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US shoots down two of its own Navy pilots over Red Sea
- ethbr1 2y agoRelevant >> Pilots recovered alive – one with minor injuries – after ejecting from fighter jet as US military says its guided missile cruiser ‘mistakenly’ fired on the F/A-18.
- cenamus 2y agoAnd I thought the F/A-18 was sorta outdated by now... Are they flying it just for practice/training missions because it's cheaper, or did they upgrade it substantially?
- GiorgioG 2y agoIt's still in production (until 2025.)
- peutetre 2y agoThe F-15, F-16, and F/A-18 have all been continuously upgraded over time. Examples: https://www.defensenews.com/air/2024/04/12/air-force-to-get-f-15e-jet-with-fresh-electronic-warfare-tech-in-summer/ https://www.defensenews.com/air/2024/04/12/air-force-to-get-... https://theaviationist.com/2024/01/24/usaf-to-fly-f-16s-into-the-2040s/ https://theaviationist.com/2024/01/24/usaf-to-fly-f-16s-into... https://www.twz.com/litening-targeting-pod-tested-on-f-a-18-super-hornet-for-first-time https://www.twz.com/litening-targeting-pod-tested-on-f-a-18-...
- Rastonbury 2y agoProbably both, the even older F-15s are still the main workhorse fighter for US and others albeit with many upgrades
- ggambetta 2y agoIt's not the plane, Mav. It's the pilot.
- swiftcoder 2y agoPart of the picture here is how few of the newer generation fighters are actually in service. The F22 fleet is capped at 200, and I gather significantly less than that in a state of combat readiness. There are technically around 600 F35s in service, but they are plagued by reliability issues, to the point that they are only averaging 50% availability for missions.
- ethbr1 2y agoAll of the comments here could have been answered by a check of (mostly current) Wikipedia. USN aircraft, by count: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_United_States_naval_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_United_States_n... USN wings, by squadron equipment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Navy_aircraft_wings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Navy_air... In short: there's little reason to majority-equip carrier air wings with F-35Cs. They're an exquisite asset, with the maintenance and availability penalties that come along with that. Not all missions require exquisite assets. When you're thousands of miles from the nearest supply depot, in the middle of the ocean, it makes sense to be pragmatic and use a design that's been in production and refined for almost 30 years. Sometimes, good aerodynamic performance, good engines, and weapons compatibility is enough. Therefore a lot of the time, the F/A-18E/F is enough.
- lr1970 2y agoDid the missile hit the plane or the pilots ejected preemptively when their aircraft detected an incoming missile?
- Thiez 2y ago[flagged]
- ashoeafoot 2y agoThey demand a genocide right on their flags.
- ashoeafoot 2y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slogan_of_the_Houthi_movement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slogan_of_the_Houthi_movemen...
- ashoeafoot 2y ago[flagged]
- tptacek 2y agoThe slogan aside, Israelis (sorry, "the Jews") have much, much less to fear from Ansar Allah than the overwhelming majority of Yemenis who aren't Zaydi, those being the people the Houthis are actually working to exterminate.
- dttze 2y agoBig claims with no evidence to back it up. Funny how you are always in any thread mentioning AA to tell us how they are actually the bad guys, and not the west which is conducting a genocide.
- tptacek 2y agoYou have to have not read anything whatsoever about Ansar Allah (or Yemen) to believe these are big claims. If you want stuff nicely packaged for western audiences, start with Human Rights Watch.
- 2y ago
- vFunct 2y agoUntil the US provides evidence confirming it was friendly fire, you can assume Houthis shot it down. The US does not want to acknowledge their role in attacking Yemen.
- tptacek 2y agoThey also blew the hell out of an aircraft carrier. Ignore the commanding officer tweeting pictures of the facility dog and the ice cream machines; that was all a smokescreen to hide how much damage the Houthis had done.
- rasz 2y agoHouthis did down 12 fancy Reaper drones tho. Its not like they are shooting rockets made out of lamp posts, its all Iran/Russian finest gear.
- icev 2y agoWhat? The publicly acknowledges their role all of the time, they even post about it in Twitter https://x.com/CENTCOM https://x.com/CENTCOM
- normie3000 2y agoWeird headline? They seem to have shot down 1 fighter jet which had 2 crew, both of whom were pilots.
- 627467 2y agoI guess that's a human-centered title rather than object-centered one.
- IshKebab 2y agoIt's a deceptive title, clearly intended to sound like it was two planes.
- stogot 2y agoI would have expected one of us programmers to make a joke about Types here, but missed opportunity! My dad jokes are too poor to try
- normie3000 2y agoFunctional vs object-oriented?
- pixelesque 2y agoCorrect on the first bit, however the backseater's the Weapons Systems Officer, not a pilot (despite what many films show, i.e. backseaters going off to be pilots).
- tomohelix 2y agoA bit on the tangent, but seeing how the US often struggles to fight clearly inferior forces, I have to question how effective the US military really is. The US has the most advance tech and the largest budget, nobody can deny that. But how useful are these when something like the B2 cost billions and there is only one tank factory in the entire country? Also, many critical parts for these expensive war machines are difficult to source and easily disrupted by an adversary. One example is the artillery ammunition being supplied to Ukraine. The US can barely break 50K/month. Meanwhile, Russia is producing them by the hundreds of thousands. China is even higher. The US has the fanciest toys but those can barely be made and are only good for strategic, precision attacks; and their supply chain cannot sustain a prolonged conflict. In a peer conflict, these are fatal. If China started a war, their manufacturing base can potentially pump out more weapons than the US can destroy. And in the long term, the US may not be able to keep up in both weapons and personnel. Just like how Japan got the largest and most advance battleships with the more experienced crews at the beginning of WW2 but still lost to the US. Japan could not match the production and rapid replacement rate the US had. Now, the US is in Japan position compared to China.
- pixelesque 2y agoThe US is still very effective and well-trained compared to its peers, however the issue is armed forces all over the world (including the US, and other NATO countries, especially the UK and Germany) are in parts struggling with retention and providing training to their soliders/sailors/aircrew (flight-time to pilots in the case of Air force), so collectively standards are going down. The Royal Air Force has less active fast jets (fighters and bombers) now than it had just bomber aircraft (Tornados) 20 years ago, and the Royal Navy is struggling to find sailors to man ships (not surprising given the pay, and the fact the UK doesn't do what the US armed forces do and pay for education, i.e. college). If you look at accident reports over the past year from the US Air Force, the amount of flying time pilots are getting for practice every three months is around a third of what is was 10 years ago.
- tomohelix 2y agoI think training and experienced crews are in the same boat as equipment. It takes too much time and effort to train someone to do things like flying the F35 or crew an aircraft carrier. By the time a new pilot is certified, in a real conflict, probably 10 already died. It is simply unsustainable if the enemy can fighting back on equal ground. The history example with Japan also demonstrated this point. Japan had highly trained and effective sailors and pilots. But they all died and by the end of the war, Japan had to scrape the barrel and forced untrained young boys into the fights, who did not received any advice or training from the experienced veterans because those had all died. And so they lost. The US may walk the exact same path on both equipment and personnel.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- underseacables 2y agoThat is incredible. So low over the water, with missile inbound. Those aviators are lucky to be alive. Last time an American war plane was shot down by a missile fired from the ship was in Vietnam!