Pilot's Escape in Attack Shows Risks in Mideast

“U.S. Air Force pilots Lt. Col. William "Skate" Parks and Maj. Michael "Danger" Blea were returning from a strike mission in Yemen last year, when Houthi militants lit up their F-16s with targeting radar.

 

For 15 minutes, the pilots struggled to evade a half-dozen surface-to-air missiles. A missile shot past Parks and exploded over Blea's jet.

 

The missile passed "right underneath my left wing," Parks said of the near miss, which occurred 12 days into Operation Rough Rider, the first major military operation of President Trump's second term.

 

As the U.S. assembles an armada of naval and air power in the Middle East -- this time against Iran -- the details of the fight against the Houthis show the risks.

 

Technology means even less-sophisticated adversaries can pose a serious threat to U.S. forces. Fatigue among overworked soldiers, sailors, aircrews and Marines can lead to costly mistakes.

 

Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has warned the White House that a fight with Iran risks U.S. casualties and could deplete munitions needed for a future conflict with an adversary like China, while further overstretching U.S. forces.

 

Trump, a Republican, launched Operation Rough Rider last March threatening the Houthis would be "annihilated" if they didn't stop attacks on shipping in the vital Red Sea trade route. He poured forces into the region including two aircraft carriers, a squadron of advanced F-35 fighters, and destroyers armed with guided missiles.

 

The Houthis proved resilient.

 

In addition to nearly shooting down the two F-16s, they knocked more than a half-dozen Reaper drones out of the sky. A missile attack on the USS Harry S. Truman in April forced the carrier to make a hard turn that sent an F-18 rolling into the Red Sea. Another plane slid off the deck the following month when its landing cable snapped because sailors exhausted by weeks of combat likely left off a washer that held it in place.

 

No Americans were killed. But the incidents showed the unpredictable role of luck in conflicts with a determined adversary. This time, the U.S. force would face Iran, which backs the Houthis and has a bigger arsenal of missiles and drones.

 

The U.S. force had a huge edge over the militant group. Part of that was the "Wild Weasels," the name for F-16 units charged with suppressing enemy air defenses. They were equipped with HARM missiles that lock on to the signal from enemy radars to knock them out. But the Houthis developed a network to track U.S. warplanes with observers, optics and infrared sensors whose intricacy U.S. officials didn't entirely understand. That enabled Houthis to flick on their air-defense radars at the last moment, so U.S. pilots would have little time to react -- a tactic pilots came to call a "SAMbush."

 

Parks and Blea took off in their F-16s from a base in the region with orders to destroy Houthi air defenses near the Yemeni capital of San'a and distract the militants from stealthy B-2s that would hit missile-production facilities elsewhere, said people familiar with the operation. As they flew toward their target, they were followed by an undulating stream of flashes they said looked like fireworks. Some military officials believe it was a signaling system.

 

The main strike went off without a hitch, and everything was quiet as they turned back. They were about to be "feet wet" over the Red Sea when a missile warning rang out. Parks, with just seconds to react, turned his jet toward the missile, an emergency tactic aimed at making the missile overshoot. The missile missed but streaked directly toward the nose of Blea's F-16. Blea watched through his center-mounted head-up display as the projectile shot just in front of his jet and exploded over his canopy. It took him a fraction of a second to realize that he was still flying -- and alive.

 

"Hey, the missile missed me," Blea called out. "Let's go!"

 

The Houthis fired more missiles. Parks and Blea flipped on their afterburners and went through a series of tight turns to avoid being downed over the mountainous terrain.

 

The maneuvers worked but left the pilots critically low on fuel. Commanders in Qatar ordered one of the tankers over the Red Sea to fly closer to the F-16s, putting the slower plane in range of Houthi air defenses. Blea, lowest on fuel, rushed to fill up.

 

The pilots got the Silver Star. The tanker crew will be presented with the Distinguished Flying Cross in March.

 

At the end of April, the Navy in the Red Sea was growing frayed by the need to constantly fight off the Houthi drones and missiles.

 

Sailors in the Truman's hangar bay were working before dawn to get aircraft in position for the next day's mission, when the carrier detected an inbound ballistic missile. The giant ship swerved to the right. An F/A-18 that was being pulled into position was whipsawed by the maneuver and "departed the hangar bay," the Navy's incident report said. The sailor assigned to man the brakes in the cockpit and another who was towing the jet jumped off at the last second.

 

The Navy found the stress of repeatedly fighting off drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, along with numerous combat operations, contributed to the incident.

 

Sailors on the USS Gerald R. Ford, which did duty in the fight with Venezuela at the beginning of this year before being redirected to the Middle East in February, already are stretched by a long deployment that began in June.

 

In the end, with Operation Rough Rider, Trump was more interested in securing freedom of navigation for U.S. ships than in open-ended pursuit of regime change. He concluded the U.S. had done enough.

 

A cease-fire deal was cemented on May 6. Under the terms of the agreement, the U.S. would stop its strikes, and the Houthis would end their attacks on U.S. ships.

 

The Pentagon touted the accomplishments of its 53-day fight. The U.S. hit more than 1,000 targets and killed senior Houthi missile and drone officials, but didn't decapitate the top Houthi leadership.

 

"Rough Rider did a significant amount of damage to the Houthis," said Gregory Johnsen, a fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute think tank. "But it didn't defeat the Houthis or degrade them to the point where they are unable to carry out future attacks in the Red Sea."

 

Iran's regime, like the Houthis, is dug in and preparing for an existential fight. The U.S's goals -- and whether military action can accomplish them -- are less clear. The risk is that a conflict drags on or spirals into something the U.S. didn't bargain for.

 

"Many outcomes could be unpredictable," Danny Citrinowicz, a senior fellow at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Strategic Studies, said on social media. "And not necessarily favorable to U.S. interests."” [1]

 

1. Pilot's Escape in Attack Shows Risks in Mideast. Gordon, Michael R; Dowell, Andrew.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 28 Feb 2026: A1.