This is a remarkable story…
A US F35-C has crashed in the South China Sea and is supposedly “rammed with classified equipment”. Should be interesting to follow this (if it’s possible to follow this story, which it probably won’t be).
Son-of-a-bitch. That is some shit news. I hope we get to it first. Even if it is to blow it up with a torpedo.
It’s the Hunt for Red October meets the Abyss.
Someone get Tom Clancy and James Cameron on the phone!
Son of a gun. I first saw this on Chinese news. Happened on my old ship. I, too, hope the US recovers the jet. I also hope the injured recover quickly.
I am not a computer expert. Shouldn’t they build these kinds of things with some sort of remote killswitch? Or is that easily hackable by malefactors?
All lot of the technology that would interest a foreign adversary is the materials like stealth coating and exotic alloys. Even a few fragments could give up some secrets. The plane looked intact when it hit the water so the recovery should be easier than a lot of others. I wonder if it ‘flew’ underwater for a significant distance.
The data probably has safeguards that automatically erase itself, but they can still gain a lot of information from the layout, equipment, materials, structure, etc.
As for implanting a remotely-activated self destruct device type of thing - that would be a rather risky move - the enemy could hypothetically get their hands on the technology or spoof it and cause our planes to self destruct that would not be ideal.
We should have never scrapped the Glomar Explorer, although I would hope we have better versions now. Rather amusing that it was sold for scrap to China. Maybe they should have kept it.
Where’s Bob Ballard when you need him?
Yes, holy shit we’d better retrieve that plane!
From CNN —
Here’s a video of its approach. The video ends just before the crash; I’m betting our guvmint cropped it.
Pretty clever to spread all these “Super Seekrit Ultra-Hi-Tech” rumors. Great way to get the Chinese to haul it up. Then, when they realize that the most advanced technology on the dummy plane is a heated cup-holder, they can’t wait to sell it for salvage costs.
OR, it’s full of Stealthy Decoy Technology. It’s apparently using fusion powered turbines, and the Chinese spend the next five years focused on that.
(I’m just playing around with cool spy theories; anything other than seeing a headline like “Reds Get Yankee Tech”.)