U.S. Copter Dodges Missile Fired by Persian Gulf Ship

A U.S. Navy helicopter on patrol in the Persian Gulf dodged a surface-to-air missile fired from an unidentified merchant ship Monday, the Pentagon said.

Officials said that no immediate retaliatory action was taken by U.S. forces operating in the volatile region.

“It is still very murky,” one Pentagon official said of the incident, adding that, while it is under investigation, “we are not in a high state of alarm.”

The Pentagon said in a statement that an SH-2 helicopter from the destroyer O’Bannon was on a “routine surface surveillance mission” in the southern Persian Gulf, 75 miles west-northwest of Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates, when it “was fired upon by a merchant vessel of undetermined registry.”

The helicopter took immediate evasive action, the statement said, and the missile “passed within about 500 yards.” It said the helicopter, which was about three miles from the unidentified ship when the missile was fired, returned without incident to the O’Bannon, one of five U.S. naval vessels reported to be operating in the southern reaches of the gulf.

One Pentagon source, while declining to identify the attacking ship, said it belonged to neither Iran nor Iraq. The two nations at the northern end of the gulf have been engaged in a grueling six-year war that at times has disrupted marine traffic in the region. Iraqi forces have regularly attacked ships, especially oil tankers, traveling to or from Iran, and Iranian forces have boarded merchant ships that they suspected of carrying war materiel to Iraq.

As a result of tensions in the gulf, some merchant ships several months ago were reported to have equipped themselves with defensive missiles.

Ship Was Pursued

While the Pentagon announcement did not identify the type of missile fired at the U.S. helicopter, one official said that “we think it may have been shoulder-fired.”

After the incident, the U.S. destroyer changed course and pursued the ship, according to the Associated Press, which quoted unidentified sources as saying that the merchant vessel had steamed into port at Sharjah, another of the United Arab Emirates, and that the O’Bannon had positioned itself in nearby international waters.

The SH-2 helicopter, also known as the Seasprite, is used for anti-submarine operations and surveillance of surface ships. It normally carries a crew of three and is capable of carrying up to two torpedoes.

Gulf Patrolled

The copter involved in Monday’s action is assigned to Helicopter Squadron 36 based at Mayport, Fla., the Pentagon said. The O’Bannon is based in Charleston, S.C.

U.S. warships have been operating for several years in the Persian Gulf, although the waterway’s strategic importance has declined somewhat in recent years with shifts in world demand for the region’s oil.

A decade ago, nearly half the non-communist world’s oil was carried by tanker through the gulf and its narrow entrance at the Strait of Hormuz, a fact that generated profound strategic worries. Today, however, with a drop in worldwide oil consumption and the construction of new oil pipelines, the percentage of the non-communist world’s oil passing through the potential bottleneck has declined to about 15%.