See the recovery efforts in Gaza as ceasefire appears to hold 'Is everything I'm trying to do pointless? ': Syrians helpless in face of 'sham' election Report: US companies may have benefited from forced labor of Uyghurs Residents stand near stalls along a road amidst debris while strong winds batter Balasore district in Odisha state on May 26, 2021 as Cyclone Yaas barrels towards India's eastern coast in the Bay of Bengal. (Photo by Dibyangshu SARKAR / AFP) (Photo by DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP via Getty Images) France's President Emmanuel Macron (L) and Rwanda's President Paul Kagame speak as they walk in the grounds of The Presidential Palace in Kigali on May 27, 2021, after their press conference and prior to their official luncheon. - French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Rwanda on May 27, 2021, for a highly symbolic visit aimed at moving on from three decades of diplomatic tensions over France's role in the 1994 genocide in the country. Macron is the first French leader since 2010 to visit the East African nation, which has long accused France of complicity in the killing of some 800,000 mostly Tutsi Rwandans. (Photo by Ludovic MARIN / AFP) (Photo by LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP via Getty Images) (CNN) — A Japanese F-35 fighter crashed into the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, raising questions about reliability and security of the most expensive weapons system ever made. The stealth jet disappeared from radar minutes into a training mission from Misawa Air Base in northern Japan. Defense officials said its pilot signaled the need to abort the mission shortly before the plane was lost. Japanese Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya said debris from the plane, parts of its two tail fins, was found early Wednesday. Japanese and US planes and ships, including a US guided-missile destroyer, were continuing to search for the pilot, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said, adding that the unnamed aviator was a male in his 40s with more than 3,200 hours of flying experience. Kyodo News/AP A Japan Coast Guard's vessel and U.S. military plane search for a Japanese F-35 fighter jet, in the waters off Aomori, northern Japan on Wednesday. He was flying what is considered the best stealth jet technology in the skies. With the world’s most advanced avionics, engines and weaponry, the Pentagon touts the F-35 as the “the most affordable, lethal, supportable and survivable aircraft ever to be used.” As of August 2018, more than 310 F-35s have been delivered to militaries around the world, according to the plane’s maker, Lockheed Martin. Japan’s first squadron of the $100 million fighter jets went operational just 11 days ago, with 13 of the jets forming the 302nd Squadron at the Misawa base, according to a report from The Diplomat.com. Iwaya said Japan’s remaining dozen F-35s would be grounded until the cause of Tuesday’s crash is determined. But early reports suggest system failure and that’s troubling because it might mean that something had been missed in the production process, said Carl Schuster, a former US Navy officer and professor at Hawaii Pacific University. US Air Force/Tech. Sgt. Louis Vega Jr. Japanese Air Self-Defense Force staff in 2016 in Arizona for the arrival of the first Japanese F-35A. “Certification when it’s new is pretty demanding. The checkout is very thorough in early production models,” he said. While most F-35s are made in the United States, the one that crashed Tuesday was the first to come off an assembly line in Nagoya, Japan, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said. Peter Layton, a former Australian Air Force officer and analyst at the Griffith Asia Institute, said the Japanese assembly line would be one of the first places to look for answers. “There are several hundred F-35s flying (worldwide) suggesting a local not fleet wide problem,” he said. The fact that the Japanese pilot called for a mission abort but apparently did not issue a mayday call indicates a possible instrumentation problem, possibly with the plane’s wiring, Layton said. “The pilot appears to have thought he was in command and not in imminent danger,” Layton said. It’s possible as the aviator was trying to troubleshoot he flew straight into the ocean, he said. The Japanese jet, an F-35A model, is the second lost to an accident. A US Marine Corps F-35B crashed in Beaufort, South Carolina, in late September. US defense officials in October said a faulty fuel tube was the likely cause, and all F-35s operated by the United States and its allies were temporarily grounded for inspection. Other incidents that have hit the F-35 program include a runway fire in Florida in 2014 which led to inspections of the plane’s engines; and five incidents in 2017 where pilots reported oxygen deprivation problems. The F-35 comes in three versions. The one that went missing Tuesday is the Air Force's F-35A model. The F-35 comes in three versions. The F-35A, like the one Japan lost contact with Tuesday, is the one designed for air forces to use off conventional runways. The F-35B, like the one the US Marine Corps lost, is designed for short