How did it take the Pentagon 28 HOURS
to find missing F-35 that had crashed
in a field 80 miles from base? Mystery
surrounds loss of $80M stealth fighter
- as unearthed study raised fears jet
could be HACKED by enemy

Too busy recruiting drag queens.

If the jet had trouble, how did it fly another 80 miles, and why did the pilot bale out? Considering all the electronics in such a plane, and that many of those components were made in China, it wouldn't surprise me at all that the Chinese hacked into the flight control system of the aircraft. I wonder how many components in U.S. aircraft in WWII were made in Germany or Japan?

Easy. They put the CIA and FBI on it.

Like the old joke goes, it doesn't take long to look at a red-hot horseshoe. IOW, China brought it right back as promised.

I have been saying for a decade that this would be the result of relying on China for computer chips.

#2 - Our military aircraft are not built with Chinese-made components. It's one of the reasons they're so expensive. For starters, there aren't but two or three approved suppliers of PWB's and chips across the entire country. The F-35 is an incredibly complex aircraft, reliant on hundreds of thousands of lines of code to perform its missions. Any one of a million things could have gone wrong that day.

When the topic is high tech weapons, no source is likely to get it pathetically, stupidly wrong than the DM.

milley and austin ... at it again, only this time they're selling a very high level of secret materials to appease the Chicoms and Soviet Russia the commies are so deeply rooted into our federal and some state governments it's scary

Quick question - where is the debris in the debris field? Just askin........

Re #2, production of F-35s has been halted several times when a check found that some parts had been tracked back to a Chinese source. From what I have read this is things like magnets that had been made with rare earth metals purchased from a Chinese metal alloy supplier. There is an effort to keep any Chinese parts out of US weapons and aircraft. I don't believe that any electronics are being made with Chinese sourced chips. One of the big reasons is that Chinese microchips are several technological generations behind the times, and they only make the kind of cheap consumer junk grade of chips, so they wouldn't even be offering the kind of cutting edge stuff that is used on the F-35. As to why the aircraft continued to fly after the pilot ejected, good question. We don't know now, but there are conditions where any aircraft can, during severe maneuvers can go out of control, and sometimes be unable to be recovered. Anyone who saw the original Top Gun movie, saw the incident where Maverick and Goose ejected, and Goose was killed. This story element was taken from a real event where an F-14 went out of control, couldn't be recovered. And there are specific conditions where a pilot is trained to eject after a loss of control, and if certain altitude limits are reached while the aircraft is still out of control. Many years ago a F-106 pilot lost control of the aircraft and ejected as he was trained to do. The actual force of the ejection seat pushed the aircraft's nose down into a flyable attitude, and the now pilotless aircraft, engine at idle power, continued to fly for many miles. It landed perfectly fine in a snow covered field in the northern plains states, like North Dakota or Montana. When people on the ground arrived, the engine was still running. It eventually ran out of fuel. The aircraft was so little damaged that it was quickly repaired and put back in service for many years, and is now in the USAF Museum. Strange stuff DOES occasionally happen. This one is very weird, and may get weirder, who knows. Another thing to consider. The USMC "B" version of the F-35 is the only US aircraft to have an "auto eject" feature. The USAF and USN versions do not have it. During the vertical landing part of USMC version's flying, certain mechanical failures can throw the aircraft so instantly out of control close to the ground that they decided to put in an 'auto eject' feature to save the pilot in one of these extremely fast 'tumbles' which could happen faster than a pilot could react. Since ANY automatic system can go wrong, is it possible that a technical glitch caused the pilot to be ejected without the pilot intending? The aircraft DOES have that possibility. Now, THAT would be very unacceptable.

I guess Lojack was an upgrade not yet installed.

Don't they have some form OnStar for airplanes? If I crash my car, OnStar can find it...and call the police :0)

You can’t search the area if our military is walking in six inch heels.

A good Tom Clancy novel. A sophisticated AF jet goes missing while carrying an Election Disease virus that was to be spread across the country like a Chinese balloon.

Reverse version of Clint Eastwood's Firefox?

Recall the Chinese spy balloon: the regime made the decision to allow it to complete its mission before taking it down. With that level of acquiescence, one cannot help but suspect further collusion.

Maybe it would be a good idea to let the pilot fly the plane rather than some techie writing code from his basement.

I also remember when one of our subs hit something underwater in the southern Pacific. No further info on that one... Puzzling.

Duck Soup AF!