The crash of an F-35B Joint Strike Fighter aircraft in South Carolina over the weekend has raised numerous questions about what prompted the pilot to eject after experiencing a malfunction and how the $100 million warplane was able to keep flying pilotless for 60 miles before crashing.
aircraft in South Carolina over the weekend has raised numerous questions about what prompted the pilot to eject and how the $100 million warplane was able to keep flying pilotless for 60 miles before crashing.A U.S. Marine Corps pilot was flying a single-seat F-35B fighter jet on Sunday when the pilot experienced a malfunction and was “forced to eject,” a Marine Corps official who was not authorized to speak publicly said on condition of anonymity.
On the Air Force and Navy versions, “the pilot has to initiate the ejection,” said Dan Grazier, a former Marine Corps captain and the senior defense policy fellow at the Project on Government Oversight, but the Marine version's auto-eject is intended to better protect the pilot in case something goes wrong with the aircraft when it's in hover mode. “Was that function triggered for some reason, and punched the pilot out?" Grazier said. “There's a lot of unanswered questions.
At the time, all F-35 ejection seats, including the Navy and Marine Corps variants, were inspected, and the continue to be looked at during standard maintenance on the aircraft, the F-35 Joint Program Office said in a statement to The Associated Press.
Lockheed Martin has delivered 190 F-35B variants to the Marine Corps, at a cost of about $100 million each.
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