takeoff and vertical landings. The F-35C model is the US Navy’s version, designed for use off its aircraft carriers. All contain an advanced electronic warfare suite which can allow seamless integration among users within one military or among allies. The jet’s sophistication means the US and Japan would likely be acting quickly to recover any wreckage from the bottom of the Pacific before adversaries could get a look at it, Schuster said. Even getting a look at the wreckage via a close up underwater camera could provide China or another adversary like Russia valuable intelligence, Schuster said. “They’ll be worried about it,” Schuster said of the US and Japanese militaries. “China does have deep-sea recovery submarines.” Schuster recalled an incident in the 1980s when the US military rushed to recover the a US F-14 Tomcat – then one of the world’s best fighters – that had crashed in the Caribbean before any adversaries could get a close look at it. Tuesday’s crash is certainly a setback for Japan’s ambitious F-35 program. With 147 of the planes in its fleet or on order, Tokyo is Lockheed Martin’s second biggest customer for the plane. Japan has announced plans to buy 105 of the F-35A models and 42 F-35Bs, the latter of which it could eventually use to turn its Izumo-class helicopter destroyers into small aircraft carriers, its first since World War II. In the Pacific, South Korea and Australia have joined Japan in acquiring the jets, and Singapore has announced it wants to buy them too. The F-35’s are seen as strong counters to China’s growing fleet of stealth aircraft, including the J-20 and J-31. The first US combat mission conducted by an F-35 happened in October when a Marine Corps jet launched off the amphibious warship USS Essex struck targets in Afghanistan. In May, Israel announced it had conducted the first combat missions using the F-35 but offered few details. CNN’s Yoko Wakatsuki contributed to this report.<doc-sep>Four aircraft had been conducting a drill on Tuesday when communications with the F-35 were cut off and the plane disappeared from radar, Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya told reporters on Wednesday morning. The missing pilot was the plane’s sole crew member, he said. Image Search and rescue operations on Wednesday at the site where a Japanese-operated F-35A fighter jet crashed the day before. Credit... Kyodo, via Reuters The Japanese military and coast guard and a United States Navy P-8A maritime patrol aircraft searched overnight for the missing jet and its pilot, officials said. “We will do our utmost to save his life,” Mr. Iwaya said. Japan’s 12 remaining F-35A jet fighters based at Misawa Air Base in Aomori were grounded and a panel was set up to determine the cause of the crash, Mr. Iwaya added. The plane took off from Misawa at 6:59 p.m. on Tuesday and contact was lost at 7:27 p.m., the Ministry of Defense said in a statement. Some debris from the plane was found at 9:45 p.m., it said. Last year, the United States temporarily grounded its fleet of about 220 F-35s made by the defense contractor Lockheed Martin after a crash in September. Initial data indicated problems with a fuel tube that may have contributed to that accident. The pilot ejected safely and survived.<doc-sep>It is not known why the plane, which is less than a year old, lost contact and crashed.<doc-sep>
Pieces from the wreckage a Japanese fighter jet that crashed into the Pacific Ocean Tuesday have been found, Japan’s Self-Defense Force confirmed a day after the incident. Officials said the relatively new F-35A was on a training mission with three other jets of the same model when contact was lost, according to Japan’s national broadcaster NHK. Japanese Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya said the jet, which flew from the Misawa Air Base in Aomori Prefecture, lost radar contact just before 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. The plane was around 85 miles east of the coast. Just before the crash, the pilot contacted the other jets in an attempt to cancel the mission, according to officials. Patrol aircrafts and ships were deployed to search for the missing F-35A after the disappearance. On Wednesday, search teams recovered debris from the jet, including parts of the tail, but Japanese and U.S. forces are continuing to look for the missing pilot. The F-35 was developed by the U.S. and eight other countries. According to NHK, the jet’s stealth capabilities make it particularly difficult to detect. Officials said there was no known problem with the aircraft before contact was lost, but the 12 other F-35As have been grounded at the Misawa Air Base in the wake of the crash. The incident is not the first time an F-35 has crashed. Last September, a F-35B, the Marine Corps version of the aircraft, downed near Beaufort, South Carolina, forcing the pilot to eject from the cockpit. In 2014, the U.S. Department of Defense grounded the entire fleet of F-35 jets after a fire broke out at a Florida air base. With a price tag of $90 to $115 million per aircraft, the single-seater F-35 fighter jet has been dubbed the single most expensive weapons system ever built. Write to Hillary Leung at hillary.leung@time.com.