A Navy MH-60R “Romeo” Seahawk helicopter deployed to the Red Sea has shot down a Houthi drone, the vice chief of Naval Operations revealed Tuesday.
While other rotorcraft have taken out drones – notably, a French AS565 Panther from the frigate Alsace in the Red Sea downed a Houthi unmanned aerial vehicle last March with its 7.62mm machine gun in an operation that was captured on video – this was a first for a U.S. Navy helicopter, Adm. James Kilby told an audience at the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium near Washington, D.C.
Kilby was describing the body of information the Navy had accumulated from 15 months of continuous combat operations in the Red Sea, with 26 ships having been in the “engagement zone” of fire from Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen during that period, and how pre-deployment training for these ships and elements continued to stress innovative and diverse ways to mitigate threats.
At a virtual training he’d observed some months ago, “F/A-18s were trying to knock down cruise missiles,” Kilby said. “In fact, I was sitting in my office not too long ago where we had the first helicopter shoot down a UAV.”

In a follow-up conversation with Vice Adm. Daniel Cheever, commander of Naval Air Forces, who also participated in the Red Sea panel, he confirmed that the shootdown had taken place “about a month ago” and involved a Seahawk attached to the Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group. While Cheever did not specify the type of UAV that had been shot down or the means the helicopter had employed to take it out, he said the Seahawk crew had “used a little bit of an unconventional system” to make the kill.
“It’s an interesting world, you know, when you’re talking ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and unmanned systems,” Cheever said. “The one thing is, we’re operating in the contested environment 24/7 and have been for [15] months. So when people talk about, you can’t live in a contested environment, I kind of go, actually, we can and have and will.”

The MH-60R, the successor to the SH-60B, first flew for the Navy in 2001. It is specialized for anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare, but it has the ability to do other missions, as well. Beyond its core mission weaponry, it can be armed with a crew-served door gun — either the .50-caliber machine guns like the GAU-21/A or an M240 7.62mm machine gun. It can also carry up to eight AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground anti-tank missiles, which are primarily used for force protection against small boats. Hellfires have also been successfully employed against UAVs in the past; a video published by the Israeli Defense Forces in 2018 shows an Israeli AH-64 Apache helicopter swatting down an Iranian drone that had ventured into its sovereign airspace from Syria. Since then, Apaches have been playing an increasingly key role in drone defense for Israel.



U.S. Army Apaches have also ramped up training on using Hellfires in the air-to-air mode for drone defense. A video posted by U.S. Central Command last October shows an AH-64D Longbow Apache attack helicopter obliterating a target drone during the Army’s Red Sands counter-UAS exercise in Saudi Arabia.
As The War Zone reported at the time, the Hellfire used to target drones in the video looks like a modified version sporting a millimeter-wave radar seeker cued by the Apache’s native AN-APG-78 Longbow radar system. These types of Hellfires are not available for the Seahawk, but laser-guided ones are. It’s possible one of these missiles was used in an ‘off-label’ manner to take down the drone.

Another possible UAV-killing tool for the Seahawk is the Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System II, consisting of Hydra 2.75-inch rockets equipped with a laser guidance kit. APKWS has been at least tested for use on the MH-60R since 2015 and is also employed on the Apache. In late 2022, defense contractor BAE Systems announced that five 70mm APKWS II rockets, equipped with guidance kits and modified proven proximity/point-detonation fuzes, had successfully taken out fast-moving drones in a ground-to-air test conducted in Arizona. With these modifications, the company said, APKWS II rockets could be successfully employed against UAVs weighing up to 50 pounds and traveling up to 100 miles per hour. Ukraine is operating multiple ground-based counter-drone systems that use the proximity-fuzed APKWS rockets. The USAF has also tested APKWS II with its fighters for anti-cruise missile defense. It’s also possible, like the Hellfire, that the MH-60 could have used a standard APKWS II to shoot down the drone, as well, if indeed the laser-guided rockets are actively available to fleet MH-60Rs.
While Cheever’s mention of an unconventional kill method raises questions about novel weapons or combinations of effects that might have been employed, the most likely option to take out the Houthi drone is perhaps the door gun – the same weapon employed by the French Panther during its successful kill in March. Helicopter door gunners have also been shooting down drones in the course of the ongoing fighting in Ukraine.

Back in 2015, the Navy published a video of a Seahawk door gunner successfully taking out a target drone over the ocean during training. While UAV technology has evolved significantly, many of the unmanned systems used to target U.S. assets in the Red Sea remain relatively inexpensive, as well as low and slow-moving – vulnerable to visual targeting and door gunner’s bullets.
While the Navy Seahawk’s quietly executed drone shootdown may represent a first-of-its-kind kill against a UAV for the seagoing force, the Seahawk — including the MH-60R’s cousin, the MH-60S — has already proved its mettle against other unmanned systems in the Red Sea. In late 2023, CENTCOM announced that Navy helicopters had sunk three small Houthi boats that attacked a U.S. position in the southern Red Sea, sending a fourth vessel fleeing back to shore.
All these firsts and lessons learned, as well as mounds of raw sensor data, on a daily basis around the Red Sea are being leveraged far faster than ever before to come up with new tactics and systems modifications, and to train crews prior to deployment. The Seahawk’s first drone ‘kill’ will certainly be used in this same manner. You can read all about this accelerated feedback cycle here.

Navy leaders Tuesday also hinted that the service’s deployed assets in the Red Sea are about to become even more deadly against drones. Rear Adm. William Daly, the service’s director of surface warfare, said during recent deployments to the region, Navy destroyers had tested “several” new counter-UAS systems, “each bringing unique tactical capabilities.”
“I expect several of these systems to be deployed soon,” he said.
In the meantime, Navy supercarriers, amphibious assault ships, and surface combatants that pack MH-60s now have another proven tool against aerial drones in their quivers.
Contact the editor: Tyler@twz.com