The US military said Sunday that one of its F/A-18 fighter jets was shot down over the Red Sea early Sunday in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, which came after the command said it launched more airstrikes on Yemen.
Two pilots ejected safely from the aircraft, with one only suffering minor injuries. CENTCOM said the US jet took off from the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and was mistakenly shot down by the guided-missile cruiser Gettysburg. According to The Associated Press, US Navy ships and aircraft shot down Houthi drones and one cruise missile right before the incident.
The Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, said the downing of the F/A-18 was a result of an operation it launched against the USS Truman and other warships.
“The [Yemeni] Armed Forces carried out the strategic operation using eight cruise missiles, 17 drones. The operation resulted in the downing of an ‘F-18’ aircraft as the destroyers attempted to intercept the Yemeni drones and missiles,” Yemen’s Al Masirah TV reported, citing a statement from Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea.
On Saturday, CENTCOM said its forces conducted “precision airstrikes against a missile storage facility and a command-and-control facility” operated by the Houthis in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa.
The Houthis downplayed the strikes, saying Yemeni forces “thwarted” the attack. “The Armed Forces confirmed their success in repelling and thwarting the US-British aggression, reiterating their readiness to confront any American, British, or Israeli folly in the future,” Al Masirah reported.
Early Saturday, a Houthi missile landed in Israel, lightly injuring dozens of people. The attack came two days after Israeli strikes pounded energy infrastructure in Sanaa and Yemeni ports in the Red Sea province of Hodeidah, killing at least nine workers.
Since last year, the Houthis have been launching attacks on Israel-linked shipping and firing missiles and drones at Israel in response to the onslaught in Gaza.
In January of this year, the US began a new bombing campaign against the Houthis and launched hundreds of missile strikes on Yemen that have done nothing but escalate the situation. The Houthis started targeting American shipping in response and have expanded their attacks on Israel.
From 2015-2022, the US supported a Saudi/UAE war against the Houthis, which involved heavy airstrikes and a blockade, and the Houthis only became a more capable fighting force during that time.
According to the UN, the war killed at least 377,000 people, with more than half dying of starvation and disease caused by the siege. A ceasefire between the Houthis and Saudis has held relatively well since April 2022, but new US sanctions are blocking the implementation of a lasting peace deal.
Diversity is the mistaken belief that a chain can be made stronger by adding a few weak links.
That's sooo wrong: diversity makes resilience bc it is the sum of many plans, if one goes wrong, the other may go right instead. Lack of diversity makes societies extremely vulnerable, to epidemics for instance.
A homogenous society is a cohesive society. People living in ethnically heterogeneous neighbourhoods perceive a greater threat to resources and to their way of life, which also negatively impacts social cohesion.
Meh. Just assimilate them all via scientific atheism and destruction of large family networks (socialism helps). Ethenicity, language and other cultural traits are easy to change.
Looking at it that scientifically is dystopian
Ethnic cleansing is dystopian. We are so hyper-globalized already that we’re bound to become a single planetary nation this very century (that or gone extinct by nuclear war). We need realistic solutions for our real problems, going back to primitive tribalism (nationalism, racism, etc.) is no solution, in fact it’s the path of war, which I’m sure you oppose, at least in principle, right?
Yes
That is just a stupid comment. Question, if you were in a car accident and a diverse group of paramedics showed up, would you refuse treatment and wait for a homogenous group of paramedics to attend to you?
Actually studies using actual data show the opposite, heterogeneous neighborhoods experience less crime, have more citizen involvement in their community, and progress more quickly than homogeneous neighborhoods. The same is seen in corporations and academia, homogeneity breeds conservatism and stagnation and examples abound throughout history.
Yep. A “homogeneous” neighorhood tends to be a dying neighborhood. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether it’s the homogeneity that’s killing the neighborhood or the neighborhood’s dying situation that’s creating the homogeneity, but they seem to go together to at least some to degree.
Not sure what your racist comment has to do with a friendly fire incident. But I am sure it is a racist comment.
