U.S. helicopter goes down in Arabian Sea, crew member missing, Navy says
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The helicopter, which was assigned to the USS George H.W. Bush, is not believed to have been taken down by hostile action, the Navy said.
U.S. Navy personnel are conducting search-and-rescue operations for one of the crew members aboard an MH-60S helicopter that had to make an emergency landing in the Arabian Sea.
The aircrew of the helicopter, which is assigned to the USS George H.W. Bush, had to carry out the emergency landing Wednesday morning. The U.S. 5th Fleet said there is no indication that hostile action necessitated the emergency landing and that three of the four crew members have been recovered and are in stable condition.
The cause of the incident is under investigation.
The U.S. military still has more than 50,000 troops in the Middle East region following the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran.
The Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea. Iran has largely blocked commercial vessels from Gulf countries from transiting the strait to the Arabian Sea. Allowing ships to go through there without fear of being attacked was a requirement of both the April 8 ceasefire announcement and the memorandum of understanding, which the United States and Iran agreed to last month. Traffic has gone up since, but it has not yet reached pre-war traffic levels.
Also, last month, an Iranian drone took down an Army AH-64 Apache helicopter near the strait. The two crew members were rescued by a drone boat.
“The surface drone that assisted in last night’s rescue off the coast of Oman was a U.S. Navy Corsair unmanned surface vessel operated by U.S. 5th Fleet’s Task Force 59. The task force began fielding these drones in theater in late March,” Capt. Tim Hawkins, CENTCOM spokesman, told the Washington Examiner at the time.
COURT RULES AGAINST PENTAGON ESCORT REQUIREMENT FOR JOURNALISTS IN THE BUILDING
In January 2024, two U.S. Navy SEALs, Special Warfare Officer Christopher Chambers and Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Nathan Gage Ingram, drowned as they attempted to climb aboard a vessel purportedly transporting Iranian weapons to the Yemen-based Houthis in the Arabian Sea.
The Pakistani captain of that vessel, Muhammad Pahlawan, 49, was found guilty last year in the Eastern District of Virginia of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists, supporting Iran’s weapons of mass destruction program, transporting explosive devices intended to harm others, and witness intimidation.