F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/f-35-cant-be-found-after-pilot-ejected

by hubraumhugo • 3 years ago

254 623 3 years ago

tornato7• 3 years ago

Interesting. The article doesn't say why the pilot ejected. If the jet were able to continue flying for hours in autopilot, maybe the pilot ejected a bit prematurely, no? Though it it continued flying I would expect it to be on ADS-B.

FinnKuhn• 3 years ago

When you have to eject anyway, you would probably want to do it in an area where you can get help relatively quickly, due to it being quite a bit dangerous, and not in an area with no infrastructure or over the ocean.

RetroTechie• 3 years ago

I'd think there's clear procedures for pilot of such a craft? If x occurs & can't be fixed by doing y or z, then eject.

Though it it continued flying I would expect it to be on ADS-B.

This is a military aircraft. Depending on its mission, transponders may or may not be enabled.

What did surprise me: if a 2-plane mission, why didn't the other jet follow the now-empty one? As a opposed to landing right after. Low on fuel?

At least it could have recorded speed & heading.

sschueller2• 3 years ago

With all the software issues how do we know the plane didn't just randomly eject the pilot due to some buffer overflow...

bmitc• 3 years ago

It would seem to me that a missing F-35 is a pretty big security threat.

z3032• 3 years ago

I'd think there's clear procedures for pilot of such a craft? If x occurs & can't be fixed by doing y or z, then eject.

Indeed they do (or at least did)

https://youtu.be/Aa1Ba_NEobs

hulitu2• 3 years ago

maybe the pilot ejected a bit prematurely, no?

He just wanted to be sure. With all those issues F35 had i wouldn't think twice when to eject. /s

belter6• 3 years ago

If you happen to find it report here: https://twitter.com/TeamCharleston/status/170352338547553496...

Please no jokes about losing a stealth fighter...

pbak• 3 years ago

"Yuri, you lost another submarine ... ?"

hef198984• 3 years ago

Aren't those F-39s invisible anyway?

belter6• 3 years ago

We are looking for an F-35...You were not supposed to disclose the existance of the F-39 ;-)

zarmin• 3 years ago

It's at Diego Garcia with MH370

Stevvo2• 3 years ago

A B-17 once landed at an airfield in Belgium without any crew on board. Just by chance it was pointing in the right direction, with the right amount of lift and drag and thrust.

1659447091• 3 years ago

This sounded like there had to be more to it but found this [1] and it makes it even weirder.

The parachutes were still onboard and no indication of gunfire or blood caused by hostile attacks were seen on the plane.

[1] https://worldwarwings.com/still-unsolved-story-of-b-17-landi...

i80and• 3 years ago

A Quora answer[1] suggests that the "parachutes" found were just the empty packs, and the crew was found safe.

That the plane landed intact is pretty cool though!

[1] https://www.quora.com/What-happened-to-the-crew-of-the-B-17-...

ggambetta2• 3 years ago

FTA: "The Second World War II"...

idontwantthis• 3 years ago

I think there were experiments with RC B17s. I wonder if this was one and they chose to emergency land it but had to keep it a secret from the Belgian airfield crew.

satiric• 3 years ago

When my grandpa was navigating B24's in WWII, he saw a B24's wing flying by itself. The Japanese had set the plane on fire from nose to tail, and the body separated from the wings. The B24 has the wings on top of the fuselage, so the wings could stay together. The body, of course, fell into the clouds below, but the wings stayed aloft. And naturally, because they didn't have to carry a fuselage around, they accelerated, and lazily curved out of sight of grandpa, who thought he might have been the only person to ever see something like that (and survive to tell the tale...)

Stevvo2• 3 years ago

Awesome and terrifying story, thank you for sharing.

nthn_g• 3 years ago

Also in Belgium, in 1989 a MiG 23 crashed in a house killing one person after the pilot ejected over Poland.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Belgium_MiG-23_crash

defrost• 3 years ago

The big question here is was it a Martin-Baker ejection seat?

If so, there's a limited edition high end wristwatch in it for the pilot:

https://us.bremont.com/pages/explore-bremont-partnerships-ma...

netsharc• 3 years ago

Simple enough to google, yes it is:

https://martin-baker.com/products/mk16-ejection-seat-for-f-3...

lbourdages• 3 years ago

It's more affordable than I thought, I expected one more zero on the price tag...

amelius2• 3 years ago

A watch without GPS?

z3032• 3 years ago

and a Tie

https://martin-baker.com/ejection-tie-club/

amelius2• 3 years ago

Wearing a tie during ejection can be dangerous.

andrewstuart2• 3 years ago

This is a fine timepiece.

A worthy chronometer to suit a crashed pilot.

m000• 3 years ago

Definitely a SPECTRE operation.

jeffrallen• 3 years ago

UFO: Unfound flying object?

Cryptoclidus• 3 years ago

UNFO: *not flying

hoseja2• 3 years ago

Why don't they fly with transponders on during training, precisely for this reason?

null0ranje• 3 years ago

It was inop at the time:

"The jet’s transponder, which usually helps locate the aircraft, was not working “for some reason that we haven’t yet determined,” said Jeremy Huggins, a spokesman at Joint Base Charleston. “So that’s why we put out the public request for help.”

hef198984• 3 years ago

Oh, someone sure is going to have to answer some tough questions. If not in purely military airspace, or combat operations, military aircraft have to be airworthy according to civil standards.

That being said, no casualties, loosing a stealth fighter is somewhat funny.

hoseja2• 3 years ago

Thanks, haven't yet read the article through when I commented, stupid of me.

k12sosse2• 3 years ago

You know where they're going to find it?

The last place they look

steve1977• 3 years ago

So I guess at least the stealth part is working as designed...

kavalg• 3 years ago

Could it be hijacked by an adversary that hacked into the plane's computer?

yabones2• 3 years ago

Have they said whether the transponder was active on the jet? They usually have the ADSB beacon live when flying near airports, but if it was turned off it would be a bit trickier to find. Also, if the retroreflector wasn't extended it might be hard for active radar to track it as well. Worst case scenario would be if it was in "full stealth" mode -- that would be the situation where we discover that NORAD air defense systems can't detect our own jets!

seatac76• 3 years ago

It wasn’t active, reasons were not given. [1]

[1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/f-35-cant-be-found-aft...

giantg22• 3 years ago

They should be able to track gross location on radar. The stealth capabilities are mostly focused on thwarting precise location and missile guidance radars.

The issue here is finding the precise crash site. General location should be known. Trying to find it under the tree canopy could be more challenging depending on how rural it is.

giarc3• 3 years ago

I think they do have the general location, they keep mentioning two lakes near the base. So I suspect it's at the bottom of one of them, although then it's odd they are asking for public help finding them.

cvccvroomvroom2• 3 years ago

This is odd because military jets in the area here in the area (in CONUS) invariably have their transponders on.

vdqtp3• 3 years ago

invariably

You keep saying that word...I do not think it means what you think it means.

