US Navy chopper, jet ‘went down’ in South China Sea
This handout picture released by the US Navy on May 9, 2019 shows an MH-60R Sea Hawk Helicopter, assigned to the Grandmasters of Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 46 aboard the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Nitze (DDG 94) as it takes off from the ship’s flight deck. (Photo by AFP)
MANILA, Philippines — A United States Navy helicopter and fighter jet crashed in the South China Sea on separate occasions Sunday, in what a retired U.S. Air Force officer described as a “remarkable coincidence.”
The MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter and the F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jet “went down in the waters of the South China Sea” while conducting routine operations from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, U.S. Pacific Fleet spokesperson Commander Matthew Alan Comer said.
The helicopter crashed at approximately 2:45 p.m. local time, followed by the fighter jet at 3:15 p.m., according to Comer.
Comer added that all personnel aboard—three from the helicopter and two from the fighter jet—were pulled out from the water by search and rescue teams.
“All personnel involved are safe and in stable condition,” Comer said in a statement sent to the Inquirer on Monday. “The cause of both incidents is currently under investigation.”
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Authorities have yet to specify the distance of the incidents from the nearest landmass, so it remains unclear whether they occurred in the West Philippine Sea — the part of the South China Sea within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone — or outside of it.
Ray Powell, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and South China Sea monitor, noted that “there doesn’t seem to be any reliable indication of where the [USS Nimitz] was exactly,” as warships are not required to activate their Automatic Identification Systems unlike civilian vessels like those belonging to coast guards.
Powell added that such an incident in the region could be unprecedented.
“I can’t think of a time when two dissimilar aircraft launched from the same vessel had mishaps so close together in apparently unrelated incidents,” said Powell, program head of Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, in a message to Inquirer on Monday.
Despite this, he described the events involving USS Nimitz as purely coincidental.
“It’s certainly a remarkable coincidence,” Powell said.
“Anyway, the U.S. military is very transparent when it comes to mishaps,” he continued. “There will be thorough investigations, and the reports will be made public.”
The Nimitz, which is the US Navy’s oldest aircraft carrier in active service, has routinely conducted freedom-of-navigation patrols in the South China Sea.
This was despite Beijing’s sweeping sovereignty claim in almost the entire South China Sea, including the West Philippine Sea, despite a landmark 2016 arbitral award which invalidated such claim.
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The Philippines is also part of the “first island chain,” which experts view as the United States’ first line of defense against China’s expansion in the Pacific. /mcm /das
