(ConservativeJournal.org) – As Arthur Conan Doyle would say at the beginning of his Sherlock Holmes mysteries, “the game is a foot.” In this case, the words are referencing a plea from the U.S. Military that was meant to solicit the public’s assistance in their search for a downed next-generation fighter jet that vanished from sight, satellite and radar.
Though the aircraft has since been found, the most powerful fighting force in human history is being eviscerated by pundits, professional pilots and amateur observers for losing track of a piece of technology that can cost more than $160 million apiece.
South Carolina’s Joint Base Charleston is listed as the takeoff spot for the now-found Marine Corps F-35. The September 17 incident, which Joint Base Charleston referred to as a “mishap,” involved the plane’s pilot ejecting over a rural area for unspecified reasons. A spokesperson for JBC reported that the aviator had placed his warplane on auto-pilot before pulling the ejection lever.
Although the pilot was quickly recovered, his plane was not. JBC jumped on their Twitter account almost immediately and provided area residents with a phone number they could call if they had information on the plane’s flight path or knew the location of its wreckage. The jet’s crash debris was discovered the following day in a rural location about two hours from its home base, though it is not known if a civilian was responsible for the find.
According to the Marine Corps, the latest blunder is the third of its kind in the last month and a half. In August, three Marines were killed in Australia when their Osprey crashed during training and another pilot died outside San Diego when his F-18 went down.
The umbrella program that funded the jet’s development is estimated to run at least $400 billion and officials gauge that another $1.2 trillion will be needed on top of that to maintain the complete F-35 fleet.
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