F/A-18F Shot Down By USS Gettysburg - Fighter Pilots React

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Mover and Gonky chat/speculate about the VFA-11 F/A-18 shot down by the USS Gettysburg. Thankfully both the pilot and WSO were able to eject and were recovered safely. What do you think? Our leadership is so bad we're shooting ourselves down? It's unfortunate but blue on blue happens during conflicts? Boat drivers shouldn't have the keys to the trigger? Leave your comments below!!!

Every Monday at 8PM ET, Mover (F-16, F/A-18, T-38, 737, helicopter pilot, author, cop, and wanna be race car driver) and Gonky (F/A-18, T-38, A320, dirt bike racer, author, and awesome dad) discuss everything from aviation to racing to life and anything in between.



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*Views presented are my own and do not represent the views of DoD or its Components.*

[superkjell]

The important question is: will the Gettysburg get a painting of a F/A-18 on the hull?

[lawrenceeverett]

My daughter is the ship surgeon on the Truman. She was working triage at the time of the incident. The pilots got excellent care!

[terryhair]

AEGIS missile system software will not allow you to fire on an aircraft that is transmitting a friendly IFF signal. It's possible that the fighter had its IFF transponder off if it went feet dry over a hostile area and failed to turn it back on going back over water. That would result in an automatic engagment if the system was configured for battle operations. I served on a AEGIS cruiser and was the guy who "pulled the trigger" when MANUALLY engaging aircraft. The system is autonomous if things are dicey.

[davidg]

The "Not service connected" was a deep burn. One that the VA won't pay for.

[peterlhoang]

Goose: Mav, are you sure this fly-by is a good idea?"
Mav: "Trust me, Goose."
CIWS:

[sec]

As an old cruiser ship driver who did a tour on a bird farm I have a difficult time thinking they actually engaged the F-18. There should have been an E-2 up, the F-18 wouldn't have been allowed to launch without valid IFF, and it was an upgraded AEGIS Cruiser that was acting Air Warfare Commander (AW). Everybody should have known exactly where friendly assets were. Plus (unless they have changed things) if an SM-2 is launched in error the ship can hold fire and destroy the bird in flight. My thought is the ship had CIWS in auto and the F-18 was directed to fly ( or just flew) within the CIWS envelope with a threatening profile and everybody forgot it was set to that. I can't believe the fighter had the wrong ident or the ident was changed and was intentionally engaged. Also I would think an SM-2 would have probably caused more injury and possibly prevented ejection.

Just one old SWOs opinion.

[smithandshortdogs]

This kind of thing is less uncommon than you would think.

As a USAF E5 on a USA ILO deployment the CLP I was the RTO for was involved in a blue on blue incident. We were on a resupply mission in a USMC AO. A sentry post was unable to identify us and investigated by fire. We responded with flares and non directed fire. They stopped.

Background: this was the first time a USAF convoy had entered this AO. USAF/USA comms were not fully integrated with USMC ones. USAF/USA CREW was incompatible with USMC CREW, and would engage each other causing denied electronics environment. Our vehicles were not marked IAO USMC NVG protocols. Due to opertaional delays, our mission was about 6 hours out of the designated window. Due to this delay, we were running previous cycle's frequencies and encryption.

From the Marine standing post's perspective, unknown unmarked vehicles approached your sector of fire. They do not respond to hails. Your radio then quits working and you cannot contact higher... they are not slowing down. What do you do?

[RedTail-]

First navy on navy? No. USS Porter fired torpedoes for the hell of it while they were all transporting frickin President Roosevelt on a "secret" mission way back when.. They had to break radio silence to warn the USS Iowa which was carrying the President. Luckily the torpedo headed right for that ship exploded just before reaching anywhere it could cause damage...




Roosevelt declined to charge the crew... "Boys will be boys"

[sharizabel]

I was over Iraq back in the mid 90s when we lost all Comms including our HF. We headed south and as soon as we approached the Saudi border every Patriot in range locked us up. Lucky for us none shot at us. We eventually made it back to Dhahran and landed using NORDO procedures. It was unnerving being locked up for an hour or so of flight.

I was in the EF-111 and we flew single ship most of the time.

