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Joe Hernandez, NPR

A Navy pilot becomes the first woman aviator to kill an air-to-air contact in combat

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Fighter jets are parked on the deck of the U.S.S. aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, also known as the 'Ike', on the south Red Sea, Monday, Feb. 12, 2024.
Fighter jets are parked on the deck of the U.S.S. aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, also known as the 'Ike', on the south Red Sea, Monday, Feb. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
Bernat Armangue/AP

A Navy aviator has become the first woman U.S. pilot to “engage and kill an air-to-air contact” in combat.

The military branch said last week that the unnamed Navy pilot, a member of the strike fighter squadron known as the “Fighting Swordsmen,” recently notched the achievement against an attack drone deployed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

The squadron was deployed aboard the Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier, which was sent to the Middle East just weeks after the Hamas-led attack against Israel on Oct. 7.

The carrier strike group ended its nine-month combat deployment on July 14 when it returned to Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia.

“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,” Cmdr. Jason Hoch said 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,” he added.

Throughout their deployment, the Fighting Swordsmen completed nearly 1,500 combat missions in support of Operation Inherent Resolve and Operation Prosperity Guardian, an effort the U.S. announced in December to respond to Houthi attacks in the region.

The U.S. and several allies, including the United Kingdom and Bahrain, joined forces to combat attacks against commercial ships and other vessels in the Red Sea, which the Iran-backed Houthis said they were doing in response to Israel’s invasion of Gaza following the Oct. 7 attacks.

According to the Navy, the Fighting Swordsmen fired more than 20 air-to-air missiles against Houthi one-way attack drones in the Red Sea and Bab-al-Mandeb Strait.

The group also led two of seven “self-defense strikes” into parts of Houthi-controlled Yemen, which destroyed “munitions and command and control facilities which were used to target civilian vessels,” officials said.

Copyright 2024, NPR