A female Air Force officer became the first woman to earn the Silver Star after she and her F-15E Strike Eagle pilot orchestrated the shootdown of more than eighty Iranian suicide drones that were launched against Israel last April.
Air Force Captain Lacie “Sonic” Hester, an F-15E Strike Eagle weapons systems officer, and her pilot, Air Force Major Benjamin “Irish” Coffey, received the nation’s third-highest award for valor after they coordinated the U.S. airborne defense against the Iranian attack.
On April 13, Iran launched a huge missile and drone attack against Israel. More than 300 ballistic missiles and suicide drones flew against Israeli cities. The attack was in response to an Israeli air strike in Damascus, Syria, that had killed a senior Iranian paramilitary officer a few days before.
The U.S. military contributed naval and air assets to help shoot down the incoming munitions.
“We were on kind of an alert status for about a week, week and a half, leading up to that point,” Air Force Major Clayton “Rifle” Wicks, said in an interview. “We knew that there was going to be some sort of large-scale attack. How big we didn’t quite know, and when exactly we didn’t quite know.”
On that night, the two Air Force officers who received the Silver Star were flying on board their F-15E Strike Eagle as airborne mission commanders, coordinating and directing other fighter jets toward the incoming missiles and drones.
"Although intelligence provided the numbers of how many drones we could expect to see, it was still surprising to see them all," Hester said in an Air Force interview.
But the volume of the incoming Iranian drones was so high that Hester and Coffey expended all of their missiles and had to shoot down suicide drones with their gun.
“A message comes across that just says. . . like Viper 72 is ‘Winchester,’ which means they are out of missiles. They have no bullets left. They have nothing,” Wicks added. “And I remember, I got chills, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up because that was the first time I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. Command and control can’t keep up with the amount of missiles that are being shot and things that are happening.’ And that’s the only message they got across.”
Overall, the defense was successful, with more than 99 percent of the incoming munitions getting shot down. The Air Force fighter jets that participated in the defense shot down approximately 80 suicide drones.
Hester became the first woman in the Air Force to ever receive the Silver Star and just the 10th woman to receive the third-highest award in the entire military.
But it wasn’t just Hester and Coffey who were recognized for their actions in countering the Iranian ballistic missile and drone attack. In total, the members of the 494th Fighter Squadron and the 494th Fighter Generation Squadron received two Silver Stars, six Distinguished Flying Crosses with the valor device, four Distinguished Flying Crosses with the combat device, four Distinguished Flying Crosses, two Bronze Stars, seven Air and Space Commendation Medals and seven Air and Space Achievement Medals.
Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operations and a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ). He holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP.
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