The F-35, the world’s most advanced and most expensive fighter jet, has crashed again.
On Tuesday, an F-35 crashed at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. According to the U.S. Air Force, the pilot experienced an in-flight malfunction and had to bail out. Officials said the pilot was safe and uninjured, but had been taken to a hospital to recover.
Video of the crash and ejection were captured by a witness and uploaded to social media.
The F-35 is an embattled weapons system. At $2 trillion, it’s the most expensive weapon ever built. Even the Manhattan Project, which gave the world nuclear weapons, only cost around $30 billion in today’s dollars.
The jet fighter program has long drawn criticism from politicians and the public. It’s expensive and seems to crash a lot. Elon Musk, who is now in a position of authority in the U.S. government, criticized the F-35 in a post on X last year. “It’s a shit design,” he said.
It’s always dramatic when an American jet fighter that costs tens of millions of dollars goes up in smoke, and there’s a lot of video of it. Here’s a bunch of them.
In December, 2022, an F-35B crashed while attempting to land at Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth in Texas. The pilot ejected. Locals caught the crash on camera.
In one of the most dramatic videos, an F-35 crashed coming in for a landing on the USS Carl Vinson in January 2022. An investigation blamed the pilot. Someone on the ship filmed the crash on their phone and leaked it to the internet.
An F-35 that crashed in Utah in October 2022 was caused by a software glitch, according to the Air Force. The crash wasn’t caught on camera, but the dramatic smoking aftermath was.
The 2023 loss and crash of an F-35 in South Carolina also wasn’t caught on camera, but Williamsburg, SC resident Randolph White was. The jet went missing for 30 in September that year. It was found in a field near a rural community after the Pentagon begged the public for any information about the crash.
White was home when the jet came down, he heard the crash and spent a few days recreating the sound it made for local news outlets.
Last year an F-35 crashed near a road and produced an incredible amount of footage. In May the jet took off from Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico and crashed shortly thereafter. It happened right next to University Blvd SE near the Albuquerque International Sunport. The dramatic burning fire was captured by drivers from many different angles.
These aren’t all the F-35 crashes, just the ones that people have caught on camera. In 2021, an F-35B shot itself. In 2014, an F-35A’s engine caught fire on the runway. In 2018, another F-35 in South Carolina crashed near Beaufort, South Carolina.
The F-35 is an expensive aircraft and we’re in a world where defense contracts, once thought sacrosanct, are on the table. A few years ago it would have been unheard of for the Pentagon to divorce itself from an expensive and confounding military contract. They just made too many people too much money.
In 2025 however? A guy with a Crusader Kings II tattoo is running the Pentagon. A man who has publicly shit on the F-35 is trimming back D.C.’s budget. And the White House is sending confusing signals about what military programs it’ll pay for.
Anything is possible.
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