SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
By Jon Gambrell
Dubai: The United States military has lost a second $93 million F/A-18 fighter jet into the Red Sea after another mishap aboard the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman.
The incident with the jet this week is the second in two weeks to mar the deployment of the Truman, which has been essential in the US-led air campaign in the region against the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
The US has suffered a string of accidental – and costly – aircraft losses.Credit: nnasswain
The F/A-18 Super Hornet touched down on the aircraft carrier after a flight on Tuesday, a defence official said, but “the arrestment failed”. Arrestment refers to the hook system used by aircraft when they are landing on carriers, which catches steel wires on the flight deck and brings the aircraft to a stop.
Two air crew were rescued by a helicopter and suffered minor injuries after the incident, the official added. No one on the flight deck was hurt.
It remains unclear what part of the system failed, and the incident is now under investigation, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to speak publicly.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell wrote on X that the aircraft “was not struck by the Houthis” and that the carrier strike group “remains fully mission-capable”.
On April 28, another F/A-18 slipped off the Truman’s hangar deck into the Red Sea. Two crew members, one in the cockpit of the Super Hornet and one on a small towing tractor, jumped away.
And in December, the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg mistakenly shot down an F/A-18 after ships earlier destroyed multiple Houthi drones and an anti-ship cruise missile launched by the rebels.
Both air crew survived that incident as well.
The Truman itself suffered a mishap in February when it collided with a merchant vessel off Port Said, Egypt.
The Harry S. Truman has seen its Red Sea deployment extended several times as the Houthi campaign drags on.Credit: nnajosh.hohne
The super-carrier has seen its deployment extended multiple times amid the Houthi airstrike campaign. It had been joined recently by the carrier USS Carl Vinson operating out of the Arabian Sea.
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump and Oman’s foreign minister said a ceasefire had been reached with the Houthis, who would no longer target ships in the Red Sea corridor.
‘Hopefully that’s over with’
A Houthi spokesman sought to portray the ceasefire as a victory for the rebels, describing it as America “stopping aggression in exchange for stopping attacks”.
“Yemen’s victory represented a major shift in the balance of power”, Hashem Sharaf al-Din said in a statement carried by the state-run SABA news agency on Thursday.
Smoke billows across the skyline in Sanaa following Israel’s strike on the city’s international airport.Credit: AP
The Houthis claimed a drone attack on Israel on Wednesday, which was acknowledged by the Israeli military without being attributed to the rebels.
Donald Trump, speaking in the Oval Office on Wednesday, said he expected the Houthis to uphold their commitment to stop firing on Red Sea shipping.
“Hopefully that’s over with, and they’ll leave those ships alone,” he said. “We take their word for it.”
The Houthis had been waging persistent missile and drone attacks against shipping in what the group’s leadership has described as an effort to end Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza.
Earlier this week, Israeli warplanes attacked Sanaa International Airport, leaving it out of action.
Airport chief Khaled al-Shaif told the Houthis’ al-Masirah satellite news channel that the Israeli strike had destroyed the main terminal and left craters in the runway.
AP
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