Summary
- Pete
Hegseth’s plane made an emergency landing in the UK. - Landing
caused by crack in aircraft windshield mid-flight. - Incident
occurred during return from NATO meeting in Belgium.
On social media, Pentagon spokeswoman Sean Parnell stated
that a break in the aircraft’s windshield, also referred to as a windscreen,
caused the plane to make an “unscheduled landing in the United
Kingdom” on the route back to the United States following NATO’s Defense
Ministers conference in Belgium.
According to standard procedures, the plane landed, and
Hegseth and every other passenger were safe, Parnell said.
“All good. Thank God,”
Hegseth wrote on X.
“Continue
mission!”
Hegseth’s aircraft was a C-32A, a modified Boeing 757 that
the Air Force uses to transport VIPs. When traveling to locations with runways
too short for the modified Boeing-747 that Trump usually flies as Air Force
One, other high-ranking officials, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice
President JD Vance, and occasionally even President Donald Trump, use the
aircraft.
The aircraft took off from Brussels, passed Ireland, and
then turned around to land at Royal Air Force Mildenhall in England at 7:07
p.m. local time, according to flight monitoring data. The plane’s original
takeoff time was unknown.
For international travel, Hegseth and former defense secretaries
have historically flown
the Boeing E-4B.
In the event of a nuclear conflict, the president or
Pentagon leadership can deploy the modified Boeing E-4B as an airborne command
post. Within the Air Force, it is referred to as the “Doomsday plane”
and “Air Force One when it counts.”
The reason for Hegseth’s flight aboard the smaller C-32
aircraft was not immediately apparent. Due to improvements made during Trump’s
first term as president, the C-32, which had to make an emergency landing, has
a more opulent cabin but less capabilities than the E-4B.
