Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)

hagaricus said:
When I first saw this I thought it was a joke.. slightly surprised (although I don't know the circumstances) that the other aircraft didn't track it as it went down.
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Sounds like weather was not great. And his wingman was probably more focused on the chute than the plane.

Some of the media coverage on this is absolutely bonkers -- reports that the plane might still be airborne 12+ hours later, etc.

The real issue is just that they haven't found the impact site. It might have gone into water, eliminating obvious markers like a column of smoke from burning wreckage.
 
Good to hear that the Marine Corp F-35B pilot managed to eject and is okay, strange how they canot manage to recover the jet though. I would have thought that they would have had some sort of sensor on board that would activate as soon as the jet crashed? Just an Idea.
 
Nah...that was a weather balloon...

From here on out---that pilot's call sign is "Thud" no matter what he drives...which is likely an ATV.

So, how many peeled potatoes is an F-35 worth of KP?
 
The fleet is grounded. If they had identified something that was only related to pilot attention, they would have not.
Remember, it could be anything that have left the pilot with the feeling that his/her life was in immediate danger: O2, erroneous data, toxic fumes etc..
 
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TomcatViP said:
The fleet is grounded. If they had identified something that was only related to pilot attention, they would have not.
Remember, it could be anything that have left the pilot with the feeling that his/her life was in immediate danger: O2, erroneous data, toxic fumes etc..
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And without enough time to say what that issue was over the radio, at that.
 
Juicy rumour floating around that it was shot down by small arms fire as it was apparantly flying/hovering in an area known to local authorities for milita activity. rumours say it was at 2,500 feet? Was it at that height?
 
TomcatViP said:
The fleet is grounded. If they had identified something that was only related to pilot attention, they would have not.
Remember, it could be anything that have left the pilot with the feeling that his/her life was in immediate danger: O2, erroneous data, toxic fumes etc..
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They didn't ground just the F-35 fleet, they put a temporary two day stop on all USMC aviation. The stop is because of the high number of crashes the USMC as a whole has seen recently, not anything F-35 specific as of yet. Most likely it just means a lot of safety briefings for the USMC aviation community.

Additionally, F-35 operations in the other branches are continuing unaffected. That further indicates the pause in USMC flight operations isn't about an F-35 specific issue.
 
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piginapoke said:
Juicy rumour floating around that it was shot down by small arms fire as it was apparantly flying/hovering in an area known to local authorities for milita activity. rumours say it was at 2,500 feet? Was it at that height?
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Would have a better chance of being shot down by flying saucers.
 
piginapoke said:
Juicy rumour floating around that it was shot down by small arms fire as it was apparantly flying/hovering in an area known to local authorities for milita activity. rumours say it was at 2,500 feet? Was it at that height?
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Pure nonsense.

The "hovering" bit especially. Like Harriers, F-35 only hovers for landing, which means it won't be on the hover except in the immediate vicinity of its landing spot. And definitely not in the hover at 2500 feet AGL.

Hitting a fast jet with visually aimed small arms at 2500 feet would be monumentally difficult. Not to mention the weather was absolute shit at the time, so the visibility was almost certainly less than that.
 
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NCQ said:
They didn't ground just the F-35 fleet, they put a temporary two day stop on all USMC aviation. The stop is because of the high number of crashes the USMC as a whole has seen recently, not anything F-35 specific as of yet. Most likely it just means a lot of safety briefings for the USMC aviation community.

Additionally, F-35 operations in the other branches are continuing unaffected. That further indicates the pause in USMC flight operations isn't about an F-35 specific issue.
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And it may reflect a desire to be seen to do something, rather than a sign that there are actual systemic issues at play. Sometimes incidents just cluster due to random factors.
 
TomS said:
Hitting a fast jet with visually aimed small arms at 2500 feet would be monumentally difficult.
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The East Lake/Roebuck community near the airport of Birmingham, Alabama is a bit different. One poor sod I knew looked to get a house cheap.

I think I could get a rock up into the wheel well with my weak arm.
 
I believe it does but it will all be dependent upon a lot of things including fuel, payload, weather conditions etc. Either way, the Finns certainly would have factored all this into their decision to acquire.
 
Josh_TN said:
That's what I thought...I would think they need a lot more rollout than the F-18s.
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Only if the F-18 is using the hook to catch a cable, but regular Finnish highways are not equipped with cables.
The F-35A may come in faster, but is better at aerobraking and has a break chute.
 

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