Update on the jet crash:
https://apnews.com/article/f35-crash-mil...215d7f203d
Quote:WASHINGTON (AP) — 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 and how the $100 million warplane was able to keep flying pilotless for 60 miles (100 kilometers) before crashing.
Here’s what is known about the modern warplane and its latest incident:
‘FORCED TO EJECT’
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. The aircraft was only at an altitude of about 1,000 feet (300 meters) and only about a mile (less than 2 kilometers) north of Charleston International Airport, in a populated area that led the pilot to parachute into a residential backyard.
[...]
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.”
[...]
Other major questions include how the aircraft continued flying for 60 miles before crashing in a field near Indiantown, South Carolina, and why the pilot bailed out — if the bailout was intentional — of a plane that was able to keep operating for that long, said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine Corps Reserves colonel and senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Security.
“If it flew that far, could (the pilot) have landed it someplace — why punch out where he did?” Cancian asked.
[...]
Jeremy Huggins, a spokesperson at Joint Base Charleston, told NBC News that the jet was flying in autopilot mode when the pilot ejected from the aircraft.
https://apnews.com/article/f35-crash-mil...215d7f203d
