Two stories breaking now, one brand new, one developing. The brand new story is that an F-35 pilot was forced to eject from his plane due to an unexplained “mishap” and the plane was left in auto pilot mode over South Carolina. As NBC News puts it, “the jet fighter’s stealth mode appears to be working too well” and now nobody can find it. It is unusual that an $80,000,000 piece of equipment suddenly disappears. (Wait for the UFO nuts to jump on this, I feel it in my bones.)
Joint Base Charleston, an air base in North Charleston, said it was working with Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort to “locate an F-35 that was involved in a mishap” Sunday afternoon.
The pilot was able to safely eject from the aircraft, an F-35B Lightning II jet, and was taken to a local medical center in stable condition, it said in a Facebook post around 5:35 p.m. ET.
The jet was left in autopilot mode when the pilot ejected from the aircraft, so there’s a possibility it could still be airborne, Jeremy Huggins, a spokesman at Joint Base Charleston, told NBC News over the phone.
However, he said, searchers were focusing their attention north of the air base around Lake Moultrie and Lake Marion based on the jet’s last-known position and coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration.
Asked whether that meant that officials believed the jet could have crashed, Huggins said he was unable to elaborate, but that more information would be forthcoming. The FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Serious business for a lot of reasons. A crashed jet would be a tremendous economic loss and God forbid it should crash into a populated area. And no, I don’t know if a jet in auto pilot mode can be controlled from the ground. Good question.
But that said, the woman with all the answers, Lauren Boebert, kicks in her two cents, not having enough sense to keep a low profile.
“Sorry sir— my pronoun class ran long so I lost track of that fighter jet.”
IS NOT FUCKING HAPPENING.
She should stick to public handjobs and leave the military to the grown ups.— Jo (@JoJoFromJerz) September 18, 2023
Bobo, go listen to that old Kenny Rogers song, The Gambler. “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away, know when to run.” And you’ve also got to know when to STFU. For your own good. You’re welcome. Adam for Colorado.
I’ve got a lot of questions, but since this is a helluva piece of highly classified technology even though the crash investigators will eventually sort it all out most of it will never be reported. Sadly the wingnuts will go bat-sh*t insane with CT. At least we now know the the dude punched out of a malfunctioning aircraft. The nature of the malfunction? Who the hell knows? That he left it on autopilot is curious but punching out is pretty goddamned risky. Cuts and bruises from shards of plexiglass as the ejection seat breaks through the canopy are only the beginning. The G-forces from an ejection can cause spinal injury even as ejection seats have steadily improved over time. If things are really in the fan and there isn’t time to ensure the helmet visor is down and locked and the oxygen mask is properly secured if the aircraft is going too fast injuries to the eyes and face are a concern. One might catch a hand or arm on something and get that badly injured or ripped off during an ejection. All this and more is why lots of people have chosen to try and ride things out rather than risk it. I could tell a long story about someone training to fly the Harrier that panicked and punched out about twenty feet altitude but the point is that although rare sometimes someone just panics.
Still, if they’ve got a search area that maybe means the poor soul dangling from their parachute saw the plane auger in, or that it was about to.
However as i said given the technology built into this type of aircraft so much about this incidident will be classified the crazies are just getting started with their comments. And almost reflexively DOD will refuse to provide even information that doesn’t need to be classified – such as some overhead photos of the crash site. That will just feed the CT beast, and is just plain effing stupid because we have idiots in Congress who will bray to everyone about stupid stuff like Bobo is doing.
Someone please tell Bobo that our military, particularly the Air Force, tends to be at the opposite end of the spectrum from “Woke.” If anyone is to blame for the loss of this jet, it’s most likely a bunch of unwoke conservatives. I mean, they are so unwoke that again and again they must be disciplined for prosyletizing to the corps. The officers in charge don’t seem to respect religious liberty and “separation of church and state.” That sounds like unwoke Republicans, to me!
But Bobo is so dumb, that she’ll blame anything bad on Democrats, even if Republicans are actually to blame.
Does BoBo know Tommy Tuberville (Republican) is blocking top DOD nominations. She can’t ever STFU. Christ.