“Bittersweet.”
That’s the shorthand the Navy uses to indicate a potential friendly fire situation. But in the minutes before midnight Zulu time on Dec. 21, 2024, it was already too late to make the call and avert the disaster by the time commanders saw it coming.
According to a command investigation published this month into the events that led to the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg shooting down an F/A-18 Super Hornet from the nearby carrier Harry S. Truman and narrowly missing taking out another, a rapid series of missteps — and a long pattern of rushed training and failed equipment — contributed to the embarrassing and costly error.
The 152-page investigation, released as part of a package of probes into mishaps on the Truman deployment that included a collision and an arresting wire failure, found the friendly-fire incident was entirely avoidable and caused by established patterns of miscommunication and oversights.
From 11:25-11:26 p.m., while the Truman conducted flight operations in the Red Sea, the Gettysburg fired two SM-2 surface-to-air missiles at the two friendly Super Hornets, hitting the first and causing the pilots to eject, and missing the second. A third Super Hornet was also targeted, the investigation revealed, but not fired on.
“The [Gettysburg commanding officer] had low situational awareness, and his [command information center] team was unable to help him regain it,” an investigation overseen by Rear Adm. Kavon Hakimzadeh, commanding officer of Carrier Strike Group 2, concluded.
To underscore the cautionary tale that the incident represents to the Navy, Hakimzadeh advised that the report be provided to dozens of Navy units and commands so they can use it to change policies and practices. Capt. Justin Hodges, Gettysburg’s commanding officer, was relieved from his post in January 2025; Navy officials have declined to specify what other accountability actions they’ve taken.
According to the investigation, the first indication to Truman’s Carrier Strike Group 8 that something was seriously wrong came at 11:25, when the group’s JAG observed “blue tracks” on what had previously been falsely identified as a foreign anti-ship cruise missile, one of dozens Iran-backed Houthi missiles that had been bombarding the Navy within recent months.
Then, a chilling call came over a voice circuit: “Stop shooting at us.”
In the minutes that followed, information spread about the possibility of a friendly fire incident, but no orders were given.
“From the initial report of engagement at [11:25], [the battle watch captain] did not negate an engagement [or direct] to break engage, hold fire, or cease fire for almost five minutes,” the investigation found.
Accounts in the investigation from the pilot and weapons systems officer of the Super Hornet that would be shot down — alongside social media posts verified by investigators — reveal how this chaos appeared from the sky.
The pilot and WSO, the probe found, were watching the Gettysburg at the time of the friendly fire missile launch, initially thinking the ship was targeting the one-way attack drone they had also been seeking. When they saw the SM-2 reach apogee and change course in their direction, they knew they were being targeted.
“Are you seeing this?” The pilot asked the WSO, according to the investigation.
“Yeah, I’m watching it,” the WSO responded. The pilot then asked him if “he wants to get out,” indicating an ejection from the aircraft.
“I will basically have my life flash before my eyes and assess we had no options … I will just pull the handle not saying eject over [comms] or anything,” he’d later tell investigators.
In accounts shared with squadron mates, posted by a third party to social media earlier this year and republished in the investigation, the pilot, call sign “Fig,” recalled the ejection:
“It was the most violent 5 seconds of anything I’ve ever experienced,” the pilot wrote. “Canopy immediately gone, I remember seeing the canopy bow disappearing below my sight line, and it getting dark. Arms and legs flail everywhere, I never said “eject” or anything on [the interior communications system] just pulled. felt the opening shock of the parachute, and as soon as I looked up at a good parachute, I heard what I assess as the missile fusing, just a loud ‘POP.’"
In the second targeted aircraft, the pilot and WSO saw the missile explosion that indicated the first Super Hornet had been hit. Instead of opting to eject immediately, they began evasive maneuvers, using afterburners to help the jet pick up speed. As they watched the missile continue to follow them, the pilot told the WSO he thought they needed to eject. But they waited a moment, seeing the rocket motor on the missile fade and burn out. It passed their aircraft, they said about one to two plane-lengths behind them.
“Both [the second jet’s] pilot and WSO note the aircraft shake as the missile passed the aircraft, and see the missile explode in the water,” the investigation found.
While such personal accounts are not typically made public on social media and caused consternation when the leaders discovered details of the friendly-fire incident were already publicly known, the investigation offered a reason for the unauthorized disclosures.
“The aircrew was upset that no action was being taken to correct the incident from occurring again, and that there seemed to be a lack of accountability,” investigators found.
The Truman had arrived in the Red Sea ten days before the friendly fire incident, joining what was already a “highly dynamic and kinetic theater,” as investigators put it, in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel. Houthi forces had tried to engage Navy assets more than 200 times since then, according to a chart shared in the investigation. The Gettysburg sailed into theater four days later, on Dec. 18.
For weeks prior to the friendly fire shoot down, key systems had been consistently failing, the investigation found. The performance of Link 16, the military communication network connecting the ships and fighter jets, had “noticeably degraded,” and there were regular outages. Likewise, the Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) system had sustained a series of “casualties,” in which it wasn’t working correctly, that had gone essentially unaddressed by the strike group.
While Gettysburg and Truman were deployed together, they’d spend nearly 60% of their underway time apart, investigators found. And joint training they’d undergone left some dissatisfied.
“We never really got a chance to learn from the integration,” a strike group official said. “… I would have liked to have a group sail longer than two days. We never got the chance to say ‘that does not work … let’s try something else.’ We just had to be like, that’s done, that’s done, and move down the list. We then had to move on to the next thing.”
On the night of the friendly fire strike, confusion started in planning, with a carrier air wing air defense brief that was not fully approved by the air and missile defense commander or circulated to all units involved. After the launch of planned strikes around 5 p.m., Link 16 went down, from about 6 p.m. to just after 9 p.m. A quicker-than-anticipated response by the Houthis to the Navy’s strikes complicated matters, prompting a change that got more aircraft re-tasked as defensive counter-air assets (DCA) against incoming drones and missiles.
Hodges, the Gettysburg CO, would tell investigators he was “surprised” at the re-tasking of strike jets as DCA, even calling up his chain of command to voice concern. As aircraft completed a return to the ship after their night on mission, some communications went unacknowledged. Gettysburg observers believed all friendly aircraft had been recovered. The two Super Hornets that would ultimately be targeted got tagged as “unknown” rather than “friendly.”
“Expectation and false belief” that Link 16 and IFF were working properly, alongside watchstanding distractions, would culminate in the near-deadly error.
While causes of the mishap are clear enough, many of the conclusions of the investigation, including accountability actions, are redacted in the version that was publicly released. It remains to some extent uncertain how the Navy will prevent future at-sea mishaps at a similar scale.
“This incident provides our Navy an introspective opportunity to improve our combat effectiveness across the enterprise,” Vice Adm. George M. Wikoff, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa, said in signing off on the investigation. “As the Fleet Commander, I failed to effectively assess the total risk accumulated within the [Truman carrier strike group] when considering material readiness and strike group proficiency in this combat environment. An accurate assessment would have inspired a questioning attitude and more effective backup in support of their operations.”
