The recent revelation that a U.S. F-35 fighter jet was nearly struck by a missile launched by Houthi rebels in Yemen has sparked renewed scrutiny of both the fifth-generation aircraft’s battlefield role and the strategic decisions governing its deployment.

The incident, confirmed by a U.S. official to Task & Purpose, underscores growing concerns about the high-profile stealth fighter’s vulnerability in lower-intensity conflicts and how America employs its most advanced—and expensive—weapon systems.

The New York Times first reported the close call as part of its coverage of President Donald Trump’s decision earlier this month to halt air and missile strikes against Houthi forces.

Although officials have not disclosed just how near the missile came to the aircraft, the pilot deemed the threat serious enough to take evasive maneuvers, highlighting the risk even the most sophisticated jets face when flying in contested airspace.

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Military analysts were quick to weigh in, warning that had the missile struck its target, the implications would have gone far beyond the loss of a single aircraft.

“It would have been an ‘absolute disaster’ if the U.S. military had lost one of its advanced and costly F-35s to the Houthis,” said Dan Grazier, senior fellow and director of the National Security Reform Program at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C.

Grazier emphasized the symbolic and strategic blow such a loss would represent.

Image Credit: DoW

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“The reason why the American people have sacrificed hundreds of billions of dollars already on this program is that it was supposed to be the fighter jet of the future,” he said.

“It was supposed to be able to go up against the pacing threats out there — penetrate heavily defended airspace. If one of those got shot down by a non-state actor, that would really put a lie to all the claims about the magical capabilities of the F-35.”

Despite decades of development and ballooning budgets, the F-35 has yet to fully deliver on its promise of revolutionary air superiority.

According to Grazier, the aircraft still has “very limited combat capabilities,” in part due to delays in software and computing upgrades needed to support its full suite of weapons.

Those improvements may not be fully realized until the end of the decade.

“If it can’t survive this level of combat,” Grazier warned, referring to the asymmetric conflict in Yemen, “then a reasonable person would not be unjustified in questioning whether or not it can survive a more intense form of combat, which is exactly why the American people are paying a premium to design and build the F-35.”

Indeed, the scale of that premium is staggering.

According to the F-35 Joint Program Office, the lifetime cost of the program is estimated at $2.1 trillion through 2088, covering development, procurement, and maintenance of over 2,400 aircraft.

The price tag for individual jets varies by variant: $82.5 million for the Air Force’s F-35A, $109 million for the Marine Corps’ vertical take-off F-35B, and $102.1 million for the Navy and Marine Corps’ carrier-based F-35C.

Meanwhile, reliability issues persist.

The Air Force variant’s mission-capable rate—a measure of how often the jet is ready to perform at least one of its designated tasks—has plummeted from nearly 69% in 2021 to just 51.5% in 2024, according to Air Force Times.

Not everyone blames the F-35 itself for the recent close call.

Aerospace industry analyst Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory, argues that the incident reflects more on how the jet was used rather than any flaw in its design.

“Of course, losing an F-35 or two doesn’t have any great meaning, except if the pilot is hurt of course,” Aboulafia said.

Aboulafia pointed out that the Houthis have developed a robust air defense network over the past decade, particularly in response to a Saudi-led bombing campaign from 2015 to 2022.

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Deploying an F-35 into such an environment without a clearly defined, high-value target increases risk unnecessarily, he said.

“The F-35 is a very capable weapon,” Aboulafia noted.

“If you misuse it by refusing to understand history, that’s one thing. But the weapon itself and its capabilities, that’s a completely different issue.”

In conflicts involving peer adversaries like China, the F-35 would serve a very different purpose—leading with long-range, stealth-based attacks on strategic targets like radar installations and missile batteries.

In contrast, operations over Yemen have focused on targeting dispersed, mobile leadership cells—a mission set that doesn’t play to the jet’s strengths.

“That’s a recipe for trouble,” Aboulafia warned.

“When the Israelis have used F-35s, say, in Syria, it’s been a lot more discrete: Here is this specific mission; there is this specific target; let’s do it. If you’re just doing an ongoing campaign of targeting a variety of terrorist cells or what have you, I really don’t understand why you’d use F-35s.”

He added that the Houthis simply lack the kind of infrastructure the F-35 was designed to neutralize. “This has more in common with — dare I say it — Vietnam,” he said.

“Did it matter what you were flying in Vietnam? I’m not sure it did, truth be told. Basically, if the other guy happened to have air defenses in the right place distributed among his dispersed units, then it was very unlucky for the pilot.”

Ultimately, the near-miss in Yemen reveals deeper issues in how advanced U.S. systems are employed, especially in low-intensity or asymmetrical conflicts.

Even the most advanced aircraft are not invincible, and strategic context matters as much as technological edge.

“No plane can be a silver bullet,” Aboulafia said, reminding observers that even stealth jets like the F-117A were not immune.

“During the 1999 Kosovo war, Serbia shot down an F-117A Stealth Fighter. It was the same — look, we’re just roaming over the country, and eventually something bad might just happen.”

As U.S. military planners reconsider the F-35’s role in conflicts outside of the great power competition paradigm, this latest incident may become a case study in the risks of deploying high-end hardware for missions better suited to less expensive—and less politically sensitive—platforms.

Whether the F-35 remains a symbol of American air superiority or a cautionary tale of overreach will likely depend not just on its next technological upgrade, but on how wisely it is used in the battles ahead.

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