Missing F-35

[DadSmith]

Come on no Dude where's my plane jokes?

 

[Alamo]

I love it. She’s required to follow the checklist and by God she’s going to follow it.

 

[Alamo]

Good info in video below.

But nothing on why the pilot ejected.

Some interesting points:
- When mil acft flying formation everyone except flight lead will turn their IFF to standby (not transmitting), and turn off ADS-B. This avoids overwhelming ATC with lotta returns from single location. This would make it invisible to ATC secondary radar.

- This mission was making use of stealth capabilities, so no Luneburg lenses. (No radar reflectors were mounted on the aircraft). So ATC primary radar not going to see it.

- The F-35B does have an auto eject feature. I had wondered about this earlier. The B model has it for vertical landing phase of flight in case he engine or the lift fan craps out during landing. The plane will automatically eject the pilot. This shouldn’t have happened at 2000 feet in level flight but who knows, sometimes things go wrong.

- Like the F-16, the F-35 has GCAS. Ground collision avoidance system will take control of the airplane if it gets too close to the ground, roll the wings level, and initiate a climb. This was installed in the F-16 first to save pilots who have become unconscious and the airplane is heading to the ground. According to the video at least nine F-16 pilots have been saved by the system. In this case, if the airplane was still flying after ejection then GCAS may have prevented it from crashing immediately.

Still unanswered:
- Why did The pilot eject?
- Why was the airplane not able to be tracked by MADL? Multifunction Advanced Data Link was installed in the F-35s so they could exchange target, threat, and each other’s positions in a stealthy fashion. The Air Force is expanding its use to all strike aircraft. Were they not using it because they were in formation/not working with other assets or ??