00:00It's a great honor to be with you, and happy Easter.
00:05We had a great Easter.
00:06This is one of our better Easter's, I think,
00:09in a lot of different ways.
00:10I can say militarily, it's been one of the best.
00:15So, good afternoon.
00:16We have quite a bit to discuss.
00:18We'll go into pretty good detail.
00:21And we have the people that are most involved.
00:23We'll give you exactitude.
00:27And we're here today to celebrate the success of
00:30one of the largest, most complex, most harrowing
00:33combat searches, I guess you would call it a search
00:37and rescue mission, ever attempted by the military.
00:41Generally, when planes are knocked down in war,
00:44especially when you're fighting a strong group,
00:47an evil group, you can't really do this because you
00:53send in 200 men to pick up one.
00:56And it's something that's usually not attempted as much
00:59as you want to attempt.
01:00And bad things happen to that one or two.
01:04And in this case, we did two.
01:05And it might not have been attempted before, but we did.
01:09And we got great talent, but we got a little luck, too,
01:12I would say.
01:15And we were helped by a lot of people, a lot of great
01:18people, and it was an honor to be involved with it.
01:22It's very historic.
01:25This is a rescue that's very historic.
01:28It'll go down in the books.
01:29Late Thursday night, an American F-15 fighter jet
01:33went down deep inside enemy territory in Iran while
01:38participating in Operation Epic Fury, where we're doing
01:42unbelievably well, well at a level that nobody's ever
01:45seen before.
01:48The entire country could be taken out in one night,
01:51and that night might be tomorrow night.
01:54Both members of the crew ejected from the aircraft
01:57and landed alive on Iranian soil.
02:01I immediately was asked to make a decision.
02:06I ordered the U.S. Armed Forces to do whatever was
02:08necessary to bring our brave warriors back home.
02:12A risky decision, because we could have ended up with
02:15100 dead as opposed to one or two.
02:19It's a hard decision to make.
02:21But in the United States military, we leave no
02:24American behind.
02:26We don't do it.
02:27Within hours, our armed forces deployed 21 military
02:30aircraft into hostile airspace, many flying at very low
02:34altitude, being shot by bullets.
02:38You bring rifles into play when you're going that low.
02:41But there are also certain advantages.
02:45And in broad daylight over Iran for seven hours, at times
02:49facing very, very heavy enemy fire.
02:53We have a helicopter that's got a lot of bullets in it.
02:55It's amazing.
02:56We just realized how good those weapons are.
03:00Those are our machines there.
03:02Nobody has nobody has the equipment that we have.
03:05And nobody has the military that we have.
03:07Not even close.
03:08The most powerful military anywhere in the world by far.
03:12The flight crews and war fighters aboard those
03:15aircraft took extraordinary risks to rescue
03:18their fellow service members.
03:20This first wave of search and rescue forces
03:22successfully located the pilot of the F-15.
03:25And he was extracted from enemy territory by an H-860 Jolly Green.
Comentarios