More seriously, military aircraft throughout the US often do not have their ADS-B or transponders turned on.

542458• 3 years ago

I’m surprised that a crashing F-35 wouldn’t generate enough fire and smoke to be easily detected.

josefresco• 3 years ago

Maybe not? This article references some examples of planes landing intact: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/f-35-cant-be-found-aft...

ikeashark• 3 years ago

Planes like the F-22 are inherently aerodynamically unstable because it allows then to be highly maneuverable, The stability of the aircraft is handled by the electronics. So back then planes of the that type would be able to just glide down and land but with a F-22 or any modern military jet, it wouldn't.

gonzo414• 3 years ago

It could fly until it finds ocean, runs out of fuel and then darts in. My god think of the bill.

kashunstva• 3 years ago

If the plane is in trim (does the F35 even have manual trim?) and/or on autopilot, I can see a long glide to somewhere with a stable flight path, at least until the loss of thrust due to fuel exhaustion leads to an aerodynamic stall. But in of these circumstances, there would have been no need for the pilot to eject. Strange indeed.

bryanlarsen• 3 years ago

If it flew until it ran out of fuel and then crashed the amount of fire and smoke would be significantly reduced.

jl6• 3 years ago

It sounds like they’re looking in lakes. Could have gone splash without leaving much trace on the surface.

tibbydudeza• 3 years ago

Well they still missing an atom bomb from 1958 dropped by a B47 bomber near Tybee island Georgia.

polynomial• 3 years ago

Wait, whaat?

ceejayoz12• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_coll...

It's not the only missing nuke, either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Mars_Bluff_B-47_nuclear_w... is probably the (darkly) funniest one in the list. That one was recovered, but "the Air Force tried to nuke my kids' play house" is a story not many people can tell.

cbm-vic-20• 3 years ago

Veritasium just did a video on this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILgSesWMUEI

Fluorescence2• 3 years ago

This sounds too ridiculous to be true.

I'd be more inclined to believe that it's a gambit to flush out an intelligence leak rather than an inability to find their own $160M plane.

runarberg3• 3 years ago

Incompetence is positively correlated with salary and responsibility. The more money you handle on your job the likelier you are to be incompetent.

It comes as no surprise to me that people responsible for these machines of war are more incompetent than you or me.

IAmGraydon2• 3 years ago

The more money you handle on your job the likelier you are to be incompetent.

And your source for this data is…?

IAmGraydon2• 3 years ago

It’s definitely BS. Transponders aside, the US has radar and near real-time satellite imagery of every square inch of American territory. There is a zero percent chance they don’t know where this plane is.

nradov11• 3 years ago

That's simply not true. The US military only has primary radar coverage over a small fraction of the country. (Air traffic control primarily relies on secondary surveillance radar.)

Only the weather satellites in geostationary orbits provide near real-time imagery, and they lack the resolution to spot something the size of an aircraft. High resolution images come from spy satellites in highly inclined low orbits which provide only intermittent coverage of any particular location. And they can't see through clouds.

ceejayoz12• 3 years ago

Ah, yes, radar. Notoriously effective on a stealth fighter.

sebzim4500• 3 years ago

Isn't the whole point of an F-35 that it is really hard to track with radar?

woodruffw• 3 years ago

The US military absolutely does not have total ground radar across the entire country.

(And even if it did, radar is not magic. If the plane is at the bottom of a murky lake, then no amount of radar or satellite imagery is going to find it.)

naikrovek• 3 years ago

the US has radar and near real-time satellite imagery of every square inch of American territory.

have you been watching prime-time crime fighting drama TV shows?

the implementation of that system is probably 8x as bad as it sounds, and it sounds too complex to implement in less than two decades.

real-time (or "near" real-time, whatever that means) imagery of every square inch of the continental US? No.

kkielhofner5• 3 years ago

If you watch YouTube replay simulations[0] with ATC (air traffic control) when pilots violate a TFR (temporary flight restriction) for something like The President it's comical how long it takes for the interception fighters to find the target. It turns out the F-* radar is terrible at these kinds of situations. They almost always end up getting vectored in by air traffic control with their much more powerful ground based radar.

Just one example of how this kind of stuff plays out in the real world.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Onx46fLyncM

xeromal• 3 years ago

There's a handful of missing nukes in the US from some very large crashed planes that we still haven't found.

dghlsakjg4• 3 years ago

This is not even close to true.

ATC radar regularly loses small planes on 'primary' radar (primary radar being pure radar), and has to rely on the transponder. There are many areas where you simply don't have primary coverage, especially close to the ground. I've flown through military controlled airspace where they lose radar contact with me in a Cessna less than 10 miles from the base.

ianburrell3• 3 years ago

BTW, the only real-time satellite imagery of all of the US is from weather satellites in geosynchronous orbit. Which has the resolution of a city.

If near real-time, you mean a couple of times per day. There aren't enough LEO observation satellites to provide complete coverage.

HlessClaudesman• 3 years ago

My jet-plane brings all the spys to the yard.

_a_a_a_• 3 years ago

Entirely credible. Right at the top it says it's a stealth aircraft. It's just doing what it does best.

jsbisviewtiful• 3 years ago

You'd be surprised to learn then that the United States has lost several (6, last I knew) nuclear weapons over the decades.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220804-the-lost-nuclear...

toomuchtodo• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear...

The US Department of Defense has officially recognized at least 32 "Broken Arrow" incidents from 1950 to 1980.

https://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/media/filer_p...

Unofficially, the Defense Atomic Support Agency (now known as the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)) has detailed hundreds of "Broken Arrow" incidents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_nuclear... ("Broken Arrow refers to an accidental event that involves nuclear weapons, warheads or components that does not create a risk of nuclear war.")

ggambetta2• 3 years ago

I guess I don't watch enough spy movies, but... how do you use a not-really-missing jet to flush out an intelligence leak?

Fluorescence2• 3 years ago

I'm delighted you ask because I watch too many.

You crash an end-of-life trainer dressed up as an F35 in a carefully chosen site with no natural foot traffic. The FBI then sits in a bush and arrests everyone that turns up.

The F35 is the prime intelligence target for Russia before it gets in Ukrainian hands so they might risk some of their most valuable "illegals" i.e. the long-term embedded agents with flawless identities. For a big target, you gotta go big. Hang out the biggest prize in the most embarrassing way you can. This is a typical type of plot from The Americans TV show.

That or it's testing the adversarial satellite or balloon surveillance tech for how long it takes to find the craft. Maybe it's a test of Open Source Intelligence networks. Maybe it had genuine stealth tech and they are monitoring channels to find out if it was being successfully tracked. A top of the line stealth craft is hell of a honeypot so there are endless things that might get revealed - I imagine all hostile intelligence networks are lit up like christmas trees - it's like a barium meal.