Diversity is ruining the military!
That is a racist comment. And ridicules.
So, how can it be fixed? All white? All males? All straight?
If that were true it would be another good argument for diversity. A ruined military is a good thing, been convinced of that ever since I was in one.
So you’re for gays, lesbians and transgenders in our military?
Have whoever you want in your military.
Personally I don’t have a military, but when I was in one (US Marine Corps, 1980s and 1990s), it didn’t bother me that there were clearly and obviously plenty of what are now referred to as LGBTQIA+LMNOPBR549 or some such people in uniform. It did bug me a little that they were required to try to hide it so as to not panic the melty-snowflake dumbasses who thought they were the next Audie Murphys but fell to pieces at the thought that someone might notice their asses in the shower.
I’m talking about the U.S. military, when referring to our military, and yes I was in the U.S. Army 1973-1975. The only ones I ever saw were the ones trying to get out of the military, like Klinger in M.A.S.H.
I once knew a Marine who won the Silver Star on Guadalcanal. His lover, who was also his platoon commander, was killed there.
Heck, one of the main reasons there IS a US military is because a rather “out” for the time homosexual, Baron von Steuben, stepped in and taught the Continentals to fight at Valley Forge.
When I was in, I didn’t know any “out” gay men, lesbians, or trans people because even toward the end of my hitches it had only gone so far as “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But I remember discussing that issue with fellow Marines who were upset that “the gays” might be allowed in the Corps, and having a good laugh at their expressions when I told them that, according to the then popular statistic (since questioned as to accuracy), there were probably 10-15 of them already serving in our company of 150 or so.
My church is strongly identified with the gay community, and at least half the women (and some of the men) who attend seem to be military retirees.
We are from different eras.
Yeah — my brother was closer to your era. I think he joined in ’75 (retired in the 1990s). He was somewhat more “socially conservative” than me, and the area he was eventually a staff NCO in (aviation ordnance) was somewhat different from mine (infantry) in terms of usual living conditions. His attitude on the whole question was “as long as the behavior doesn’t negatively affect unit morale/cohesion/performance, I don’t care who’s fucking what.”
He was still after my era. I was in the Air Defense Artillery, Nike Hercules Nuke missiles in Alaska and I had a Top Secret clearance. This type of behavior was not permitted in the ADA!
I was in the Army from 1973-1976. I don't recall anyone trying to get out of the military because they were gay. Gays weren't accepted and no one would want to get their asses kicked for coming out and that is what would have happened. It's not like you just went to your CO and told him you were gay, and you were gone. There is a process for getting out of the military.
I’m talking about people pretending to be gay to get out of the military! Was Klinger gay??? Get a grip!
I didn't see anyone "pretending" to be gay to get out of the Army at any point that I was in the Army. And there were no "Klingers", not a one. Besides, he was a crossdresser, and it wasn't even implied that he was gay.
Of course Klinger wasn’t gay. I never said he was! He tried to use crossdressing to get a Section 8 to get out of the Army, but nobody took him seriously.
Maybe I should have said acting gay to get out of the Army. Just because you never saw it doesn’t mean it never happened. I saw a lot of guys use various ways to get out of the Army during the Vietnam war, even though I was far removed form the war being stationed at Ft. Richardson Alaska.
You brought up Klinger. And you brought him up as an example of the LGBT's when you said, "The only ones I ever saw were the ones trying to get out of the military, like Klinger in M.A.S.H.". And if people were "pretending" to be gay to get out of the Army I would have seen at least one example of that in my 3 years. I'll say this again, people would have gotten their asses kicked if they came out as gay or even pretended to be gay back then. I did see that. You've heard of "blanket parties" I assume. I also saw plenty of people trying to get out, myself included, just never for being gay.
I was in from the mid-1980s until the mid-1990s, and I knew one guy who decided he wanted out and told me he planned to go into the office and confess to the unit’s first sergeant that he’d hooked up with a dude and kind of thought he liked it. Not long later he was gone, but I don’t know if that was the strategy he ended up using.
