NEW YORK — An aviator for the United States Navy recently became the first American woman ever to score a victory in air-to-air combat, the service said. The fighter pilot, who was not identified, earned that distinction after knocking down a Houthi drone, one of dozens of attack drones launched by the Yemen-based rebel group that have targeted civilian merchant ships in the Red Sea and surrounding waters, according to the Navy. Houthis say the attacks are a direct response to the devastation in Gaza since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
The Navy said the pilot was flying an F/A-18 Super Hornet, a military striker, during a combat deployment on the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower that lasted nine months. She was among a group of men and women belonging to Strike Fighter Squadron 32, nicknamed the "Flying Swordsmen." The Eisenhower was the first U.S. aircraft carrier to integrate their operating crew with women aviators in 1994, according to the National Air and Space Museum.
"During one mission, VFA-32 became home to the first American female pilot to engage and kill an air-to-air contact," the Navy said.
It wasn't clear exactly when the pilot shot down the drone, but the Navy said that throughout their deployment her squadron fired more than 20 air-to-air missiles against one-way Houthi attack drones targeting merchant vessels in the Red Sea and Bab-al-Mandeb Strait, which is a narrow waterway between Yemen and the horn of Africa.
Strike Fighter Squadron 32 finished deployment earlier this month and returned to the Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach on July 14, the Navy said, calling their service "historic."
"The success of the entire squadron over the past nine months is a testament to all the members of the command and their friends and family at home that support them," said Commander Jason Hoch, the commanding officer of Strike Fighter Squadron 32, in a statement. "I couldn't be prouder of the Swordsmen's performance day-in and day-out in incredibly demanding conditions. We proved over and over again that the flexibility a carrier strike group brings to the fight is unmatched, and that is solely due to the highly trained and motivated Sailors who go above and beyond the call of duty each and every day."
The squadron flew more than 3,000 combat hours and completed more than 1,500 combat missions over the course of their deployment, which the Navy said was unprecedented. Their deployment served operations Inherent Resolve and Prosperity Guardian, the names for the U.S. military's campaigns against the Islamic State and the Houthi-led attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, respectively. In addition to confronting attack drones in and around the Red Sea, they also carried out two strikes in areas of Yemen under Houthi control, according to the Navy.
Houthi attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea and surrounding waters, all vital international shipping corridors, picked up in November and have continued since then. Like Hamas, the Yemeni rebel group is backed by Iran. At least two of the group's drone attacks in that region are believed to have caused mariners' deaths, with the most recent being a Houthi strike on a cargo ship in the Red Sea that sank in June. One person is believed to have died in the attack, the Associated Press reported at the time. U.S. officials previously said that another Houthi attack on a commercial ship in the Gulf of Aden killed at least three people, and injured four others, in March.
—Haley Ott contributed reporting.
