Two U.S. Navy fighter pilots shot down over Red Sea in ‘pleasant fireplace’ incident

Two Navy pilots ejected over the Red Sea early Sunday after their fighter jet was shot down in a “friendly fire” incident, the Pentagon said.

In a statement, U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the Middle East, said that the American guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg mistakenly fired on and hit the pilots’ F/A-18 aircraft.

“Both pilots were safely recovered. Initial assessments indicate that one of the crew members sustained minor injuries. This incident was not the result of hostile fire, and a full investigation is underway,” CENTCOM said in its statement.

The incident seems to have taken place during U.S. airstrikes targeting Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The CENTCOM statement on the friendly fire incident did not explicitly mention those strikes. But just hours earlier, the Pentagon said that American troops “conducted precision airstrikes against a missile storage facility and a command-and-control facility” used by the Houthis in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen.

“During the operation, CENTCOM forces also shot down multiple Houthi one-way attack uncrewed aerial vehicles and an anti-ship cruise missile over the Red Sea,” CENTCOM said in its statement on the Houthi strikes.

Those U.S. attacks included the use of F/A-18 fighter jets like the one shot down in the friendly fire incident, according to the Defense Department statements.

For nearly a year, the U.S. has led a multinational air campaign against the Houthi rebels. Those Iran-backed rebels began targeting commercial ship traffic in the Red Sea and other regional waterways shortly after Oct. 7, 2023, when another Iran-backed militant group, Hamas, launched a major terrorist attack on Israel.

Since then, the Houthis have repeatedly targeted commercial vessels, fired missiles and attack drones toward Israel, and harassed American ships in the area. Last January, two Navy SEALs were declared dead after being lost at sea during an operation to intercept Iranian weapons allegedly destined for the Houthis.

Sunday morning’s friendly fire incident is sure to raise significant questions about the U.S. operation against the Houthis, which has no explicit metrics for success or timeline for completion. One of the most immediate foreign policy questions confronting incoming President-elect Donald Trump is whether he will continue the open-ended, increasingly expensive campaign.