“Happy Birthday United States Air Force! As an Air Force Veteran myself, I’m especially thankful for everything I learned while serving in this incredible branch of our Armed Forces,” Luna, an influencer on Instagram before being elected to Congress last year, wrote on her post.
The problem?
The jets aren’t American.
They appear to be Russian.
“As I examine them, the silhouettes look most like MiG-29s,” said Rob Young, historian for the National Air and Space Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel.
Indeed, the fighter jet images that Luna used are noticeably different than those of common U.S. fighter jets past and present, such as the F-14 Tomcat, F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon, F/A-18 Super Hornet, F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning.
Multiple messages from Raw Story to Luna’s office before publication were not returned. The posts had been online since Sept. 18.
UPDATE, Sept. 27: Luna has deleted the Russian fighter jet posts from her X and Instagram accounts.
Late Tuesday night, Edie Heipel, Luna’s communications director, sent a response via email.
“This post was published without approval from me as the comms director, via a junior staffer,” she wrote. “Rep. Luna is a US Air Force veteran who worked in airfield management and her husband is a Bronze Star/Purple Heart Combat Controller. To suggest she doesn’t know the difference between American and Russian fighter jets is asinine.”
The Mikoyan MiG-29, which first became operational in 1984, was a singular achievement for Soviet military aviation that evolved into an ever more deadly weapon of warfare. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian military made them a centerpiece of their fighter complement, and the jets spread worldwide — to the point where the United States purchased some in an effort to keep them away from bad actors.
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Ukraine also inherited some MiG-29s and has used them in the war against Russia.
Despite being an Air Force veteran, Luna has confused types of fighter jets before. In May, after meeting with representatives of Ukraine’s parliament in Poland, she said they “demanded F-35s.” They were asking for F-16s, which they eventually obtained, with pilots being trained by Americans.
A fellow Republican — 2022 U.S. Senate candidate Joe O'Dea of Colorado — similarly released a television ad last year that featured Russian fighter jets while promising to "support the police and military" of the United States, Roll Call reported.
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Luna has said U.S. involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war could “potentially start WWIII” and, in a post last week on X, she wrote, “NO MORE FUNDING FOR UKRAINE.”
As an enlisted servicemember, Luna worked as an airfield management specialist in the Air Force. She changed her name from Anna Paulina Mayerhofer to Anna Paulina Luna in 2019, at age 29, according to the Washington Post.
Former President Donald Trump endorsed Luna’s run for Congress from a district that includes Clearwater, Fla. Other far-right lawmakers, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), campaigned for her.
In Congress, Luna led the GOP’s successful effort to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), in a vote along party lines, over his role in investigating Trump. But Luna had to remove language that would have imposed a multimillion-dollar fine because some of her colleagues thought it was unconstitutional.
Luna gave birth Aug. 26 and, despite an infection and fever, vowed earlier this month to fly to Washington, D.C., to vote “no” on a short-term spending bill written by a leadership coalition of House Republicans to avert a government shutdown.
“If I’m needed, I’m coming,” she said.
Screenshot from Green's Twitter