As Col. Kurt points out, a private who lost his night-vision goggles in the field is treated by the military as a major failure that can result in the whole unit being punished. Jimbo suggests we had better hope the Chinese economy collapses before they want to fight a war.
The only thing I would point out is that this was a Marine Corps F-35. You can't put this one down to "Oh, the Air Force has a corporate rather than a military culture" or "Oh, the Navy...." The Marine Corps is famous for holding itself to a higher standard than any other branch: only the special operations units impose higher standards of discipline and performance than the USMC. Training is dangerous and accidents happen, but if this can happen here it can happen to any part of our military at this time.
On the other hand, it's not like this is the worst thing that the military has lost in its air operations.
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Without commenting on Kurt's and Jimbo's larger point, I offer this about the Marine F-35, in particular.
The background of this particular incident is that we don't know any facts beyond the loss of the F-35; however, the Marine accident investigation will uncover them, materially helped by the ejecting pilot and his wingman being alive and well. Within that, one report I've seen is that the aircraft's autopilot was engaged at the time the pilot ejected. However, a JB Charleston spokesman says "authorities did not know whether that was the case." https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/questions-mount-us-fighter-jet-went-missing-rcna105876
If the aircraft got into a loss of control condition while in autopilot, and the failure involved an inability to release the autopilot and take manual control, the pilot may have been forced to eject as the F-35 descended through the Marine eject decision altitude. If the autopilot was already released and the aircraft under manual control when the loss of control condition developed, the pilot still would have had to eject at that decision altitude if he hadn't recovered the aircraft. In either event, the force of the ejection, with the dirtying up of the aircraft with its canopy being blown off, could have corrected the condition, and the F-35 flew on until it ran out of fuel.
What we don't know aside from the proximate circumstances, or at least I haven't seen any information regarding, is the fuel state of the aircraft and what the training mission was for the two F-35s. Nancy Mace, who otherwise is a very astute Congresswoman, exposes a measure of ignorance: How in the hell do you lose an F-35? How is there not a tracking device....
There is a device, a transponder that operates in two ways. One is called Mode 3, and it's the same thing that allows FAA to track commercial aircraft (and private aircraft flying above a threshold altitude or in certain airspaces) as they fly from here to there. The other is Mode 4, which is a strictly military identification device. These are easily turned off, and one scenario in which they might have been in the present case is if the training mission the two F-35s were on included a series of intercepts against each other: they would have been separated by some distance, turned in on each other with one designated the bad guy, the other the good guy, and the bad guy would turn off his transponder for the sake of the training.
Finally, the USAF has imagery https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/interceptor.html from some years ago showing the aftermath of an F-106 in an unrecoverable flat spin, which as the aircraft descended through the USAF's minimum ejection altitude, the pilot did. The push from the seat's rocket ejection, and the dirtiness of the aircraft with its canopy blown, righted the F-106, and it flew on, gliding to the ground. The imagery, with this having happened in winter, shows the F-106's trail along a farmer's snowy field, ending in the trail's right turn and a short remaining track. The F-106 was recovered, repaired, and flew again.
Stuff happens. Even highly unlikely stuff.
Eric Hines
My understanding is that when several aircraft are flying in formation, only the lead aircraft should normally have its transponder on. The same is true for ADS-B transmissions. (ADS-B transmits GPS-derived altitude and position, once per second)
https://ffi.aero/files/FFI%20FORMATION%20GUIDE%20V3.2%20MAR%2015%202020.pdf
Given that the F-35 is a stealth airplane, it doesn't seem that unlikely that it couldn't be tracked in flight if transponder and ADS-B were off. Civil aircraft have emergency locator transmitters that are supposed to activate at a certain shock level (and have been known to activate with a hard landing), however, I can imagine that a sufficiently bad crash could damage the ELT to the point that it can't transmit.
Not totally clear if the autopilot was on or not...if not, it's interesting that the plane was sufficiently stable to continue for some distance...if it was on, question is why the pilot didn't deactivate it before ejecting--maybe he felt something was bad enough he just didn't have time.
If it's a well-designed stealth aircraft, it should be hard to find, shouldn't it?
Collecting commentary on this by people I know:
John Wagner / "Mr. Wolf" of BlackFive
https://sofmag.com/an-f-35-is-missing-without-a-pilot-lets-decode-this-fast-before-we-lose-another-one/
David Bellavia (Recipient, Congressional Medal of Honor)
https://www.audacy.com/podcast/david-bellavia-podcast-04a83
"Lost it in a boating accident"
I'd also be curious to hear whether or not the aircraft had radar reflectors on it as it typically would for domestic/peacetime flight so that it would be visible to controller radars and other aircraft.
If it did, it should have been trackable at least to a certain altitude.
Much very useful information here, thank you.
The only place I've seen radar reflectors is on drone targets (e.g., converted F-4s, F-102s, etc) used for weapons testing that are too expensive actually shoot down--so they carry reflectors that alter their radar returns, and the shooting is counted a success if it passes through the altered window at a suitable distance from the target.
Even stealthy military aircraft--B-2, F-117, F-22, F-35--don't use radar reflectors; they use the transponders I mentioned above. Transponders are better than mere reflectors, anyway, for FAA tracking purposes; they return their own radio signal when triggered by a radar signal.
Nor are radar reflectors a useful thing on a combat aircraft: they can't be turned off/jettisoned/done away with in any way.
Eric Hines
My understanding is they do in fact use Luneberg lens reflectors/enhancers.
https://theaviationist.com/2022/11/20/u-s-and-dutch-f-35s-flew-without-radar-reflectors-during-falcon-strike-2022/
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