WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump said Monday that the US military had used as many as 155 warplanes to rescue the second airman in Iran and was forced to destroy some cargo planes that got stuck.

The pilot was injured "quite badly," Trump said at a press conference at the White House.

"We blew up the old planes," Trump said while focusing on the details of the rescue. He said the planes contained communications equipment and anti-missile technology.

The search-and-rescue mission was then conducted by "faster, lighter planes," Trump said.

"Hundreds of people could have been killed," Trump said. "So we had people that were within the military that said this is not wise, and I understood that. But I decided to do it."

US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine told reporters that the US A-10 Warthog downed on Friday was conducting a "sandy" mission -- positioning itself between the rescue force and enemy fire.

The aircraft was hit multiple times by Iranian fire, but the pilot managed to fly it out of Iran before ejecting over friendly territory.

The plane had only one job: "Get to the survivor, bring the rescue force forward, and put themselves between that survivor on the ground and the enemy," said Caine.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe said the agency played a key role during the search and rescue efforts by using "human assets and exquisite technologies" to locate the airman and determine he was alone and alive on Saturday morning.

Ratcliffe described the search and rescue as a "daunting challenge" that is "comparable to hunting for a single grain of sand in the middle of a desert."

"This was also a race against the clock, as it was critical that we locate the downed aviator as quickly as possible, while at the same time keeping our enemies misdirected," he told reporters.

Ratcliffe confirmed that the CIA "executed a deception campaign" against Iran during the rescue so that the missing pilot, when "concealed in a mountain crevice," was "invisible to the enemy, but not to the CIA."

Trump said that an Iranian shoulder-fired missile downed the US Air Force F-15E jet on Friday. But neither the president nor his top officials elaborated on the type of munition and how the fighter jet was shot down.