Do I believe any of these? Nah. Reality is more ridiculous than fiction so no doubt it really is the case that they have just lost a prize intelligence asset.

anigbrowl• 3 years ago

Or a new marketing campaign from Lockheed Martin - 'stealth technology so good, even we can't find it'.

Meanwhile the loony tune demographic has decided that it flew to China on Biden's orders.

h2odragon• 3 years ago

Why shouldn't "finders keepers" apply here? If their jet crashed, unoccupied, on my land, why ain't it mine now?

At least do the "prize value" salvage reward they do for ships.

floatrock• 3 years ago

Sadly the law of salvage is only part of maritime law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_salvage

Hills of south carolina are out of its juristiction.

ganoushoreilly• 3 years ago

fortunately in the low country.. there really aren't hills just marshes and wetlands, but in all seriousness it would be a pretty cool salvage for someone

btbuildem• 3 years ago

An 80's movie dream is playing out for some rural kids, where they stumble upon a smouldering high-tech wreckage and as they explore it, men in suits pour out of black SUVs and talk to them in taciturn ways.

Seriously though, these jets sound terribly overpriced for how unreliable they seem to be.

weinzierl• 3 years ago

Maybe you are thinking of The Machine-Gunners [1]. I loved to watch the BBC adaption as a kid.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Gunners

gadders• 3 years ago

I was thinking more The Nightmare Man [1]. Scared the absolute piss out of me as a kid and I don't think it was even on that late:

https://ayearinthecountry.co.uk/the-nightmare-man-part-1-col...

nradov11• 3 years ago

The F-35 has a lower mishap rate and higher availability rate than most other tactical aircraft.

mensetmanusman2• 3 years ago

An iPhone would be over a billion dollars if we only made 40.

cypress66• 3 years ago

There's a lot of very low volume niche Chinese phones for reasonable prices. So it doesn't need to be so expensive.

You could argue that an iPhone would cost over a billion because you need to develop iOS. But why would you do that instead of modding android for 1/100th of the cost, if you're only gonna make 40?

rbanffy3• 3 years ago

I'd love to have a civilian version of the F-35 for joyride operators, but I guess half of the point of a military aircraft is that your enemies can't buy one.

bowsamic• 3 years ago

No, it wouldn't.

kunwon1• 3 years ago

I'm no expert on aircraft procurement or government contracts (I'm an engineer who used to work on fighter jets) - that being said, it's my understanding that the F-35 is actually a very successful project, and a very affordable one at that. I haven't got any citations or evidence to present, I could be wrong about all of this, it's a topic I've got only casual knowledge about.

A broad overview of my understanding of the situation: Most critics are making unfair comparisons (e.g. criticizing the F-35 for its inability to dogfight, or comparing its cost to 4th generation fighters, rather than its 5th generation peers)

This argument is further complicated by (as I understand it) a general lack of knowledge in the west concerning the true cost of Russian and Chinese 5th generation fighters (PAK FA and Su-57)

All of that being said, I think this is a heavily politicized topic, and I can never discount the possibility that I've been hoodwinked when it comes to such matters.

SonicScrub3• 3 years ago

https://www.aviacionline.com/2022/01/f-35-cheaper-than-the-g...

Specific figures will differ depending on how exactly one calculates acquisition costs. These numbers differ depending on the acquiring country, the block numbers, etc. But as rule of thumb the F-35 cost is roughly 10 million USD cheaper than the much less capable Gripen. This is notable as the Gripen is being marketed as the cheaper alternative. The F-35 has much higher operational costs (mostly due to the costs of maintaining stealth coating), but here's the opinion of the Finish and Swiss governments on full life-cycle costs from the article:

However, both the Swiss and Finnish authorities argued that the F-35 was the best cost/benefit investment, if its full life-cycle economics were taken into account.

mrtksn5• 3 years ago

All that might turn out to be irrelevant as the drones prove detrimental in a warfare.

With the advancements in AI in recent years, it will probably get harder and harder to justify carrying a biological being and all the support systems onboard. At some point, a warplane capabilities might become irrelevant and the only important aspect would the the implications of carrying a solder onboard and making the downing of the device much more politically significant than downing a drone.

m0llusk• 3 years ago

There has been a great deal of honing to the jet and its production processes over time. The prototypes were overpriced and underperforming but with scale all that was overcome.

belter6• 3 years ago

Well at least in close combat we know who turns first: "F 16 vs. F 35 - Turn Comparison" - https://youtu.be/SPqUvCnWcrk

brobdingnagians2• 3 years ago

I've read some analyses of the F35 vs A10 which don't favour the F35 for CAS operations much. The main thing I saw was that F35 requires more maintenance and longer runways than the A10 and is more fragile. It depends on what kind of a war that is being fought, but in a major great power war, you couldn't always guarantee having nice high quality air bases, runways, and support teams near the front. Sometimes it is preferable to have a low tech; that fancy new wifi connected oven can be great, until your wifi goes out for a few days and you find out that it won't turn on, and you have to get a special maintenance guy.

hollerith• 3 years ago

If F-35 is such a failure, how come many countries have chosen to buy it? Consulting this next page, I count 8 countries besides the US that have taken delivery of F-35s, plus many that have ordered it, but not yet taken delivery:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning...

The UK for example currently has a fleet of 32, and Australia has 50.

ozim2• 3 years ago

It is quite clear dogfights happen only in the movies. But all my knowledge about fighter jets comes from YouTube fighter jet pilot channels.

mercutio2• 3 years ago

I found this article illuminating on the F-35. Certainly convinced me that the costs have been misrepresented.

https://www.navalgazing.net/The-Case-for-the-F-35

8bitsrule• 3 years ago

a very successful project, and a very affordable one...

I've read several articles today that called it the 'most expensive weapon', that the program is '10 years behind', that each costs $80M, and '$9M/year to maintain', that over 1000 have been built etc. For decades it has been a troubled project, many experienced insiders have called it a failure, from the day the first one rolled out ... long ago. 'Very successful' in what way?

protomolecule• 3 years ago

Russian and Chinese 5th generation fighters (PAK FA and Su-57)

PAK FA/T-50/Su-57 is the same Russian fighter.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-57

SkeuomorphicBee• 3 years ago

I gather that everyone who actually knows their stuff consider the F35 very capable for its price, but still the number of reports of it crashing seems quite odd to my civilian ear, is this much crashing just normal for military equipment? As a comparison I searched for data on a civilian plane of roughly the same age:

- The F35, with ~965+ units made since 2006, had 12 incidents with 9 or 10 hull-losses

- The Boeing 787, with ~1,077 units made since 2007, had 7 incidents with 0 hull-losses

I know that military does more dangerous stuff that civilians (e.g. one of the F35 crashes was during aerial refueling, other one while landing in a carrier), but still a ~1% hull loss (without enemy fire) is surprising for me.

