From here
airways wrote:
Belgium is irrelevant to the Russians.
We’re still gonna buy those ridiculous F35s, though…
Fantastic planes, unless like the Brits you forget the intake cover on take-off from an aircraft carrier when transiting through the Med ;-)
LFHNflightstudent wrote:
you forget the intake cover on take-off
Is that what happened? How does the engine even run with the cover installed?
Cobalt wrote:
Is that what happened? How does the engine even run with the cover installed?
it is indeed, though the UK MOD is not confirming it ;-) according to various US podcasts the cover (the hard kind) got knocked over and was lying flat in the intake and didn’t get spotted by the ground crew (or the pilot) who’s supposed to do a walkaround.
lots of speculation and reporting on it but it clearly didn’t make the Beeb ;-)
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/carrier-f-35-crash-potentially-caused-by-rain-cover-being-left-on/
https://theaviationist.com/2021/11/24/f-35b-crash-cover-possible-cause/
I love the fact the Sun seems to know what an intake cover is but theaviotionist and the ukdefefence journal don’t (or chose not to mention it ;-)
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/a38402684/watch-f-35-crash-into-ocean/
sorry edited to include the US were asked for assistance in recovering the plane as they were on tour in the Med as well and have the equipment
LFHNflightstudent wrote:
but it clearly didn’t make the Beeb
Apparently it did, but only as a two-liner in an article about the leaked splash video…
It has been speculated that the crash might have been caused by an engine cover being mistakenly left on the jet.
In the mess at RAF Marham…
Gotta love British humor !!
It sounds like the whole basis of the technology in these things is that it will never be used in battle, because the moment they get used, the enemy will get hold of one on Day 1. Like that F117 which was brought down in Yugoslavia (using mobile phone tower signal analysis, reportedly; the stealth works only with a range of common radar frequencies) and was shipped straight to the USSR 
Peter wrote:
Like that F117 which was brought down in Yugoslavia (using mobile phone tower signal analysis, reportedly; the stealth works only with a range of common radar frequencies)
You sure you’re not mixing things up? It’s 2021 and passive radar is still considered hot s**t and this was in 1999. How was cellphone coverage 20 years ago? Anyway googled a little bit and this came up: How to shoot down an F117 when the enemy feels invulnerable
My memory of news reports at the time:
The F117 caused disturbance of mobile phone communication.
Computing allowed the position of the cause to be calculated.
This story might have been military disinformation. The war was continuing at that time.
