Picture of the Day: F-35 Emergency Landing
This file photo, taken on Oct. 18, 2021, at the Seoul International Aerospace & Defense Exhibition (ADEX) 2021 at Seoul Air Base, east of Seoul, shows an F-35A stealth fighter. An F-35A fighter operated by South Korea’s Air Force made an emergency belly landing while training on a runway at an air base in Seosan, 151 kilometers south of Seoul, at 12:51 p.m. on Jan. 4, 2022, due to a malfunction in the landing gear. Its pilot emerged unscathed. (Yonhap)
The F-35 is turning out to be a very unreliable and very expensive to maintain jet. It’s a total ripoff.
If the numbers of training accidents were ever published, even Chinese trolls would have the opportunity to see the truth.
They wouldn’t admit it; but they’d have the opportunity.
Between 1952 and 1993, 50 B-52 gunners were killed in crashes. Only six of those died on wartime missions, despite tens of thousands of sorties over enemy territory.
Fighter and bomber aircraft (and crews!) get abused during training flights so combat losses will be light.
Anyone with even the slightest knowlege of any country’s military knows that.
So is it ignorance or malice when someone pretends training flights are harmless?
Training flights? This was not a training flight. I just read more details on this event, and they’re now saying that the jet fighter’s communication, digital cockpit, and navigation system, all failed. Then the three landing gears failed to open. The jet was almost in a complete shutdown mode, unfit for flying. It was only due to the skill set of the fighter jet pilot that he was able to belly flop onto the runway. The pilot is being awarded a medal for doing his best not to eject from the jet, and possibly kill people on land. Not only that, the pilot saved the $100 million plane – taxpayer’s money, as the jet ended up with little damage. Japan has so far seven (seven!) F35 accidents, some of them fatal with wrecked jets after pilots ejected. Other countries with F35 accidents recently include the UK and Australia. Are the countries getting their money’s worth for paying such a high cost for this piece of lemon? At least it’s better than the Chinese JEN20 fighters, right? Hmm… not so sure about that now.
Dear ignorant person. There are only trainibg flughts and combat missions.
Please try to develop a friendship with someone who actually served in their country’s military and learn about what they actually did before you comment on the subject again.
All of the F-35 jets are now grounded as of yesterday. They all need to be shipped to Australia so that the US service crew can work on them because the US won’t allow the Koreans (who by the way, paid billions for the planes) to touch and work on their own planes. This is turning into one huge financial fiasco, not to mention, a big huge hole in the air defense for South Korea. So who made this decision to buy these jets? I heard that the US company Lockheed Martin will now charge an outrageous amount of money to work on those planes. It’s a triple whammy for South Korea. Even my own cheap car has a better warranty than these $100 million jets.
This shows those dullards in the Korean conservative party, exactly why South Korea needs to produce its own fighter jet plane. Kudos to the “commie Moon” for being responsible for continuing with the KFX fighter jet program, and pushing self-defense instead of being helplessly reliant on the US (as the rightwing always constantly insist on doing).
The first 5 prototypes of KF-21 will make their first test flights in April this year.
If only they had elected you President of South Korea instead of that buffoon in the Blue House now, is that what you’re saying?
Because it sure sounds like it.
That was a really good pilot.
I blame McCain for this plane.
(sorry, setnaffa, not a fan of this airframe, for a long list of reasons)
Any chance that you’re dying of COVID in the brain?
Are you talking to me, Korean person?
If so, I just agreed with you.
I said the pilot was really good.
I blame McCain for this plane (it was a political move at the time to shut down the F22 line and pay major penalty fees to put remaining resources into the exportable F35. Lockheed had a monopoly so they win either way)
No I am talking about our resident cancer patient, mr setnaffa, Liz
Any way BBC reporter Laura Bicker, explains and repeats here what I have said all along on why South Korea is spending so much on developing its own defense industry instead of going the easier way in just buying up everything from the US.
Sadly for the Beijing bot, my cancer is in remission. And I’m still WuFlu-free, too…
Sorry to spoil your weekend, sunshine.
It’s a total ripoff.
The Korean F-35A acquisiton program isn’t without controversy.
The plan came into fruition during the Lee Myung-bak presidency and at that time it was planned to procure F-35As under a sole source contract.
But someone must have mentioned about the whole thing being unfair because the programme was reborn as the third phase of the FX bid, which was carried out during the Park Geun-hye presidency.
The bidders were Boeing with the F-15SE, Eurofighter with the Typhoon, and Lockheed Martin with the F-35A.
The F-35A didn’t meet the criteria of the bid but DAPA(Defense Acquisiton Procurement Administation) made every effort to have the F-35A not be disqualified attracting criticism of the fairness of the bid process itself.
At the end, the lowest bidder was surprise, the Eurofighter Typhoon. But it was discovered that to submit the lowest bid, Eurofighter, on its own reduced the number of two seaters which was previously set by DAPA, so DAPA threw out the bid.
After that, the F-15 was declared the winner, which would have fit nicely into the ROKAF since it was already operating them and the training, logistics and support infrastructure were in place.
But some retired ROKAF generals created a ruckus and at the end the Defense Minister threw out the selection and the F-35A was finally selected as the ROKAF’s next fighter.
So if it was a ripoff, the ROKAF and the MND brought it onto themselves.
ROKAF can have their own opinions on which jets they want to buy. But the final decision was with the ministry of defense, part of the South Korean government under the Rightwing Conservative government of Park Gyun Hye. After hindsight, it was not a wise decision, was it? However, despite their bad choice, what you’re suggesting is that if I buy a lemon car from a car dealer, I ripped myself off – and the car dealer or manufacturer has no responsibility for manufacturing, marketing, and selling a bad product. Is that what you’re saying?
“you’re suggesting is that if I buy a lemon car from a car dealer, I ripped myself off – and the car dealer or manufacturer has no responsibility for manufacturing, marketing, and selling a bad product. Is that what you’re saying?”
If you go on a wine and pills bender in a back-alley Thai bar and take out one of the tallest and most slender-hipped smokey-voiced beauties you have ever encountered, it might not fully be your fault.
But if you let her do àss to mouth on you all night, you really must accept some blame.
Actually, I don’t think that analogy really fits the F-35 purchase but I liked the visualization of a husky ladyboy holding you by the ears up under her miniskirt.
what you’re suggesting is that if I buy a lemon car from a car dealer, I ripped myself off – and the car dealer or manufacturer has no responsibility for manufacturing, marketing, and selling a bad product. Is that what you’re saying?
If you buy a product, then the manufacturer has the responsibility of making sure that you are all fixed up should the product break down because of a manufacturing defect or such, during the warranty period and/or after you buy the support package.
If you break it then of course it’s your responsibility.
Now if a certain car has been getting bad press, but you are so in love with the design and features that you have to have it no matter what, you eventually buy it and it keeps breaking down after you bought it, then yes the manufacturer should be responsible for fixing it. But on the other hand, you more or less brought the problem onto yourself by buying a car you knew had problems.