F35 jet has crashed into the sea...why?

[Faringdon]

Anybody know why this £100 million pound F35 jet went down?...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59323895
Thank goodness the pilot is in good health.

The Western world has outsourced most of its “general electronics” out to the Far East now.
Does anyone suppose that the general level of electronics ability throughout the West may have suffered because of this? Might  this lack of ability have in some way  had some contribution to the technical fault on the F35?

This is not to criticise people who trade as middle men with China. After all, if your government legalises making pots of money so easily, then who can blame those who simply line up to pocket the money. The  profits  are certainly not heavily taxed either.

This is most definetely not anti the Chinese or the Chinese people. The Chinese , are an  upstanding, decent race of people, hardworking and community minded towards others and each other. They have become “1st world” without invading or enslaving. Being hard working and diligent, they have simply serviced product orders which have been placed with them by the West.

[Bassman59]

Anybody know why this £100 million pound F35 jet went down?...

Because they are shitty airplanes. The entire program should have been canceled ages ago, but our department of defense apparently has never heard of the "sunk cost fallacy."

[SiliconWizard]

Since it's under investigation and it's not civil aviation, I doubt anyone can answer your question here at this point. Not even sure the general public will ever know?

As to the overall F35 program, yes it's been highly controversial. But nobody knows here if the intrinisic qualities or lack thereof of this plane have anything to do with this crash. That I know of.

[coppercone2]

I bet this jet did exactly what the military never let anyone do, that is change too many systems at the same time in an attempt to streamline the design and reduce cost.

Back when this tech was considered amazing, they would not care about making a larger plane as to mix older parts with newer parts in the areas they did not feel confident about, but because of the radar size issue and the strong unverified reliability assurance claims that have been the norm in an attempt to greenlight fast progress..

I think its kind of like if we got rid of desktops and laptops in the computer world (which are a metric for reliability) and just went pure cell phone electronics to reduce size.

When you follow the F35 program, the kind of problems that were being investigated, reminded me more of a failed smartphone/videogame release then a standard military program. Then of course when you realize what is going on you jump back to the latest 'reasonable' design, the F15. Kind of like saying 'fuck working on this tablet, time to go install this on a desk top'. We have all probobly gone away from shady 'hot and popular' hardware like circa 2010 mini-laptops because of various faults that made is unpleasant to use.

I recall the tech trends prediction people were making some really fantastic claims about substandard hardware back 10 years ago, and the majority of people I know ended up seeing things as a 'fad' rather then the future.

How many technology platforms have been considered "product killers", "game changers", and so forth.. that ended up being geek connivance items with a high upkeep/skill requirement. This kind of shit was touted to turn your grandma into 7of9 when you bought it lol. I call it ultra aggressive marketing of miniaturization.

And when you have a lab you realize that having a old computer that easily interfaces with stuff is acceptable, reasonable, cost efficient and thee is little reason to try to aggressively eliminate them. Slowly you end up getting good community made interface patches that let you move through forward through the technological timeline.. but this is more like a luxury then a priority. You got lucky when you managed to put a SSD inside of a old scope.. its not a requirement.

[Monkeh]

Anybody know why this £100 million pound F35 jet went down?...

No, because not one person on this forum is in a position to.

That said, my bet is on pilot error, not your continual focus on foreign electronics.

[ataradov]

No, everything that happens in a world is China's fault. Faringdon's toilet does not flush. Can this be because of China?

Seriously, stop with this nonsense blaming everything on China. So you even have evidence that anything at all in F-35 is made in China?

[james_s]

Because they are shitty airplanes. The entire program should have been canceled ages ago, but our department of defense apparently has never heard of the "sunk cost fallacy."

I don't know what makes you say that. They are extremely expensive, they may have capabilities that are not necessary, they may not make financial sense, but that doesn't make them shitty. If anything I think they are better than necessary, and far too expensive. Like a $30k scope when a $300 Rigol would do the job.

[coppercone2]

apparently like a lecroy made flying smartphone more then anything

[Bud]

The Western world has outsourced most of its “general electronics” out to the Far East now.
Does anyone suppose that the general level of electronics ability throughout the West may have suffered because of this?

Well, if the autopilot was outsourced to Tesla....

[coppercone2]

i swear the future of warfare is aladin flying on a iRug

[bdunham7]

Planes crash sometimes.  There are a certain number of systems that don't have redundancy--like the engine in the case of the F35--and military planes are designed for a purpose rather than to just fly around safely.  Fighter jets often have characteristics that make them less safe during normal flight but better in combat.  That's one reason why they have ejection seats and civilian planes do not.  And as far as whether the F35 is 'shitty' or not, you can't even intelligently comment on that unless you know what it's actual capabilities are. 

As for why this one crashed, we don't know.  But in carrier operations with a single-engine airplane, there are going to be circumstances that are unrecoverable.  That's true even for twin engine planes.  Thus the rocket seats.

[Bassman59]

Planes crash sometimes.  There are a certain number of systems that don't have redundancy--like the engine in the case of the F35--and military planes are designed for a purpose rather than to just fly around safely.  Fighter jets often have characteristics that make them less safe during normal flight but better in combat.  That's one reason why they have ejection seats and civilian planes do not.  And as far as whether the F35 is 'shitty' or not, you can't even intelligently comment on that unless you know what it's actual capabilities are. 

As for why this one crashed, we don't know.  But in carrier operations with a single-engine airplane, there are going to be circumstances that are unrecoverable.  That's true even for twin engine planes.  Thus the rocket seats.

Maybe the plane was shot down?

It would be irresponsible not to speculate.

