Bye-bye F-35?

Well, he shouldn't have, should he? but he did. Probably not his smartest decision ever.

Even when you know where a plane crashed, on dry land, they take weeks to find. If you're a blubbering idiot, you can make a lot of posts about how this is "suspicious". But that would be pretty stupid.
 
Are you thinking some good old boy found that missing nuke and needed the F-35?
you aren't wrong. but thats a long time for a single good ole boy.

naturally my conspiracy driven part of my mind went to the supernatural/unexplained phenomena's. maybe global warming has shifted the bermuda triangle inland. or it was just bigger than we thought.
 
I'm glad it was found. I guess this means the stealth tech on the f35 was worth the wait, at least, must be difficult to track with radar.
 

Meanwhile, a report by a Government watchdog warned that the F-35's weapons systems could be overtaken by 'relatively simple tools and techniques.'
 
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I’m leaning towards this was a warning from China before they invade Taiwan.
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

What has been the entire theme of this thread? The entire F-35 program has been plagued with design problems, delays, recalls/stand downs and cost overruns. The Chinese don't have to do squat. The F-35 likely had some kind of glitch
 
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Was this for all military aircraft or just F35?

Headline can be read a couple of ways

It was actually just for Marine aviation. They've lost an F-35, a MV-22, and an F/A-18D in the last six weeks. The F-35 was the only one without loss of life.
 

On Thursday, the the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report (pdf) which concluded that the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, was only mission capable about 50 percent of the time for the A and B variants and 57 percent for the C variant of the fighter. These mission capability rates, the GAO report states, are "far below program goals" of 90 percent for the F-35A variant and 85 for the B and C variants.

Contributing to this low mission capability rate, the GAO report concluded the F-35 program is heavily reliant on contractors for maintenance work and the DOD has been slow to take over the program's responsibilities.

The GAO report said the DOD is still working to determine the right balance of government and outside contractor roles to sustain the F-35 program going forward. The DOD also lacks both the technical data and training to support its desired program sustainment model.
 
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It's apparently even worse than that

The Marine Corps’ goal for availability of its F-35B version is 85%, for example. Instead, the “mission capable” rate for F-35B training jets in fiscal 2022 was about 55% — and near zero for “full” mission capability, according to Navy statistics cited in the report.

In other words "mission capable" means it will get by but not everything is working properly. If I'm reading the article correctly, it also says the military is returning a huge proportion of parts for depot level maintenance because the military has been unable to establish depot level maintenance facilities. I don't understand with that failure how the F-35 can be made mission ready anywhere near a combat area.

F-35s Are Rarely Flight-Ready and Repairs Are Too Slow, GAO Report Says
 


I hadn't heard the disinformation part - just the jokes and criticism. I did know about the B model and autoeject and wondered, but it really didn't sound like that's what happened. I read the pilot was definitely not a kid and had a lot of flying hours, so you wouldn't expect him to eject without real reason. As an AF brat, I learned that crashes can be very difficult to locate; many (probably most) are unwitnessed. I have seen one crash (a P-51 at Tyndall when I was 5 or 6); it was just a flash. The plane was on approach so already low over the bay behind our house, apparently something seemed wrong enough that I looked up just before the plane hit the water - I can still remember the sight line from the backyard; other than at airshows or near airports you just don't find many ground witnesses.

My brother verified the day after this crash that if it's a flight of two, the other pilot will always attempt to find the parachute and follow the pilot to the ground rather than attempt to follow the plane. There just seemed nothing unusual here except that the plane continued flying, and that does happen; considering the pilot landed in a neighborhood, the fact that the plane didn't crash immediately is very fortunate.
 

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