Another fighter jet plunged into the Red Sea after it went overboard during an unsuccessful landing on the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier.
The two aviators who were in the aircraft safety ejected and were rescued at sea by helicopter. They suffered minor injuries, and nobody on the ship deck was injured, The Washington Post reported.
The incident happened the same day President Donald Trump announced a ceasefire deal with the Houthis, the Iran-backed rebel group that the Truman’s crew has been battling in Yemen.
Hours after Trump’s announcement, the Houthis “took a shot” at the aircraft carrier, a source told CNN. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the shooting was related to the lost fighter jet, an F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jet worth about $67 million.
It was the second jet to go overboard the Truman in as many weeks.
On April 28, an F/A-18E Super Hornet was lost after the aircraft carrier swerved to avoid an attack from the Houthis. The plane was being towed in the hangar bay, and the move crew lost control of the aircraft, the Navy said in a statement. The tow tractor also went overboard, according to the statement.
A third fighter jet was accidentally shot down over the Red Sea in December by another Navy warship, the USS Gettysburg, raising questions about how well warships and fighter jets in the region are communicating, the Post reported.
And in February, the Truman collided with a merchant vessel near Port Said, Egypt, in the Mediterranean Sea, according to the Navy. There were no reports of flooding or injuries, but the ship’s commanding officer were fired following the incident, according to the Post.
The dangerous mishaps have raised questions about the Truman’s grueling deployment, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has extended twice, the paper reported.
Former President Joe Biden’s administration began launching strikes against the Houthi militants in early 2024 in response to attacks on commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea.
Originally the Houthis were targeting Israeli vessels and demanding an end to the war in Gaza, but over time the attacks became increasingly indiscriminate, according to a congressional research report.
The Trump administration has ramped up strikes against the group, hitting more than 1,000 targets in Yemen in less than two months, the Post reported.
On Tuesday, the president unexpectedly announced the U.S. would stop bombing the Houthis after Oman helped broker a ceasefire between the two sides, according to The Washington Post. Hegseth also shared a social media post from Oman’s foreign minister announcing the agreement.
A member of the Houthi Political Council, which occupies parts of Yemen, told Bloomberg the ceasefire addressed “U.S. aggression in Yemen” and said the group would not stop its “operations to support Gaza.”
CNN’s report about the Houthi shots fired raised further questions about the scope of the agreement and its durability.
U.S. defense officials have released limited details about the military campaign, which was marred by controversies including the lost fighter jets, a strike believed to have killed dozens of civilians, and Hegseth famously sharing war plans in an unsecured group chat on the commercial messaging app Signal.
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