SonicScrub3• 3 years ago

The F-35 is cheaper than it's contemporaries, and has a lower accident rate.

jameshart• 3 years ago

You don’t hear about the ones that don’t crash.

To determine that this crash is evidence of unreliability would require you to have detailed knowledge of the operational and training volume and tempo they’re flying with - in comparison to other aircraft and their comparative failure rate.

xhkkffbf• 3 years ago

My personal favorite is the short story "Night Rescue" from Bertrand Brinley's Mad Scientist Club books.

http://madscientistsclub.com/books.html

foxyv4• 3 years ago

Fighter jets in general are a constant maintenance marathon. They are pushing the edge of engineering and performance. That means that they are less reliable and more expensive to maintain than a 777 by a wide margin. However, the F-35 is significantly more reliable than it's predecessor the F-16.

The F-35 represents the result of a changing model for warfare. Less dogfights and missile duels, more managing a fleet of strike drones, loitering ordinance, ECM, and acting as an observability platform. With the advent of extreme long range, datalink guided, air breathing, air to air missiles, BVR is transitioning to over the horizon combat. I see you, I kill you. F-35 is a reaction to that.

pookha• 3 years ago

F35 has a lower mission capability rate than the F-16, and it's not even close (< 50% vs 73%). They're complicated (overly) machines...The DOD industry has come a long ways from Edwards Demming.

mortureb5• 3 years ago

We got to move away from fighter jets for the most part. It’s the age of slaughterbots baby, bring on the tens of thousands of highly intelligent drones.

aftbit• 3 years ago

The real question IMO is whether the 6th generation fighters (Next Generation Air Dominance program in the USA) are making the right design trade offs. They are projected to be bigger, more expensive, and ordered in fewer numbers than even the F-22. Are we better off with fewer but more advanced super weapons, or with many more cheaper weapons? In the era of UA/RU war where few-thousand-dollar drones are spanking multi-million dollar EW and AA systems, this may not be the right trade off.

justrealist• 3 years ago

Yeah, far more F35s will be ordered than F22s, in the end the program ground out a pretty successful jet.

The next generation may be the questionable one.

nradov11• 3 years ago

Unfortunately there is no alternative. In order to be relevant in a potential conflict with China around the first island chain, NGAD must have a size and fuel fraction similar to the F-111. It will probably also need a second crew position to manage the workload including controlling "loyal wingman" type disposable drones. There's just no way to do that on the cheap.

Small, cheap drones have been effective in Ukraine because the ranges are so short. The battle space in the South China Sea is completely different.

ianburrell3• 3 years ago

The Air Force and Navy NGAD programs are separate and different. The Air Force is building a fighter larger than the F-22 cause they want the range to fly across the Pacific. They are also working on wingman drones and already gave order.

The Navy NGAD is more of a replacement for the F/A-18E/F. It will probably be the same size because of constraints of carrier. Another difference is that the Air Force is working fast while Navy NGAD won't be ready until 2030.

mrguyorama3• 3 years ago

The F-35 has a comparable or better safety record than most other American Fighters. You just don't see articles written about a single aircraft incident for the F-18 anymore.

pohl• 3 years ago

I've seen some analysis that, per hour of flight time, these tend towards the most trouble-free end of the spectrum. Someone will need to run those numbers again, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if, even with this incident, that was still the case.

Rebelgecko• 3 years ago

I think so far the F-35 has had 1 death and maybe half a dozen crashes in hundreds of thousands of hours of operation.

Just from perusing the stats for other military planes that seems pretty good actually.

Hammerhead12321• 3 years ago

Something to keep in mind that I do not believe anyone else has mentioned is that the F-35 was built in several variations to serve different branches of the military in roughly similar configurations. The Navy and Air Force can both successfully operate and maintain the aircraft as older planes are decommissioned, and eliminates the need for other aircraft to be developed to serve the specific use cases of the various branches of the U.S. military.

It makes maintenance far easier and over the long run results in significantly reduced costs.

leoh• 3 years ago

Seriously though, these jets sound terribly overpriced for how unreliable they seem to be.

There are a number of possibilities you are not considering. Having our adversaries believe that the F35 is unreliable, for example, would be exceptionally useful. Other possibilities include intentionally attempting out-of-spec maneuvers or experimental hardware.

WalterBright• 3 years ago

overpriced for how unreliable they seem to be

The high price may cause them to be unreliable, because they are so expensive to operate they don't get enough flying time to work the bugs out.

XorNot4• 3 years ago

Criticism of the F-35 has been coming from a vocal selection of loons who's most common media appearances tended to be on Russia Today, and who's qualifications have been to lie about their qualifications, and misrepresent actual events which happened.

Here's the thing: you don't know anything about the F-35. Because the project is secret. The capabilities are secret. And in a US political system that's incredibly fractious, civilian oversight has been satisfied with the project for multiple administrations. But it's still secret.

rootusrootus3• 3 years ago

I was an early armchair skeptic, and I've always had a not-so-secret love of the F-16. But after watching an F-35 demo at a recent airshow, I'm a convert. Anyone who says this plane can't out-dogfight an F-16 is delusional.

sbierwagen• 3 years ago

You'd hate the F-104, which killed 116 pilots while in German service, which is the kind of casualty rate you'd expect from actual war, not training. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-104_Starfighter#Wes...

petesergeant• 3 years ago

these jets sound terribly overpriced for how unreliable they seem to be

I'm in no way suggesting your comment is an example of this, but, if I was a hostile foreign power I'd do everything possible to amplify messaging that my enemy's wonder-jet was an expensive boondoggle to try and hurt political support for it.

lambersley• 3 years ago

$1.2T to OPERATE the F-35 program, yikes! I would love to see the TCO figures on an F-35 (or not). US Military budget concepts have always blown my mind.

yabones2• 3 years ago

Not to say $1.2T is nothing, but that's over the lifespan of the program. It's like if you paid for your car plus all the fuel, oil changes, spare parts, tires, car wash, toll roads, all up front.

$1.2 trillion to operate and maintain the fleet over more than 60 years.

Workaccount2• 3 years ago

Headlines kick harder when you leave out divisors.

mrguyorama3• 3 years ago

Holy cow, 60 years is the design life of the F35?! We will somehow still be operating these things in 2150!

RobotToaster• 3 years ago

Military intelligence really is an oxymoron.

tivert4• 3 years ago

Maybe it's another Cornfield Bomber (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber):

The "Cornfield Bomber" is the nickname given to a Convair F-106 Delta Dart, operated by the 71st Fighter-Interceptor Squadron of the United States Air Force. In 1970, during a training exercise, it made an unpiloted landing in a farmer's field in Montana, suffering only minor damage, after the pilot had ejected from the aircraft. The aircraft, recovered and repaired, was returned to service, and is currently on display at the National Museum of the United States Air Force.