[Warhorse]

I like Mover's point about the codes rolling. As prior service Coast Guard, we had to pay VERY real attention to our radio codes and make sure to roll the codes on time and on correct data. For us in the USCG, fratricide is always a possibility and we've actually had it happen to us once during the Vietnam era. One of our 82-ft patrol boats, POINT WELCOME, got strafed almost to the point of sinking by USAF aircraft, when the USAF failed to transmit the correct ID codes of the day to the cutter. The F-4s on patrol misidentified the cutter as a Vietnamese junk and rolled in hot. The pilothouse was shot to pieces and the fantail was set on fire. The CO was killed, the XO severely wounded, and the chief boatswain's mate took charge and dodged about 3-4 firing passes before running the cutter aground to keep it from sinking. Fratricide is a big deal for us.

[Milo_]

Thank God the aviators were able to eject safely. Shows just how important comms and deconfliction are.

[BrianM]

To be fair they thought that the F18 was an Iranian passenger plane.
Edit: great minds think alike.

[stargazer]

Plot twist: They've really started using AI Skynet and it viewed the humans as a threat.
"In a panic they tried to pull the plug..."

[mikeck]

Glad Mover brought it up: there are a lot of assumptions that the ship was at fault but it’s possible the aircraft wasn’t “saying” what it was supposed to or flying a route it wasn’t supposed to.

On another note, I know the AEGIS is a pretty automated system so I wonder if anyone actually “pressed a button”

[astrophysicistguy]

So here are some facts ... hornet that was shot down was 15 miles from the carrier on a straight in approach (std night ops), the ship that shot him was in between him and the carrier, 5 miles aft of carrier. They fired a second missile at the next hornet on final who did a pitch down and hard turn to get the missile abeam. That missile exploded 100 ft below the 2nd hornet. Pretty impressive considering they were at std approach conditions, 1200' and 250 kts. The only reason the crew survived is because they ejected when they saw the middle had targeted them pre emptively ... impressive SA for sure ...

[greghalliday]

Sorry to burst your god bubble Mover, but in my service it was mostly the incompetence lack of understanding of officers that created accidents or near accidents and the actions of non-commissioned sailors who knew how systems worked and the risk environment that stopped or minimised the issue.

[adrianflower]

A Royal Navy Harrier on fleet CAP was directed to intercept / shoot down a pair of contacts during the Falklands War. They were a flight of 2 Harriers leaving the battlegroup. Nigel "Sharkey" Ward recounts the story in his book of the conflict. He was the pilot on CAP and his situational awareness was such he disobeyed the order.

[Csailor]

The Ripper tanker (TTLR overhead at 8k, apparently) soaked one up, a second missile was going after another blue jet in the vicinity. Paddles saw the engagement and fireball, called up to the bridge that they were engaging blue fighters, captain called AW to cease fire, second weapon was post-launch aborted and narrowly missed the second jet.

Heard they were actively engaging drones earlier. Fog of war?

[kevintaylor]

So do the AA guys that messed up owe the F/A-18 crew a case of whisky or something?

How do you apologize for something like that?

"Sorry about your jet. I'm really glad you're ok. Here is a case of Talisker and a promise to not do it again"

[soul]

I was in (very close to), a blue on blue incident, in Afghanisten.
We were hit by Allied Javelins, from outside our operational area. Two guys killed, several injured.

During a TB assault, on our small patrol base.
Apparently when we returned fire on TB, our bullets continued in the general direction of an Allied unit, in their own AoR. So they thought they were under attack to.
Deconfliction got messed up. And they pummelled us.
Several times, we were assured, that the Allies, were not attacking our coordinates.
As they were behind TB positions, from our vantage point, we couldn't say for sure, where the launcher was. Hence not disprove those assurances. So we were scared shitless, of the new weapon the enemy had, and just moved artillery barages around the general area, on our side of the baundary. To no avail.
The battle lasted a couple of hours. Only when Air support arrived, did everything fall into place.

From the investigation that followed. It was concluded. That TB, had left the area, ~30 minutes after the initial assault. The rest was, us fighting ourselves.
Many people, at multible levels messed up that day. Procedures was in place. But shit happened anyway.


I know this is in no way the same, as a jet getting shot down, from within it's own battlegroup.
It's just an anecdote, of how messy combat can be.