Three members of a four-person MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter crew were rescued after the aircraft made an emergency water landing in the Arabian Sea early Wednesday morning, and one crew member is still missing. The helicopter was assigned to the USS George H.W. Bush.
The incident happened at about 3:30 a.m. Eastern time, which would have been about 11 a.m. local time, and the search for the missing crew member was still underway when the report was updated Wednesday afternoon. Three of the helicopter's four crew members have been recovered and are in stable condition aboard George H. W. Bush, while U.S. Navy assets in the region continue looking for the other aircrewman.
That search matters because the emergency landing initially raised the possibility of hostile action in a region where military aviation has already taken losses. U.S. Naval Forces Central Command said there is no indication the helicopter was shot down, a key distinction after an Apache helicopter was shot down by an Iranian drone in early June and the two crew members aboard it were rescued. The U.S. had lost 42 fixed-wing or rotor aircraft in Operation Epic Fury as of mid-May.
The Bush has been in the Middle East since late April, and the Sea Hawk’s water landing now leaves one unanswered question that matters most: whether the missing aircrewman can be found before the operation shifts from a rescue to a recovery. For now, the Navy is treating it as a search at sea, not a combat loss.