Given it's a military plane (which IIRC, aren't required to have transponders or have them activated) and stealth. it seems understandable that it would be hard to find if it didn't crash immediately.

ceejayoz12• 3 years ago

I've always wondered what his squadronmates changed his callsign to afterwards.

standeven• 3 years ago

Scarecrow?

ourmandave• 3 years ago

O'Chute

tra3• 3 years ago

The confluence of events that allowed an unpiloted jet to land with its engine idling.. its unbelievable.

hindsightbias2• 3 years ago

Most aircraft are designed to be inherently stable so as long as it doesn't hit anything a good percentage of them should be able to manage pretty well w/o a pilot.

kristjansson2• 3 years ago

Incredible:

One of the other pilots on the mission was reported to have radioed Foust during his descent by parachute that "you'd better get back in it!"

dehrmann• 3 years ago

aren't required to have transponders or have them activated

Seems like you'd want them activated in domestic airspace.

AndyMcConachie• 3 years ago

The F-35 really is the most expensive joke in American military aviation history.

skazazes• 3 years ago

So much so that America's allies are lining up to get them!

miguelazo• 3 years ago

Yeah, and that's totally legitimate interest. Has nothing to do with sleazy lobbying and attempts to curry political favor.

m3kw9• 3 years ago

Looks like it did not cause fire and after crash

Simulacra• 3 years ago

When I read this, the first thing that came to mind was the F-35 malfunctioning ejection seat issue that was due to counterfeit parts.

aragonite• 3 years ago

From this F-35 crash video last year at least it looks like they fixed the ejection problem at least!

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/pilot-ejects-from-f-35-at-...

frankjr• 3 years ago

Should have put an AirTag on it. I'm kidding. Maybe.

wongarsu3• 3 years ago

Planes have transponders to make it easier to find them, though that's mostly for when they are in the air. The issue is that the military likes to turn them off.

ChrisArchitect2• 3 years ago

[dupe]

Earlier discussion over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37552740

askiiart• 3 years ago

Context: this comment is from a newer post whose comments were merged into this post.

Slackwise• 3 years ago

Wow, the Warthunder forum arguments are getting way out of hand

genpfault• 3 years ago

Warthunder forum arguments

Context: [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Thunder#Documents_leaks

tester756• 3 years ago

In January 2023, Raytheon denied media reports that security clearance background checks for jobs at the defense contractor investigate whether applicants play War Thunder.

wtf

swader9992• 3 years ago

These things can carry nukes and we can lose them. Hmmmm.

1970-01-01• 3 years ago

Very unlikely to be a broken arrow if they're asking for civilian assistance. Much more likely is it had blanks, went AWOL, and is lost in a lake.

swader9992• 3 years ago

This time.

bunabhucan2• 3 years ago

Not yet:

https://theaviationist.com/2021/10/06/f-35-b61-12/

Best you could hope for would be a test bomb over Nevada but with no nuclear components.

stuckinhell• 3 years ago

The USA really is in decline.

cvccvroomvroom2• 3 years ago

And they want to replace A-10's, F/A-18's, and F-16's with this overpriced MIC boondoggle. It costs almost 2x/engine hour of a Viper, and the total program cost will exceed $2 trillion.

pgraf• 3 years ago

They should have placed an Apple AirTag under the pilots seat… *sarcasm off*

solardev• 3 years ago

Guess the stealth is working.

simonswords82• 3 years ago

Hand over as much intel to 4chan as possible and watch them find this thing in a matter of hours...

motohagiography• 3 years ago

Came here to say that. Thinking topographic maps of the region for higher probability impacts, wind direction maps, air quality data, last known trajectory, shodan cameras, cell tower signal interference blips, RF noise from surviving electronics or beacons. Not a lot to go on though.

tsavo• 3 years ago

And don't forget current fuel load to estimate radius of search area.

hn8305823• 3 years ago

Am I the only one shocked that it's stealth was effective enough that they couldn't track it even with a malfunctioning transponder?

AustinDev2• 3 years ago

Not in the slightest bit.

llm_nerd• 3 years ago

By reports this is one of the F35B variants, a VTOL capable jet. Like the V-22 Osprey, it is pushing mechanical complexity maybe too far and has been a program rife with troubles. Compared to the F35B, the normal variants have been essentially trouble free.

Trying to make a whole mechanical system to redirect 40500lbs of thrust isn't super reliable.

There is some sort of lesson there that applies to the software engineering realm.

EDIT: Ooof, looks like there are some VTOL fanatics in the house. Who knew that unreliable military hardware was a fetish.

AlbertCory• 3 years ago

The answer has been found!

It crashed into a secret US Navy project: the Stealth Aircraft Carrier.

GartzenDeHaes• 3 years ago

It's not uncommon for jets to fly for long distances after a pilot ejects. In one incident I responded to, the crew of an F4 ejected due to a fire, but the jet continued to fly over about half of Nevada until it eventually crashed near Tohnapah.

SV_BubbleTime• 3 years ago

That F4 is shaped in a way that wants to stay in the air.

The F35 is shaped in a way that only flys well with 10-40 thousand pounds of thrust.

I am extremely skeptical a modern fighter jet wpuld coast and set it self down in a field.

umeshunni• 3 years ago

This is a particularly interesting story:

A Soviet MiG-23 flew all the way from Poland to Belgium without its pilot after they ejected from the jet shortly after takeoff back

https://community.infiniteflight.com/t/the-ghost-mig-over-be...

mylittlebrain• 3 years ago

Maybe the news reports are in error? They said autopilot was left on. The pilot survived. Surely they must know the settings for the course. It sounds like an episode in one of those spy thrillers.

jononomo2• 3 years ago

As another commenter has noted, this confirms that the stealth capabilities of this fighter jet are truly magnificent.

wkat4242• 3 years ago

Did they find it jet?

3seashells• 3 years ago

So.. Can one deduce jet vectors from disturbed clouds? Soldier movement from grass swinging in the wind. Can one visualize patterns not following a model?

cooper_ganglia• 3 years ago

They should’ve put an AirTag on it.

tehf0x• 3 years ago

So a similar thing happened near some friends' in France. A military jet crashed into the forest near their house, but the air force couldn't figure out where it had gone. Eventually a farmer noticed that a new pond had appeared on his land. The jet made enough of a crater when crashing that drained the nearby swamp and created a new pond deep enough to conceal the full fuselage, thus completely hiding the airplane. Once the farmer alerted the air force, they were able to crane the remains out of the newly formed pond and recover the key parts of hardware onboard. Had the farmer not noticed the change in landscape they might have never found it. https://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2011/03/02/97001-20110302...

