Yesterday’s missing F35 story continued developing — and fortunately — seems to have ruled out the worst case ‘defection’ scenario. But we are far from having all the answers. ABC ran the story yesterday afternoon headlined, “New details in F-35 'mishap' as mystery remains about how jet was lost.”

The sub-headline — with a slightly doubtful tone — added dubiously, “The overall recovery process has begun, an official told ABC News.”

An anonymous Marine Corps official — ABC didn’t explain why his identity was withheld — said only that the recovery process was “ongoing.” ABC noted, “The official would not specify what point in the recovery and investigation process the Marine Corps is in.” Nor did the official say what caused the pilot to eject, or what brought down the F-35.

What he did say was the mysterious pilot enigmatically ejected at about 1,000 feet "and one mile north of the Charleston International Airport,” parachuting to safety in someone’s backyard. The faceless pilot who ditched the $100M stealth fighter was discharged from an undesignated hospital on Monday afternoon without any serious injuries.

Nancy Mace, the feisty Republican Representative for South Carolina, where the crash occurred, was vexed. “It's very frustrating to not have any answers," she told reporters annoyedly. Mace accused the Marines of not being transparent. "Not to be able to provide answers to the community, you know, when mistakes happen -- we should be able to take responsibility for it and communicate and be transparent with the public."

ABC quoted one of its regular news contributors, retired Colonel Steve Ganyard, who was shocked that the military could somehow “lose” the plane for 28 hours. "Even though it's a stealth aircraft, losing a stealth aircraft is hard to understand. ... It does seem ridiculous that an aircraft this expensive, this sophisticated, it could just vanish," he said.

Yes. It does seem ridiculous. Ridiculous and indescribably shameful.

You might also muse about how it’s odd to lose any kind of aircraft only one mile from the airport. Plus, the plane basically continued on the same line after the pilot ejected:



Did they even try flying the flight path in a helicopter? It was only 80 miles away right along the flight path. It should have taken them only half an hour to find it.

To be clear, we don’t have any idea what caused the crash or why it took the military 28 hours to find the crash site. Yesterday I speculated about nefarious Chinese hackers, and some skeptical commenters thought the theory premature. But I wasn’t the only one wondering about that theory. The UK Daily Mail ran this story:

How did it take the Pentagon 28 HOURS to find missing $80M F-35 jet?
By Harriet Alexander And Stacy Liberatore Deputy Science And Technology Editor For Dailymail.Com
Published: 06:12 EDT, 19 September 2023 |
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ga...ng-80M-F-35-jet.html

It wouldn’t be the first time the military got hacked this year. Remember Jack Texiera? The young part-time Texas national guard member and video game aficionado who supposedly hacked all our intelligence agencies and downloaded embarrassing Ukraine intel that showed Biden had been lying for a year?

Like a lost F35 fighter jet, Texiera completely vanished off the news radar in May. But I digress.

According to the Mail’s article, a four-year-old GAO report warned the $80 million F35’s systems “provided a back door for hackers.” POGO, a military watchdog agency, also released a report in 2019 showing that nearly every software-enabled weapon system they tested between 2012 and 2017 can be hacked - including the F-35.

The agency wrote:

“Despite years of patches and upgrades, the F-35's most combat-crucial computer systems continue to malfunction, including the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) maintenance and parts ordering network; and the data links that display, combine, and exchange target and threat information among fighters and intelligence sources. As in previous years, cybersecurity testing shows that many previously confirmed F-35 vulnerabilities have not been fixed, meaning that enemy hackers could potentially shut down the ALIS network, steal secret data from the network and onboard computers, and perhaps prevent the F-35 from flying or from accomplishing its missions.”

As if that weren’t enough, also in 2019 the Pentagon itself confirmed the F35B — the same plane that just crashed in Charleston — has already been hacked by the Chinese.

As I understand it, somebody with a Chinese accent called the Pentagon saying they needed the F35 login password to update the antivirus software.

Anyway. To be clear, I’m not claiming the Chinese hacked the downed F35. How would I know? But yesterday I badly underestimated the amount of software in that plane, relying on an older estimate. Current numbers put it around 8 million lines of code — just inside the airplane. The programs on the ground are even bigger.

It might be too early to call the F35 a “flying disaster of epic proportions,” but my money is on some kind of software problem, whether or not it was a Chinese hacker’s backdoor.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com...ack&utm_medium=email

Wouldn't it also be likely that USMC and the military in general will be reluctant to discuss this publicly? One, it is embarrassing, generally speaking. There will be a natural human reticence about talking about a mistake. It may not be the best reaction, but it isn't hard to understand. And, they won't want to discuss until they are fairly certain they know what happened, and we all know how long it will take these organizations to investigate. Second, revealing what happened may reveal secrets about these planes and possible vulnerabilities and capacities. A lot of the the F-35 is still super secret, as we can all imagine. (My son has a buddy who is a Lockheed project manager on the F-35, and he can tell my son almost nothing about his job other than that is on the F-35.)

quote:

Wouldn't it also be likely that USMC and the military in general will be reluctant to discuss this publicly?

Yes, I agree with all of what you wrote. Embarrassing. And secret.