And it's quite possible those things happened while I was in too. But people usually had to fuck up several times before they got out so it was obvious as to why. I just never saw anyone getting out mysteriously quick. But my world was quite small being in the same company and platoon my entire 3 years, minus basic training.
Of course Klinger wasn’t gay. I never said he was! He tried to use crossdressing to get a Section 8 to get out of the Army, but nobody took him seriously.
Maybe I should have said acting gay to get out of the Army. Just because you never saw it doesn’t mean it never happened. I saw a lot of guys use various ways to get out of the Army during the Vietnam war, even though I was far removed form the war being stationed at Ft. Richardson Alaska.
I am not for anybody wanting to join the military or for making any other obviously wrong life choices. But I also decline to be responsible for making it for them. Sadly, I have not been presented with appreciable evidence to believe gays, lesbians and transgenders by virtue of their sexual preferences are any more sane than the 'normal' or nominally bicurious rest of us. If that were the case, you'd want any military on this planet to consist entirely of the alphabet + special characters folk.
Ok kiddo
Way to go guys.
Houthis do not have F/18 fighter jets.
In fact the Houthis do not have any aircraft.
sheesh……………….
Flying drones and paper airplanes.
Mistakes happen in wars. Always have and always will happen.
Many if not most wars are the result of mistakes, frequently multiple mistakes over the course of generations. Historian Barbara Tuchman wrote a book on the topic called 'The March Of Folly'.
I agree. The classically mistake is that side starting the war assume a easy and quick win with low cost. I bet Putin never expected his attack on Ukraine to last this long and cost Russia so many deaths.
Houthis have no aircraft but they have some anti-aircraft defense.
Who needs "Houthis" when one has friendly fire, right?
Too early to tell what happen. Could be a simple mistake like the IFF being turn off or set to the wrong code. Or maybe the missile guidance system malfunctioned. Or the F-18 got too close to the Gettysburg and the CIWS system fired on the plane. Just a few of the many possibilities. War is a dangerous business.
Like the Iranian airliner shot down on 8July1988. Downed by two surface to air missiles fired from the USS Vicenes.
Whose crew all won medals for it.
No the crew did not receive a medal for shooting down an airliner. What they received was a combat action ribbon for the battle they had early in that day with Iranian gun boats.
They received a combat action ribbon for the actions that they undertook during that cruise. Fighting off some guys in Zodiacs was only one of the things they did on that trip.
The Iranian airliner was mis identified. Being an airliner it was an easy killed once the mistake was made. A F-18 has an IFF and missile warning systems. Plus it also has decoys.
Misidentified my ass. A 12 year old child would have known the difference between a civilian Airliner and an F-14.
Since when did you become an expert or even knowledgably on early 1980s radar and fire control computers to make a claim that a child could successfully operate those systems? Those old systems lack computer power, were not well integrated and the radars lack the granularity of today's modern phase array radars. Multiple mistakes were made on the ship and the captain was overly aggressive. Combine that with the failure of the airline to respond to multiple identification requests and result is a civilian airplane got shot down.
I didn't say a child could operate any "system". My point was that the difference would have been obvious to anyone with a stich of experience in identifying the difference between a lumbering airliner and a fighter jet.
For example, on July 3, at the first Pentagon press conference on the incident, Adm. William Crowe, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the Iranian plane had been flying at 9,000 feet and descending at a “high speed” of 450 knots, “headed directly” for the Vincennes. In fact, however, the Aug. 19 report—written by Rear Adm. William Fogarty of U.S. Central Command—concluded (from computer tapes found inside the ship’s combat information center) that the plane was “ascending through 12,000 feet” at the much slower speed of 380 knots. “At no time” did the Airbus “actually descend in altitude,” the report stated.
@disqus_lbkuZ0DrY6:disqus likes to obfuscate.