Scoundreller• 3 years ago

I wonder if some of the "autopilot" functionality for military aircraft is to swan-dive into water/forest if everyone has already ejected.

If it's going to crash (and can't autoland, which it probably shouldn't attempt even if it could if something ejection-worthy happened), might as well obliterate the thing in a safe place.

ozim2• 3 years ago

Well usually it is pilots responsibility to try to aim it in safe direction as much as possible and only then eject. Basically like captain on the ship you don't eject but you are last one to leave the ship after you made what is possible to save others from harm (unless they are of course hostile forces).

I think quite some pilots died this way because they were trying to the last second to save other lives.

If plane is that much out of control that you cannot do much, adding some code to try to do something might make things actually worse from my perspective.

bob1029• 3 years ago

Some Hollywood points in this direction. E.g. the Behind Enemy Lines ejection scene.

Seems like a pretty good idea to self-destruct the most sensitive hardware (computers/chips/storage modules/etc) if recovery of the aircraft is no longer feasible.

MarkMarine16• 3 years ago

The thing you’re thinking of is the pilot. If the plane is capable of control, the pilot will move it on a trajectory away from populated areas if possible. Protecting innocent people on the ground in the case of an emergency was always top of mind, you can see this in the crash reporting for multiple real world incidents (in airframes with, and without ejection seats, where the last actions of the aircrew were steering away from populated areas)

By the time a pilot ejects they’ve exhausted EVERY other option to control the aircraft, no AI is going to regain control at that point.

akira2501• 3 years ago

I doubt it. You do not want an uncommanded activation of that system for any reason. You may actually _want_ your disabled plane to continue in a specific direction for tactical reasons. You generally do not allow auto pilot to make large deflections in control surfaces, as you always want a pilot on the stick to be able to overcome any uncommanded autopilot actions.

CodeWriter23• 3 years ago

I think the failures leading up to ejection preclude any kind of automated flight control afterward. Seeing how modern aircraft are all fly by wire.

krisoft• 3 years ago

I wonder if some of the "autopilot" functionality for military aircraft is to swan-dive into water/forest if everyone has already ejected.

Not quite the same you are thinking about but something similar is documented behaviour of the Global Hawk. Obviously since that is a remotely piloted aircraft “everyone has ejected safely” is not the trigger for it.

The way it works at the flight planning stage the operators define pre-determined points, and if the system detects certain faults it cannot recover from it tries to fly to these points and crash land into them. They call these point “termination point” on land and “ditching point” over water.

In this document[1] you can read more about the selection criteria of such points.

This document[2] details for air traffic control under which conditions flight termination points are used. In short (page 22) when the aircraft is uncontrolable for landing or landing at a suitable airfield cannot be achieved safely.

1: https://static.e-publishing.af.mil/production/1/af_a3/public...

2: https://www.eurocontrol.int/sites/default/files/2019-05/atm-...

dheera• 3 years ago

Why don't these aircraft get 10Hz GPS updates and send them to StarLink as they are going down? It's 2023 already.

kube-system2• 3 years ago

Well, for the plane in the parent comment's article, that reason is likely because the design for that plane was started in 1972.

izacus• 3 years ago

Because they're stealth military planes and broadcasting it's exact position to Musk owned network is literally the primary thing it should NOT do.

mortureb5• 3 years ago

But why? Don’t these billion dollar machines have a GPS tracker on them?

Aloha• 3 years ago

GPS is not reliable underwater, I'd expect it to have an ELT/EPIRB but those don't work with GPS as far as I know, and the crash could have been hard enough to render it inoperable.

jpadkins• 3 years ago

I don't think stealth aircrafts normally have trackers or anything broadcasting a signal. Kind of defeats the purpose...

I did read that stealth aircraft have transponders installed when operating in US airspace, so commercial radar can see them better. But it was not installed on this flight.

kube-system2• 3 years ago

They have transponders. But military airplanes can and sometimes do turn them off. When airplanes broadcast signals they can be detected. The military sometimes wishes to avoid this.

_djo_4• 3 years ago

They have transponders that transmit their identity and location on the most modern, but those depend on being active (for some reason the one in the F-35 was not) and on there being receivers nearby to pick them up. At lower altitudes in remote locations coverage is spotty.

So it's not a guarantee.

simne• 3 years ago

In civilian planes, sometimes, standard ADS-B tracker turned on automatically.

But in military planes, it must be turned on explicitly, because, depend on target of flight, it is possible, it must be OFF.

In general, this is very frequent case, when pilot just forget to turn on ADS-B.

Rygian• 3 years ago

It's relevant to note that the aircraft disappeared from radar in the evening while doing "low altitude exercises" and was discovered the next morning (bad weather preventing the rescue teams from finding it earlier).

The linked article mentions that the pilot and navigator were considered missing. Other news reported also the presence of human remains near the crash site.

iancmceachern2• 3 years ago

Just like Luke's X-Wing on Dagobah!

bitwize• 3 years ago

Surprised they didn't get Yoda to Force-levitate it out.

hinkley• 3 years ago

From the satellite images of the area, you have several urban areas with large swaths of farmland and some forest around them. One of the lakes is a dammed river. The flood plains downriver from the dam are quite lush. It’s in a field, under a tree, or in a pond it dug itself if the water table is high right now.

lofaszvanitt• 3 years ago

Jesus, imagine the thrill, that you have a full blown airplane in your backyard. Going out during the nights and sleep next to it, sit in the cockpit, whatever.

dolmen2• 3 years ago

More details on the Mirage 2000 crash: https://www.lamontagne.fr/saint-oradoux-pres-crocq-23260/act...

make3• 3 years ago

"why isn't there a tracker on those planes", it feels to me like a tracker is the last thing you would want to put on a stealth fighter

phendrenad2• 3 years ago

It's in Sasquatch country now, we'll find it 20 years from now in an area we already searched.

avidphantasm• 3 years ago

They should be ashamed to make this request. How much money do we give them every year for “defense”? This is embarrassing. Fire everyone in this chain of command, all the way to the top. Oh, wait, Tuberville won’t let the Senate confirm any general officers. What a laughing stock we have become.

elfbargpt• 3 years ago

Seeing some (probably very fake) tweets that the unmanned jet landed in Cuba. No reason to believe that's true, but I do wonder whether it would be remotely possible for someone to take the jet over. I imagine it has a lot of proprietary software inside

toyg• 3 years ago

Tbh my conspiracy mind went somewhere like that. An F35 costs hundreds of millions, I'm sure there are plenty of state (and non-state) actors willing to pay, say, 50m for access to its hardware. If you're an enterprising arms dealer, you find a pilot willing to cooperate for 5-10m, ask him to point the plane in a particular direction and eject, and then wait for it to come to you. A soft crash would probably still give you enough to turn a decent profit.

jjkeddo199• 3 years ago

Absolutely inappropriate to post something like this to Twitter before exhausting all other options (civilian airports, drone clubs, Space Force satellites) first. I feel like the Twitter account manager shared this out of desire to go viral, rather than securing the plane.

pcurve• 3 years ago

" we are focusing our attention north of JB Charleston, around Lake Moultrie and Lake Marion"

Sounds like it's in the water. It won't be easy to fish them out even if you find them. They probably determined security risk is very low.

jmclnx2• 3 years ago

“Now that I got that out of the way. How in the hell do you lose an F-35?” South Carolina Republican Representative Nancy Mace said on social media. “How is there not a tracking device and we’re asking the public to what, find a jet and turn it in?”