[bdunham7]

Maybe the plane was shot down?

It would be irresponsible not to speculate.

By a guy in a rowboat with a musket?  Perhaps, but only if the pilot forgot to switch on the force field shielding.

[coppercone2]

operation thunderball?

they will know for sure when they determine if all the parts are accounted for. if you are going down that line perhaps you should DNA test the pilot to make sure its really him too

I did hear a story a while back about a helicopter during the Vietnam war that was apparently downed by a thrown object (like a spear).

Sabotage and espionage are probably going to be investigated (i.e. downright terrorism or as a result from stealing hardware, i.e. instead of preventative maintenance you sent it to china and reuse the same no longer wanted part, or incorrect re installation of part after reverse engineering or damage during reverse engineering (i.e. pop a circuit board off after hours so you can do some x-rays and firmware dumps for your 'friends', then end up zapping it with ESD and dropping it on the floor too and then reattaching the cable poorly, not to mention it was plugged into the wrong voltage momentarily because you thought it was 5 rather then 3.3?).

I imagine about a billion "criminal" human/goverment/espionage factors potentially effecting this investigation.

[TimFox]

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_military_aircraft_(2020%E2%80%93present) for a listing of all "surprises" on military aircraft (worldwide) in 2020 and to date in 2021.

[ejeffrey]

I'm not saying it was aliens, but it was aliens.

[xrunner]

Anybody know why this £100 million pound F35 jet went down?...

If anyone here says they know I'm sure they will be sought out and contacted in a very short amount of time.

[sleemanj]

A UK operated fast strike jet designed and manufactured by the United States, operating in the Mediterranean... and the first post tries to point at China

I'm going into tin foil hat production, make myself a fortune.

Like almost all aircraft accidents, there will probably be several factors which occurred to produce this unfortunate result any of which could have prevented it, until an investigation is completed what exactly those factors are is total guess work. 

[Gregg]

Once upon a time:
There was an airplane that contained multiple switch mode power supplies. 
These SMPS were not properly grounded because the plane was in the air; DUH! 
The resulting resonances between these SMPS caused high voltage spikes that caused some inferior chips sourced from an unnamed magical place to fail.
If the avionics engineers had only pestered the astute members of the EEVblog enough, they may have been able to avert the multitude of problems. 
The disabled airplane tried to dive into the treez, but the pilot bravely managed to make it to the water and managed to survive; only because of his trusty LED survival beacon not sourced from the same magical land as the faulty SMPS. 
The rest is history and the pilot lived happily ever after. 

[dietert1]

In the 1960s the german government bought from the US more than 900 "Starfighters" (Lockheed F-104A and revisions). About 300 of those crashed one after the other, killing 116 pilots. Among them an air accident where four pilots died at the same time in 1962. The son of the german minister of defense died in 1970. German airforce terminated the program in 1971.

Regards, Dieter

[wasyoungonce]

Anybody know why this £100 million pound F35 jet went down?...

The Western world has outsourced most of its “general electronics” out to the Far East now..

Nothing electronic on the F35 is made in China.   I'm ex Avionics many decades from mirage IIIO/FA18/F111/Pavetack/FLIR (Australia) ....no, repeat no Chinese parts were ever used in the F18 or I believe the F35.  The US would not allow it as the parts have to be all Mil Spec with full mil Spec supply line reporting and accounting.  That itself is a whole can or worms with bogus or fake parts.   Being Military Acft parts are not cheap its easy to see why people will make bogus parts.  The have been reports years back of some bogus F18 undercarriage brackets...that were easily identifiable as bogus.

There was some crap back awhile about a PCB mfgr taken over that had made PCBs for F35 Acft.  But it was never stated any of these went into the F35 and the PCBs were blank.  Being that Acft Avionic PCBs are multilayer Mil Spec ....you can bet they are USA sourced.

Oh I did use Russian miniature power valves in the Mirage servo control (flight controls).   They worked well, better than the French Valves, lower noise.  Oh those Ruskies......!  Make good valves

In the 1960s the german government bought from the US more than 900 "Starfighters" ....Regards, Dieter

Used to be called "widow maker" due to its instability in Roll and such high pwr, roll coupling.  The Mirage IIIO also had its issues, engine, Undercarriage and roll coupling (not as bad as F104).   The pwrs to be said they would never buy another single engine fighter.....apparently that lesson is lost in Australia.  I can count over a dozen times we save F18s from the mere fact it had 2 engines.   That said the old F404 was the beginning of the "hot high performance reliable" engines.

But this F35 crash...I think the Royal Airforce uses F35B so not sure it it was Duct fan fail on take off or it was short take off?  But it crashed soon after take off.

Oh my Chinese made Fluke and Rigol and PSUs work just nicely...along with my Chinese Uni-T meters

[dietert1]

There are countries who don't buy parts from other countries but complete weapon systems. The jet that crashed was one that GB got from a US enterprise. Why mention China at all? If it was sabotage, the first one to mention is USA.

Regards, Dieter

[armandine2]

My first thought wasn't exactly thank goodness the pilot was safe, but rather something like 'it takes something to ditch 100 million' something I doubt I have!

[jc101]

Rumour in the aviation world is FOD ingest on take-off leading to engine failure. 
Pilot ejected and landed back on the carrier deck. 

Did they not store enough brooms on the carrier when it left port?

[Monkeh]

Rumour in the aviation world is FOD ingest on take-off leading to engine failure. 
Pilot ejected and landed back on the carrier deck. 

Did they not store enough brooms on the carrier when it left port?

Probably those damned Americans littering again.