Obvious wrongs are rationalized and the truth is always the first casualty. The fact is the US had an aircraft carrier in Iranian waters. Let's look at it from the Iranian perspective. Imagine that China shoots down an airliner flying out of LAX and said it was an accident. Apart from the fact that America would shoot back first and ask questions later, the question is why was a Chinese carrier in or off the coast of CA?
Second, if it was an "accident" why didn't the US admit liability for its mistake? The US paid the lower end of compensation as a settlement of the going rate in those days without paying economic and punitive damages. I recall in 1979 in Chicago when an American airliner crashed in O'hare airport. Passengers received between 500k to 1.5 million each in comparison to the 200k Iranians were compensated. And that was almost a decade earlier.
Aside from the dispute of whether it was a mistake or not, given the vindictiveness of the US, and the available evidence its questionable of whether it was an accident. While the US claims it was descending and appeared hostile, flight records show it was ascending and according to a routine flight route. The US claimed that it issued 7 radio calls on military frequencies and 3 civilian but the aircraft did not respond. First of all, given that it was a civilian aircraft it would not be able to receive on military frequencies. Second, it is disputed whether the aircraft received warning calls at all. You would have to believe the US was telling the truth, which is a tall order. And even if it was the Iranian airliner transponder was squawking the correct civilian airline code. So who knows what frequency the trigger happy, arrogant Americans were using to attempt to contact it.
So it kind of goes back to what you were saying. A thoughtful, non arrogant-trigger happy 12 year old would probably not have made the same mistake.
@brian_bixby:disqus
No one trusts the US government to tell the truth.
Houthis are more believable.
It was probably shot down.
And the Pentagram is probably too embarrassed to admit that a third world nation can take out one of their top warplanes.
LOL. "It was probably shot down" It was shot down, not probably. And is was shot down by a missile fired by the USS Gettysburg.
The cease fire between Saudi Arabia and Yemen was negotiated by China, over strident US objections.
We're apparently spending several hundred million dollars a month on the absurdly named "Operation Prosperity Guardian", trying to prevent one of the poorest nations on the planet from supporting the Palestinians (while we spend another couple hundred million assisting Israel in Gaza).
Does that make sense to anyone?
We spend the money to keep trade through the Suez open – without this trade Egypt becomes even poorer and Chinese exports will suffer very badly.
But sure western states too will suffer and it will accelerate their home shoring of production – the outsourcing of which was what led to the biggest growth of prosperity in the far east.
… and on the west side created the horrors of Somalia & Sudan … for freedon & democracy of course.
Somalia was because they were a threat to trade through the Suez – have you forgotten? Spreading democracy was never a goal.
Are you proposing that the west got involved in Sudan to suppress their support for Palestine?
As far as I can tell the west got involved in Sudan to stem the flow of refugees to Europe – and NB not for humanitarian reasons.
Piloting around Africa rather than Suez costs about $1,000,000 per trip, between fuel, insurance and crew costs, to the central Mediterranean. The average container ship carries 15,000 containers, so that’s a whopping $66.66 per container. If a container holds 10,000 widgets consumers will pay all of $0.0066 extra per widget. I see why you worry about the extra damage to “western states”, consumers will be slammed by the extra expense! (Yes, that’s sarcasm.) If you were actually worried about the economics of western Europe you’d oppose the sanctions and (partial) embargo on Russian petroleum and gas (interestingly nuclear fuel can be exported by Russia still, since Europe depends on it). Now they’re buying LNG from the US at three times the price and still buying Russian petroleum, but only after India purchases it first and then resells it a a steep markup. It’s energy costs which is destroying western European industry (particularly Germany), not shipping.
Egypt brings in about $5 billion a year on the Canal, less the expenses of operating and maintaining it, while their annual budget is $127 billion. So revenue from the Suez Canal accounts for less than 4% of their budget. They’ll survive, and the population supports the Palestinians so the government doesn’t have much choice anyway.