Sure lets put tracking devices in these stealth planes, will make it easy for anyone to find, even the Russians or Chinese.

How dumb can a Congress Person get, they surprise me everyday.

johnklos• 3 years ago

How dumb could a person be, suggesting that something be installed in an expensive airplane that couldn't possibly ever be turned off!

Sigh.

jmclnx2• 3 years ago

Turning it on would be very hard after a crash. Plus if you eject and you turn it on, the "other" people could trace it too. AFAIK, the purpose of F-35s are to be used in hostile areas, not only training.

Also, ever hear of cracking" ? You think hackers in China could not crack that tracker given enough time ? Stealth usually means "unable to track" in case you are wondering :)

chankstein383• 3 years ago

It may be naive to ask this but... can I get a tail number? I'm not 100% sure these would have one I could look up on flightradar but a national post asking people to help find their plane would be way more useful with a little more info about the actual aircraft. We know it was "Sunday afternoon" over South Carolina somewhere but if we had some "last known location" info or something this might be solvable with some math estimates.

btgeekboy• 3 years ago

With all due respect, I would hope that anything you could do with ADSB-out data is something that the US military has already tried.

chankstein383• 3 years ago

That's my assumption as well but I'd have assumed that'd be the case with basically anything except on-site search parties (though I'd hope they could do that as well haha). I'm with you though!

gl-prod• 3 years ago

US military: Yeah, right, we definitely tried that

(Goes to check ADSB-out data)

fnord77• 3 years ago

I wonder how many people are going to lose their jobs over this

bastardoperator• 3 years ago

Why not use the Find my F-35 app?

blobbers• 3 years ago

Anytime something like this happens, wouldn't they have seismic sensors that would detect a crash of this size?

I can't see one of these things going down softly once pilot ejects unless it had some kind of drone mode, in which case god help us who knows where it is?

ustad• 3 years ago

Reminds me of the movie The Pentagon Wars. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon_Wars

fallingmeat• 3 years ago

so they were not kidding about that low RCS!

tclover• 3 years ago

what a clown state lmao

jononomo2• 3 years ago

What might cause a pilot to need to eject from an airplane that is not in any distress? The pilot apparently had the time to put the airplane into an auto-pilot mode before ejecting. Why not just fly the plane back to base?

I always thought pilots ejected when the plane was about to crash.

Given that the plane costs $150 million, it seems like an extraordinarily expensive decision to make if the plane is not about to crash.

skunkworker• 3 years ago

I'm curious if the F35 had a luneburg lens installed or not. If it didn't and did not have an active transponder it would make things much more difficult.

dumah• 3 years ago

Relevant crashes into swamps:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ValuJet_Flight_592

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_co...

ChrisArchitect2• 3 years ago

A bunch more discussion on this dupe over here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37555172

Jimmc414• 3 years ago

Unfortunately, no one had installed FindMyPlane

RecycledEle• 3 years ago

I need a tanker truck of jet fuel and a copy of the movie FireFox from 1982.

I'll be sharing a table with Jeff at the next gun show. https://joshdance.medium.com/who-is-jeff-and-why-does-he-hav...

andrewstuart2• 3 years ago

They should put Apple Airtags in the F-35s.

I have one on my cat and when he runs away he is not hard to find.

laweijfmvo• 3 years ago

Still needs someone with an iPhone to walk by and update its location

mortureb5• 3 years ago

I’m so confused? Is it that they can’t make a gps tracker that works after a catastrophic crash?

Alifatisk• 3 years ago

Sounds like a job for Rainbolt

rmbyrro• 3 years ago

"How in the hell do you lose an F-35? ... How is there not a tracking device...?" -- South Carolina Republican Representative Nancy Mace

Considering it is a stealth jet, broadcasting its location through easily detectable radio waves would be a serious bug, not a feature, wouldn't it?

andbberger• 3 years ago

stealth aircraft usually fly with radar retroreflectors deployed when not on combat missions so as to prevent adversaries from assessing their cross-section

voxadam• 3 years ago

How Luneburg lens radar reflectors are used to make stealth aircraft visible on radar screens[0]

[0] https://theaviationgeekclub.com/these-devices-make-stealth-a...

httpz• 3 years ago

Wait.. does this mean an enemy fighter jet with F-35 level of stealth capabilities can penetrate the US mainland without being detected?

I thought US had the air defense system that can defend against some level stealth aircrafts. Is that not the case?

sethhochberg• 3 years ago

If I'd lost an aircraft with a bunch of classified stealth features, and I perhaps also had air defense systems with a bunch of classified stealth countermeasures, I might be inclined to ask the locals if they've seen the thing in the swamp out back before I did anything that might reveal anything about the limitations of that stealth tech or abilities of the system that could track it.

azalemeth• 3 years ago

In addition to the other comments, it's worth pointing out that (a) stealth aircraft deliberately use radar corner reflectors and other methods to increase their radar signature, reserving "stealthing up" for missions that require it; (b) almost all forms of identifying and locating an aircraft in flight besides radar require it to be transmitting RF (eg ads!) yet the conditions likely to lead to ejection likely lead to a reduction in the ability to do this; and (c) search and rescue in deep water is really really hard as water strongly absorbs and scatters most forms of radiation likely to be used .

jjk166• 3 years ago

That depends on what you mean by detected.

Stealth technology shrinks radar signature, meaning all else being equal, a radar pointed at a stealth aircraft will return a substantially weaker signal than for a non-stealth aircraft, particularly at certain wavelengths it's optimized to be stealthy in. Thus a system of radars that might have no gaps a non-stealth aircraft could fly through might have gaps where it couldn't detect a stealth aircraft, or radars with the resolution to accurately locate the aircraft might not be able to distinguish it from background noise. Generally very large, long wavelength radars can detect that a stealth aircraft is present, but can't accurately determine location. The only time an air defense system has ever shot down a stealth aircraft was during the 90s when a Yugoslavian force shot down an F-117, but they relied on the fact that the plane was flying along a known flight route. Under ideal circumstances defense against stealth is theoretically possible, but a system that can reliably defend against stealth under arbitrary conditions is at best impractical.

