Except it's a plane. And that just freaks me the hell out. That third dimension with flying is the scary one
It's the axis intercept that's most bothersome.
Real quote from my grandmother: "I'm not afraid of flying or anything. I just wish they didn't have to get so close to the ground before landing!"
These books describe every possible failure and respective diagnostic and repair procedures. Multiple planes of this type have been broken on purpose in different modes to figure out what can be bent where and by how much before it becomes a problem. Planes roll out to the soft ground and ingest foreign objects every year, the kind of strain increased rolling resistance does to the airframe is nothing new, there are well defined procedures to getting the plane back on deck.
1) There's plenty of reasons their planes could go bad without landing in fields. If they want to make sure this particular plane is fit to fly, they can.
2) Iran has been doing that for decades now.