Blue on Blue incident in the Red Sea

[Allan W]

Someone messed up, big time.  The Hornet crew were very lucky to get out with only minor injuries to one.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj30zk1jnmno

[Stuart Galbraith]

https://x.com/MCCCANM/status/1870751414747873308?t=5Ex4Vg1cU08The_nbokXYw&s=19

[Murph]

Yep, why the Chief of Naval Operations, the captains of the ships involved, and anyone else who had a hand in this clusterfark needs to be removed from command, and booted from the Navy.

[beans4]

Hoping to find out it was a problem with the Hornet's IFF.  Otherwise, sheesh 

[TrustMe]

I wonder if the US fighter had it's IFF not turned on?

[Yama]

IFF is just another electromagnetic signal, I suppose it's not impossible it might get 'buried' in complicated target situations with lots of different emitters etc?

Houthis claim that it was them who shot the Hornet down.

[FALightFighter]

3 hours ago, Murph said:

Yep, why the Chief of Naval Operations, the captains of the ships involved, and anyone else who had a hand in this clusterfark needs to be removed from command, and booted from the Navy.

At this point, we have no idea what actually happened, so your statement is AT BESTa rush to judgment, if not just utter asshattery.

So some potential possibilities:

- if the IFF or the missile malfunctioned, why should anyone get fired?

- if the pilots turned their IFF off for some reason, who should get fired?

- if the O2/3 and E6 in the CIC made a bad choice in the face of overwhelming “clutter” of incoming and returning aircraft, who should get fired?

I’m sure you can come up with some other possibilities, right?

 

Unless there is something explicit in the way the crew was prepared, the CNO is kind of out of it.

The captains of the ships are closer to the scene, and much more likely to have been in position to influence the action yesterday directly, but plenty of possibilities where something happened completely out of their control.

Your ignorance of the people actually involved is shown by the fact 5hat you left off USCENTCOM, NAVCENT, and the fleet and task force commanders, although I guess you covered that with “anyone else…”, although USCENTCOM is not in the Navy, so….

 

 

 

[Dawes]

Despite modern technology, I'm skeptical that we'll ever totally eliminate "own goals" in warfare.

[QOHC32]

Didn't the RWR give any signal?

[Tim the Tank Nut]

if you run enough ops stuff happens.  If your people are run too hard and are tired out the chances of bad stuff happening grow pretty quickly.  Nobody died and odds are the plane was 3/4's worn out anyway.  If there's punishment due the do it but we don't really need a scapegoat either.  Let the facts speak for themselves.

I keep looking at ops tempo and can't be surprised by this

[Murph]

I disagree, the way the Navy (and all the US military) has wokefied, and just gone to heck in a handbasket, I suspect a few reliefs and/or forced retirements might be the best thing Pour Encourager Les Autres.  

[Tim the Tank Nut]

and you may be completely correct, it's just too early to tell...

We've been asking the forces to do more with less for so long and that has its price, too.  I'm not defending the mis-allocation of the resources they do have as that is inexcusable but my guess is that this incident is a combo of tech and fatigue rather than woke malpractice.

[EchoFiveMike]

"We investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing."

I read that the last time the squids blasted their own plane was 1968.  Nice work.  S/F....Ken M

[urbanoid]

Exactly these vibes kek 

[R011]

6 hours ago, Tim the Tank Nut said:

if you run enough ops stuff happens.  If your people are run too hard and are tired out the chances of bad stuff happening grow pretty quickly.  Nobody died and odds are the plane was 3/4's worn out anyway.  If there's punishment due the do it but we don't really need a scapegoat either.  Let the facts speak for themselves.

I keep looking at ops tempo and can't be surprised by this

That's reasonable.  Stop it!

[Dawes]

SM-2 - when it absolutely has to be shot down.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Tico, when you arent that fussed what you shoot down...

[Dawes]

A 747 kill marking on the superstructure would probably stretch the limits of good taste...

[Murph]

Now it looks like it was almost 2-0 on the shoot down.  The Navy is doing a great job.  

https://www.dailywire.com/news/second-u-s-fighter-jet-nearly-shot-down-in-friendly-fire-incident

 

Shortly after an F/A-18 Super Hornet was accidentally shot down in a friendly fire accident over the Red Sea earlier this week, a second F/A-18 Super Hornet came within feet of also being shot down.

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement that the two pilots from the plane that was shot down ejected safely after their plane was “shot down in an apparent case of friendly fire.”

 

“The guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg (CG 64), which is part of the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, mistakenly fired on and hit the F/A-18, which was flying off the USS Harry S. Truman,” the statement said.

Both pilots were safely recovered from the Red Sea, CENTCOM said.

Fox News reported on Tuesday that a second F/A-18 Super Hornet that was flying several miles behind the downed fighter jet “was forced to take evasive maneuvers after a second surface-to-air missile was fired from the cruiser USS Gettysburg, narrowly missing the second jet by 100 feet while it prepared to land aboard the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman.”

[Calvinb1nav]

Good summary of the incident; 

 

[Olof Larsson]

On 12/23/2024 at 9:10 PM, Murph said:

I disagree, the way the Navy (and all the US military) has wokefied, and just gone to heck in a handbasket, I suspect a few reliefs and/or forced retirements might be the best thing Pour Encourager Les Autres.  

That explains why there were no cases of blue on blue during the invasion of Iraq, the liberation of Kuwait, during the cold war, in Vietnam, Korea or the second world war.

 

On 12/24/2024 at 1:03 AM, EchoFiveMike said:

"We investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing."

I read that the last time the squids blasted their own plane was 1968.  Nice work.  S/F....Ken M

1978, when a US Navy F-4 shot down another US Navy F-4 with a Sidewinder.

Well the US Navy did try to sink the USS Missouri in 1991 with a Phalanx.

And in 1987 a US Navy F-14 shot down a USAF RF-4C with a Sidewinder.

 

Luckily such incidents were impossible at the time, because they didn't have woke...

[Stuart Galbraith]

Thought this one was pretty creative.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/10/02/us-missile-hits-turkish-destroyer/96e5d1bd-edd3-4b70-b1fa-62d1b14e31d2/

Not to mention rocketing your own carrier.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire

 

 

[Dawes]

Not exactly a "blue on blue" incident, although a beachfront community was worse the wear for it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Harpoon_missile_misfire_incident

[R011]

7 hours ago, Olof Larsson said:

That explains why there were no cases of blue on blue during the invasion of Iraq, the liberation of Kuwait, during the cold war, in Vietnam, Korea or the second world war.

 

1978, when a US Navy F-4 shot down another US Navy F-4 with a Sidewinder.

Well the US Navy did try to sink the USS Missouri in 1991 with a Phalanx.

And in 1987 a US Navy F-14 shot down a USAF RF-4C with a Sidewinder.

 

Luckily such incidents were impossible at the time, because they didn't have woke...

My favourite is when a US destroyer fired a torpedo at a battleship carrying FDR.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Obviously Republicans.