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The US Navy is attempting to recover its most modern fighter plane from the depths of the South China Sea, an exceedingly complicated operation that observers believe Beijing will closely follow.
The F-35C, a single-engine stealth fighter and the newest jet in the US Navy fleet, crashed-landed on Monday during regular operations aboard the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, according to the Navy.
According to Navy sources, the $100 million warplanes collided with the flight deck of the 100,000-ton aircraft carrier before plummeting into the water as its pilot ejected. The Vinson’s pilot and six sailors were hurt.
While the damage to the Vinson was minor, and it and the carrier’s air wing have resumed regular operations, the Navy has the enormous challenge of attempting to lift the F-35 off the ocean floor in some of the world’s most disputed regions.
The Navy is providing little specifics about its F-35C recovery plans, despite the fact that the first of these planes only went into service in 2019.
The US Navy is planning recovery efforts for the F-35C aircraft involved in the incident aboard the USS Carl Vinson, according to Lt. Nicholas Lingo, a spokeswoman for the US 7th Fleet.
Though the Navy has not said where the incident happened in the South China Sea, Beijing claims practically the entire 1.3 million square miles (3.3 million square kilometre) waterway as its property and has boosted its claims by building up and militarizing reefs and islands there.
Chinese naval and coast guard warships are always present in the South China Sea.
The United States opposes China’s territorial claims and uses deployments like the one the Vinson was on to argue for a “free and open Indo-Pacific.”
There has been no official Chinese reaction to the incident, with state media just citing “foreign media” in reporting it.
Analysts predict that China will almost probably want to see the missing F-35.
