A Navy fighter jet that got the United States’ first air-to-air kill against another plane in nearly 20 years in 2017 is currently taking part in combat operations against Iran.
The specific F/A-18E, Modex or identifying number 402, was seen launching from the USS Gerald R. Ford in a video posted by U.S. Central Command earlier on Saturday, showing a variety of the air power being used during Operation Epic Fury, the military’s name for combat operations against Iran. The plane is part of the “Golden Warriors” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 87.
X user @obretix first noticed the presence of the specific F-18 in the video, and Jared Keller, the author of the Laser Wars newsletter, tipped off Task & Purpose to the aircraft’s appearance. The fighter jet and the rest of VFA-87 are assigned to Carrier Air Wing 8.
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Nine years ago on June 18, 2017, Lt. Cmdr. Michael “Mob” Tremel was part of a group of Navy aviators flying over Iraq and Syria, on close air support missions supporting ground troops from the Syrian Democratic Forces fighting Islamic State militants. According to accounts from Tremel and other aviators, he split off from the close air support stack to track a Russian Su-27 that showed up in the area. Soon another fighter showed up, the Syrian Su-22. Tremel repeatedly sent out broadcast warnings to the Syrian jet to turn away, and even tried flying close and releasing flares to get it to back off. Then it started to dive, at the friendly forces on the ground. So Tremel lined up a shot and fired an AIM-9X Sidewinder, with the Syrian jet launching its own flares to send the missile off course. Tremel tried again, this time launching an AIM-120 AMRAAM. That hit the back of the Su-22 dead on, causing the back of the jet to explode and forcing the pilot to eject. Tremel had just scored the first air-to-air kill in 18 years and the first once in the 21st Century.
In May 1999, a pilot from the 78th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, was the last American to score an air-to-air victory, taking out a Serbian MiG-29 while flying an F-16 over Bosnia.
The F/A-18E originally had a silhouette of a plane below a Syrian flag on the left side of its body marking the kill, but that was shifted to a single Syrian flag on the right side after it got a fresh paint job. Since getting that Syrian flag art, the plane has changed operators and been assigned to different carriers. A Navy official previously told Task & Purpose that the kill marking applies to the aircraft.
The fighter jet has been busy in recent months. Photos on the military’s Defense Visual Information Distribution Service show the same plane launching from the Ford in December, as part of Operation Southern Spear in the Caribbean. Before that, Puerto Rico-based aviation photographers spotted it at the Roosevelt Roads naval base on the island, with its pilot identification more visible. The pilot, at least then, was Lt. Cmdr. J.G. Gordon, callsign “Hodor.”
The U.S. military is using a wide range of air power as part of Operation Epic Fury, including B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, F-15s, F-16s, F-22s and the Navy’s F-18s, the latter launching from the two carriers in the CENTCOM area of responsibility, the Ford and the USS Abraham Lincoln. So far they, along with ground assets around the region, have hit thousands of Iranian targets, including sinking several ships.
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