US asks for help finding missing fighter jet after crash

US Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II craft connected committee the US Navy's USS Tripoli amphibious battle vessel past year. Photograph: Jam Sta Rosa /AFP via Getty Images

The United States’ subject is connected the hunt for an F-35 combatant pitchy that has gone missing pursuing an incidental that forced the aviator to eject from the precocious stealth craft implicit South Carolina.

Emergency effect teams are trying to find what’s near of the F-35B Lightning II jet, which suffered what the subject called a “mishap” connected Sunday afternoon, according to societal media posts by Joint Base Charleston, an airbase successful South Carolina. The unidentified aviator ejected safely and was taken to a section infirmary successful a unchangeable condition.

Joint Base Charleston called connected the nationalist to co-operate with subject and civilian authorities arsenic the hunt for the F-35 pitchy continues. The airbase said it was moving with Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort to hunt for the level northbound of North Charleston astir Lake Moultrie and Lake Marion, based connected its last-known location.

Lockheed Martin Corp is the shaper down the F-35, a single-seat combatant trade utilized by militaries astir the world. The craft was a vertical take-off mentation utilized by successful the US Marine Corps, and the pitchy is fashionable for its stealth qualities that marque it hard to observe by radar.

The F-35 programme, the astir costly US weapons programme ever, is projected to outgo $400 cardinal successful improvement and acquisition, positive an further $1.2 trillion to run and support the fleet implicit much than 60 years. Each pitchy tin outgo much than $160 million, depending connected the variant.

It’s not the archetypal clip an F-35 has been successful trouble. An F-35B mentation crashed successful 2018 successful Beaufort County, South Carolina, due to the fact that of a manufacturing defect successful a substance tube, according to the authorities accounting office’s report. The pursuing year, a Japanese F-35A stealth combatant plunged into the water during an workout implicit the Pacific Ocean, which Japan blamed connected aviator disorientation, alternatively than method issues.

The missing craft successful the US swiftly drew online mockery, from postings with Missing-Jet fliers connected lamp-posts and notices connected beverage cartons, to mashed up “Dude, Where’s My F-35″movie posters.

“Now that I got that retired of the way. How successful the hellhole bash you suffer an F-35?” South Carolina Republican typical Nancy Mace said connected societal media. “How is determination not a tracking instrumentality and we’re asking the nationalist to what, find a pitchy and crook it in?”

– Bloomberg