Two US Navy pilots were rescued after ditching their F/A-18 fighter jet during a landing mishap on the USS Harry S. Truman off Yemen’s coast on Monday, US officials confirmed to Al-Monitor.
The pilots were forced to eject due to an arrestment failure in which the aircraft’s tailhook failed to sufficiently engage on the deck, one official said. The two pilots were recovered via helicopter from the water and treated for minor injuries, CNN first reported on Monday night.
Why it matters: The incident marked the second loss of an F/A-18 by the US Navy in the campaign in just over a week.
The USS Truman also lost an F/A-18 overboard on April 28 when a towing vehicle lost control of the aircraft after the Truman took a hard turn amid a report of incoming Houthi fire.
The Truman has borne the brunt of US strikes against the Houthis in recent months, with round-the-clock sorties launched from the carrier’s deck. Another F/A-18 was shot down by friendly fire launched by the USS Gettysburg, a guided-missile destroyer accompanying the Truman, in late December.
What’s next: President Donald Trump announced on Monday the United States would halt its bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen less than two months after he authorized its resumption.
“We will stop the bombings,” Trump said in the Oval Office alongside Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. “They have capitulated,” he claimed.
Houthi officials responded publicly by saying they would halt their attacks on US ships if the US military ceased its campaign, but vowed to continue to launch other attacks in retaliation for Israel’s two-month blockade of humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth laid out the intended end stage of the redoubled US bombing campaign in mid-March, saying it would come once the Houthis stop attacking American ships in the region. The strikes have failed to restore international commercial shipping traffic via the Red Sea to what it was before Oct. 7, 2023.
Trump’s announcement that the campaign would halt came just a week before he is set to visit Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar in the first overseas trip of his second term. While Yemeni government officials have pushed for US and Gulf support in hope of relaunching a ground campaign to seize the port of Hodeidah from the Houthis, Saudi officials remained wary of reengaging in the war after having failed to unseat the rebels despite a more than seven-year bombing campaign backed by the United States.
Know more: The joint US Army-Navy mission to set up a floating over-the-shore pier to deliver humanitarian aid onto Gaza’s coast last year resulted in 62 injuries and damage to 27 Navy vessels amounting to some $31 million, the Pentagon’s inspector general revealed in a scathing report late last week.
The operation, authorized by the Biden administration amid withering international criticism of its support for Israel’s campaign in the besieged Palestinian enclave, was plagued with communications and interoperability problems, the Pentagon’s internal watchdog office found.
The units involved — the Army’s 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary) and US Navy Beach Group 1 — suffered from shortfalls in staffing and were not trained and equipped to common standards. Several prior exercises using the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore systems had found significant shortcomings in interoperability.
“The Army and Navy did not meet service-level standards for equipment and unit readiness to perform JLOTS operations,” the investigation concluded.
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