Pentagon chiefs airplane diverted to U.Ok. as a consequence of cracked windshield on flight from Brussels to U.S.

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s airplane made an unscheduled touchdown within the United Kingdom as a result of a windshield cracked on a flight again to the U.S. from a NATO assembly and all aboard are secure, the Pentagon mentioned.

The airplane landed “based mostly on commonplace procedures”, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell mentioned in a put up on X.

After Mr. Hegseth left Brussels, open-source flight trackers noticed his C-32 lose altitude and start broadcasting an emergency sign.

No members of the Pentagon press corps had been travelling with Mr. Hegseth, as was common follow beneath earlier defence secretaries. Instead, Pentagon reporters had been emptying their desks and cleansing out their workspaces after rejecting new guidelines for journalists based mostly within the Pentagon.

In February, an Air Force C-32 carrying Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Jim Risch, was equally compelled to return to Washington after a difficulty with the cockpit windshield. The incident occurred about 90 minutes after the flight took off from Joint Base Andrews outdoors of Washington.

The C-32, a specifically configured model of the Boeing 757-200 industrial airplane, transports U.S. leaders, together with the vice chairman, first girl and members of the Cabinet and Congress.