Oh, and you’re wrong about Chinese exports, only ships from countries which ally with Israel in its Gaza genocide are targeted by Ansar Allah, Chinese, Russian, Indian, and African shipping passes unmolested. Of courses Iranian ships have issues, but that’s because of regular harassment by the US Navy, which has stolen a couple of them, not Yemen.
You seem to be fairly ignorant about the costs of things – I'm not overly worried about the cost to western nations – they are in a process of homeshoring production.
The blockade of the Suez a while back the cost is to disturbing the flow of JIT supply chains – not necessarily the cost of the single item.
So the cost of this will be borne mainly by the nations which can least afford it – i.e. those nations in the far east relying on exports to Europe.
So you misunderstand what worries me – the west will cope – sanctions are not a major concern – the cost of lifting sanctions would be much higher than the cost of keeping them up until the international rules based order can prevail (mostly as it did before).
The income was 9.4 billion in 22/23 and it was 7.2 billion in 23/24 so down 23%.
https://eurometal.net/egypts-suez-canal-revenue-shrinks-23-amid-attacks-on-shipping-political-tensions/
It may fall to 5 billion if Russia prevails in Ukraine as much trade will be lost to military rearmament – already Trump is talking about more than doubling military expenditure in NATO.
Again missing the point by more than a mile – most of EU's trade with China is carried on ships not registered in China or Russia – but controlled by EU based companies- hence trade with China will be suffering very badly.
JIT supply chains are, and have always been, a stupid idea. I don’t feel sorry for any executive who unexpectedly doesn’t get his quarterly bonus because they embraced long-term stupidity for short-term profits.
I am with you on the JIT. They are great until they break. I am old school where I like to have a cushion for problems that will occur.
Sure they seem a vulnerable system but they are what has led to much lower prices for just about everything they have touched and a few they were not even in touch with.
Is it that you think we'll be better off with literally tones of parts stored along the supply chain and being much less flexible in our response to changes in demand?
Back in the 1990s, the company I worked for got VERY invested in “Just In Time” order/receipt of production inputs. That resulted in frequent production stoppages, sometimes amounting to multi-day layoffs. There were nine ingredients — NOT including packaging elements — in that factory’s main product (mustard). Run out of any of them and production stopped until more arrived. After a few months they went back to trying to keep a large “cushion.”
It is a bit like combined arms warfare – fairly simple to understand, very difficult to actually implement. That said it should not be ignored that JIT (or nearly JIT) has been behind much of the reduction in costs over the last decades. From what you tell it sounds like they were trying too hard too early – but it could also be that sales were just too fluctuating for it to be a practical solution.
How does ordering 500 widgets one at a time with multiple delivery times create a reduction in cost over just ordering 500 widgets, assuming the widgets are either non-perishable or only perishable over a long time period? It may save some warehouse space in the short term, but it entails additional loading/unloading cycles too.
On my end of the mentioned production process, we had two large silos, one for each of two varieties of mustard seed, which was delivered by rail car from Canada to Missouri. Part of the “Just In Time” protocol was to delay ordering seed until the silos were down to a a very low percent of full. And then the entire mill and bottling line would be shut down when there was a rail delay. And then the entire mill and production line would have to work overtime when the stuff finally arrived to catch back up.
Reduction in local storage, paying only for the deliveries as they are consumed – reduction in waste, flexibility to respond to changes in demand.
In car production it has spread production over many suppliers each with their advantage – if JIT was not a thing we'd have much larger production facilities.
JIT is not equally advantageous in different type of production – the type you describe is not a place where I'd guess there would be the biggest savings – add to this that from what you describe they were postponing rather than ordering just in time.
I.e. before you have mastered fluctuations around a safe level of local storage trying to run the business at the lowest stock possible is a disaster waiting to happen.
In the particular workplace where I was employed, reduction in local storage wasn’t really a consideration — because very large storage space (for inputs and finished goods) was already built out. We did end up with a lot of empty room. If there had been plans to expand production facilities, that would certainly have come in handy since e.g. tank farms and bottling lines could have been put in already built places.