Now that's the case for a radar deliberately set up to try and detect military aircraft flying through some area. The US isn't particularly expecting any foreign nation to fly a small sortie over North Carolina any time soon. Radar coverage in the US is limited; airports have radars that can detect very non-stealthy civilian aircraft a few dozen miles away, and there are many radars at military bases and weather stations and such scattered around, but air traffic monitoring relies heavily on transponder signals for most of the air space. While a foreign adversary probably shouldn't count on the ability to overfly the US completely undetected, we almost certainly would not be able to track it along its flight path.

Of course the US does not rely on detecting foreign aircraft to protect against an attack on the mainland, but instead practices a strategy of deterrence.

MikusR• 3 years ago

If the enemy aircraft teleported inside the US then yes. Radars are usually directed across the border.

readthenotes1• 3 years ago

Funniest headline I read about this:

"F-35 carrying Epstein client list goes missing"

from a news satire site

msgilligan• 3 years ago

Found it: https://babylonbee.com/news/bad-luck-military-announces-lost...

monlockandkey• 3 years ago

Have fun searching for a stealth fighter...

omginternets• 3 years ago

Finders keepers!

slackfan• 3 years ago

Too stealthy.

porknubbins• 3 years ago

I wonder why they don’t have a human on the ground ready to fly it like a drone via sattelite as soon as the pilot is no longer capable of flying. Sure sattelite is probably way too slow to really maneuver a jet but seems better than crashing it.

0x38B• 3 years ago

Worth mentioning that the jet was on autopilot:

But here's the kicker: the DoD is saying the F-35B was put on autopilot prior to the ejection.

lobocinza• 3 years ago

So is this the "invisible" F-35 Trump used to talk about?

MarcScott• 3 years ago

They found it

Debris found from F-35 jet in South Carolina after US pilot ejected

a5d8a401• 3 years ago

2034?

unnouinceput• 3 years ago

Quote: "The jet’s transponder, which usually helps locate the aircraft, was not working “for some reason that we haven’t yet determined,” said Jeremy Huggins, a spokesman at Joint Base Charleston.

That's such a convenient event, isn't it? I mean, this screams of a middle manager screw-up and what is the best way to cover your financial losses (read embezzlement) other than staging a bank robbery, a fire or losing a jet? Yeah, that's my 2 cents conspiracy theory.

lstamour• 3 years ago

It has been found: https://x.com/TeamCharleston/status/1703898175138894214?s=20

al_be_back• 3 years ago

so the 'Stealthy' feature works then. handy if you eject over non-friendly territory, at least it would buy some time.

janandonly• 3 years ago

Didn't anybody think to stick an AirTag or such similar gadget onto a $150 million plane?

whearyou• 3 years ago

This would be the mother of all heists if it was one - probably to the serious detriment of the western world

ConcernedCoder• 3 years ago

anyone have any solutions / ideas -- how would you go about locating the lost F-35 if you were so inclined?

chakintosh• 3 years ago

Something tells me the pilot did something stupid (read Ejected by mistake) and his wingman is covering for him (who by the way could have followed the jet and reported where it crashed). There is no reason for him not be able to fly what is arguably the most sophisticated jet on the planet in limp mode at least.

brightball• 3 years ago

Debris was found.

https://wpde.com/news/local/missing-f-35b-jet-search-lake-ci...

hkt• 3 years ago

That's what you get for investing in stealth tech!

dredmorbius2• 3 years ago

A debris field has been found:

The debris field is approximately two hours northeast of Joint Base Charleston. JB Charleston, which led the search, “is transferring incident command to the USMC this evening, as they begin the recovery process,” the Marine Corps said in a news release.

Members of the community were cautioned to avoid the area so the recovery team can secure the debris field and begin the recovery process.

<https://lite.cnn.com/2023/09/17/us/south-carolina-fighter-je...>

giarc3• 3 years ago

Two hours by car, or two hours by F-35 jet? Quite a big difference.

dredmorbius2• 3 years ago

I demand reasonable units of length: bananas, giraffes, or smoots.

Though I suspect information is being kept deliberately vague Because Reasons.

interestica• 3 years ago

The repeated referral to "debris field" is interesting. As if it's saying "nothing to see here."

Or maybe it's really just a field of debris.

wackycat• 3 years ago

The fact they waste taxpayer money on the military only for them to admit that they don't even have the tech to track these 100 million dollar planes is so disheartening. You know that the giant cost of these planes is just lining military contractors' pockets.

dolmen2• 3 years ago

Debris found: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/19/debris-of-us-f-35-f...

Mobil1• 3 years ago

False Flag F-35 Crash Used to Pursue Case for AI Control

September 20, 2023

New evidence has emerged suggesting that the recent F-35 jet crash was not an accident, but a false flag event orchestrated by powerful interests to pursue a case for greater control over artificial intelligence (AI).

The crash occurred on September 15, 2023, during a routine training exercise. The pilot was able to eject safely, but the jet itself was completely destroyed. However, witnesses to the crash report seeing no debris field, and no hero pilot has been presented to the public.

This has led some to believe that the crash was staged in order to justify a crackdown on AI development. AI is rapidly becoming more powerful and capable, and some fear that it could eventually pose a threat to humanity. This crash could be used as a pretext to impose new restrictions on AI research and development.

There is also evidence to suggest that the crash was used to test new AI technologies. Some experts believe that the pilot may have been replaced by an AI system, and that the crash was used to assess the system's ability to handle a real-world emergency.

The US government has denied any wrongdoing, but the lack of transparency surrounding the crash has only fueled speculation. The public deserves to know the truth about what happened, and why the government is so eager to cover it up.

Why AI Control?

Those who believe that the F-35 crash was a false flag event argue that the powerful interests behind it are seeking to control AI in order to maintain their own power. AI has the potential to revolutionize many aspects of society, and those who control AI will have a significant advantage over others.

One specific concern is that AI could be used to develop autonomous weapons systems that could kill without human intervention. This would give those who control AI a terrifying amount of power.

Another concern is that AI could be used to manipulate people on a mass scale. This could be done through social media, advertising, or even through the development of AI-powered propaganda tools.

Those who are concerned about AI control argue that we need to be very careful about how we develop and deploy AI technologies. We need to make sure that AI is used for good, and not for evil.

Conclusion

The evidence suggests that the recent F-35 jet crash was not an accident, but a false flag event orchestrated by powerful interests to pursue a case for greater control over artificial intelligence (AI). This is a very serious concern, and the public deserves to know the truth about what happened. We need to be very careful about how we develop and deploy AI technologies, and make sure that AI is used for good, and not for evil.

F-35 can’t be found after pilot ejected

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