Still, I agree with the Representative for South Carolina, where the crash occurred:
“It's very frustrating to not have any answers,"

And this is a discussion forum so until there are better answers... there will be speculation.
After all, we paid for it.

If this had happened over Area 51, ok, no explanation expected. But near a civilian airport and then in a populated are, yes, explanation needed and promptly at that.

Perhaps they should put an Apple AirTag on each F-35 aircraft so they can track it like lost luggage next time...

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
Yesterday’s missing F35 story continued developing — and fortunately — seems to have ruled out the worst case ‘defection’ scenario.

If someone defected, it would be bad, but in my opinion, not the worst case scenario. If there was a hack that gained control and forced an ejection, it is scores worse because a foreign government has gained access to our technology somewhere along the way, which would mean they compromised the entire fleet (and any others that use the same tech). The exception to that scenario would be if our own government was testing for vulnerabilities and was successful in finding such (DARPA or USAF vs USMC). Either way, it's embarrassing which means we'll never know the truth.

At least it's not another nuke that was lost.

quote:

Originally posted by mrvmax:
At least it's not another nuke that was lost.

"Broken Arrow!"

quote:

Originally posted by abnmacv:
Would like to hear from the pilot what he thinks went wrong and why he had to abandon the plane in flight. Not a good career move for a pilot.

yep, if it's still flying after the pilot ejected, he/she misinterpreted whatever emergency he/she thought he/she was experiencing!!

Fucks sake. Half the articles you guys are posting appear to be written by children. So much drama for an aircraft mishap that we have nearly zero information about. Every thing posted so far is wild conjecture. A guy with a Chinese accent called the Pentagon and asked for the F35 login password? Where is this garbage reporting coming from, why are you reading it, and why are you posting it? It’s trash.

Planes can fly after ejecting. Not exactly an unknown phenomenon. If it flew on for 80 miles that is a big search area.

This thread is right up there with the UFO thread in crazy.

I don ‘t think we will ever have any real answers. Hell, they can’t even be consistent on the price of the damn things!

I’ve seen $80M, $100M, $125M, and $135M “each” in just the links in this thread - that Igbo be “rounding errors” to some, but it is a pretty big range to me…

quote:

Originally posted by airbubba:
yep, if it's still flying after the pilot ejected, he/she misinterpreted whatever emergency he/she thought he/she was experiencing!!

Have you ever flown a tactical jet? No? Then I respectfully suggest you have no idea what you're talking about. There are PLENTY of reasons a pilot might eject yet the jet continue to fly. It's not like the movies or video games.

As a retired AF Lt. Col., I find all this drama puzzling. In the past, all the services were as forthcoming as possible. Trust and credibility with the public were considered important. Apparently, values have changed over the years.

quote:

Originally posted by mojojojo:

quote:

Originally posted by airbubba:
yep, if it's still flying after the pilot ejected, he/she misinterpreted whatever emergency he/she thought he/she was experiencing!!

Have you ever flown a tactical jet? No? Then I respectfully suggest you have no idea what you're talking about. There are PLENTY of reasons a pilot might eject yet the jet continue to fly. It's not like the movies or video games.

no but i guess you have!!
over 40 years, i flew 19k hours in helicopters with many indications (gage failures) that by themselves indicated an engine failure. cross-checking other instruments, confirmed aircraft still flying indicated no engine failure!! keep flying!!

i did have 2 engine failures, this one over the rain-forest on maui.





this one into the east river/ny-34th st, engine fail, ditching, float malfunction on the same dance card.




if it's a military jet, at least make an attempt to get the aircraft heading in a safe direction, if planning to eject!!

with all the woke horseshit in the military, this won't be a surprise if it was a low time, early f35 transition pilot, who was flying!!

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:
Hence the general paranoia of airline pilots flying the modern iteration of airplanes! The rumor is the final words on Airbus cockpit voice recorders when they crash are, "What's this thing doing?". I am one of those pilots who avoided an accident in an older generation airliner by flying outside of the envelope. Had a computer been in charge it would not have allowed the AOA, bank angle, and thrust setting required when we had an engine flame out during a microburst arriving into a one-way mountain airport. The FDR was downloaded and programmed into the sim as one of the surprise scenarios, and it is not a survivable event by the book.

Sounds like you flew the airplane to the absolute edge of the “real envelope” rather than staying within “book envelope”. Again, as someone with a programming background, I’ll take a pilot with a feel for the airplane over a computer all day everyday when things go pear-shaped. Sure, a good autopilot can cruise more efficiently, and as you point out, inherently unstable aircraft are borderline impossible for a pilot to fly on their own, but there are plenty of cases where a pilot’s feel save the day. Congratulations on your save!

quote:

over 40 years, i flew 19k hours in helicopters with many indications

Yes, but did you ever eject from one?

For chrissakes, can we ease up on all the damn exclamation points?

quote:

Originally posted by kkina:
[FLASH_VIDEO]<iframe frameborder="0" height="560" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uvWe6Y5vUAs" title="F-35 Marine Fighter jet crash Interview with South Carolina Farmer" width="315"></iframe>[/FLASH_VIDEO]

At least it didn't hit his goddam truck ... that was the only thing that pulled its weight around there.

quote:

Originally posted by RichardC:

At least it didn't hit his goddam truck ... that was the only thing that pulled its weight around there.

Poor Edgar