I suspect that MAY have been part of the reason for adopting JIT, and just hadn’t eventuated by the time I stopped working there.
But I also got the impression that this company’s management loved hopping on the latest fads without really thinking through the requirements or consequences. I was a manual laborer — starting as an assembly line worker, eventually becoming a miller — and hated having to sit through endless employee seminars on Who Moved My Cheese, etc. because eager beaver managers thought they were going to re-invent factory work with a bunch of verbiage.
With short-term perishable inputs/outputs, flexibility in response to changes in demand does make a lot of a case for JIT. If I make something out of inputs that go bad in a month, and my finish product has a shelf life of a week, obviously I don’t want a bunch of stuff laying around for any longer than necessary. In the case of mustard seed, perishability was a LITTLE bit of a consideration. We didn’t want the stuff sitting in a silo for months, because if mold got in there it would be ruined. But ordering stuff that it “normally” took 10 days to get only 11 days in advance when inventory was getting low was a bad idea because the slightest delay at any point in the chain between the supplier and us had costly consequences.
The connection between decentralized supplier options and JIT is interesting, but kind of a chicken and egg thing. Did new suppliers pop up because JIT created niches for them, or did JIT pop up because buyers realized they had multiple supplier options making it doable? Some of both, I’d wager.
And yes, you are correct. My impression is that the company tried to jump to JIT with both feet, not anticipating the problems that could arise when, say, you have a single supplier of mustard seed, one way of delivering it (rail), and really only a single main route for that rail connection where one stalled train, derailment, collision, etc. can shut things down for significant time periods. In one case, the plant was nearly shut down for three days because of a rail delay … then several of us had to work a double shift sucking the mustard seed out of the rail cars and into the silos when it finally arrived. I was employed full-time during the near shutdown because there was plenty of maintenance work to do in the milling areas, then got that eight hours of overtime, but a lot of the bottling people got two days off with no pay.
It’s been nearly 25 years since I left that job. I suspect they eventually got their JIT ideas in square with reality. But while I was there, JIT was a significant source of hold-ups and workplace unhappiness.
Sure, only they are what has made trade a much more efficient option – and without them there will be much less trade.
So the executives who lose their bonus are far from the only ones to be in the shit house.
But you perhaps prefer the Asians to be poorer!?
You’re confusing ‘efficiency’ with ‘short-term profitability’, a common mistake.
And the Asian countries will be fine, the Western countries could fall off the globe tomorrow and they’d still have 6 1/2 billion people to trade with, but your virtue signally has been noted.
You mistake numbers for purchasing power – and as for short term profitability – you seem to confuse that with the advantages of division of labor, but your ignorance have been noted.
Maybe friendly, or, maybe, unfriendly
Most likely Unfriendly…!
False, all missiles are stored underground and no words of using bunker busters…!
And you know all this how?
1) Yemeni people are not stupid, even the ones who became religious fanatics.
2) Every other group storing large amounts of missiles against attack puts them underground.
3) Ansar Allah is still firing as many missiles as it wants, in spite of over a year of constant attacks.
There are some things called 'logic' and 'deduction' out there which you might investigate.
"Friendly fire" over the Red Sea when we aren't at war. How'd that happen Joey?
Hard to believe in the "precision" of our strikes when we apparently can't differentiate a US warplane from a seagull. It couldn't have been mistaken for a Houthi aircraft as the Houthis don't actually HAVE any aircraft. Shades of the USS Vincennes; apparently our navy hasn't gotten any better in the last FORTY YEARS. Waiting for the courtmartial to follow; but of course, it never will.
Pretty embarrassing. This millennial military gets easily triggered.
Just as likely that a Houthi device flew close enough to draw fire, which ignorant people like myself would characterize as a fuckup.
Shorter: I never buy the US version these days. It's just become automatic, backed up by too many examples.
Pretty much the same territory as the million dead Russian soldiers in contrast with the 47,000 dead Ukrainians according to comrade Zelensky, or the 4000 dead North Koreans, ……..