Just as the U.S. takes responsibility for a tragic military aircraft accident at home, its military planes are causing other near-misses, where geopolitical tensions are already sky-high.
On Wednesday, the U.S. admitted failure for an incident in which a military Black Hawk crashed into a civilian passenger plane over the Potomac river on January 29, killing everyone on each aircraft. Here, the U.S. said the Black Hawk pilot’s lack of vigilance was "a proximate cause" for the crash.
That admission of wrongdoing comes amid new close calls between U.S. military jets and passenger planes in the Caribbean, where there were two near crashes with passenger planes within a 48 hour window between December 12-13. Namely, a JetBlue Airways plane leaving the island nation of Curaçao, near Venezuela, almost hit a U.S. Air Force tanker on December 12; the next day, a private jet headed from Aruba to Miami almost hit another one.
In the near miss over Curaçao, the JetBlue Airways pilot said the military aircraft did not have its transponder on. Military planes often have these off during reconnaissance missions and other military operations; that aircraft, however, was over civilian airspace, a nation the U.S. has no hostilities with.
"They passed directly in our flight path," the pilot said, calling the incident “outrageous.” "We had to stop our climb."
These near misses come amid the largest U.S. military buildup in Latin America in decades including F-35 fighter planes and MQ-Reaper drones carrying out ongoing boat strikes in the Caribbean
Experts say the near misses reflect a recklessness in the build-up and could lead to a real collision, which could be cause for further military escalation there.
“These incidents are the result of an unusual and dramatic increase in military activity in the Caribbean, an airspace heavily trafficked by civilian aircraft. Mix that with secrecy, and you have a recipe for disaster,” Alan McPherson, a professor at Temple University who specializes in the history of U.S.-Latin America relations, told RS.
“Such near accidents could also lead to actual accidents. If these kill Americans or Venezuelans, they could inflame tensions on both sides and even precipitate a war," he said.
To some observers, the U.S.’s military mishaps are par for the course.
“The near mid-air collision between a Jet Blue Airways pilot and a U.S. military aircraft taking off from Curaçao and heading toward Venezuelan airspace is a perfect metaphor for the lack of discipline and the recklessness in the execution of U.S. foreign policy,” John Mearsheimer, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute, said on his YouTube channel. “The military aircraft headed for Venezuelan airspace, the zone of tension, was operating so dangerously that it nearly caused a civilian air disaster.”
“This is not just carelessness. It is a lack of control in executing military operations backed by the Trump administration's strategic ambiguity,” he added.
U.S. Southern Command did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
