Built from Scraps: F-35C Crash Exposes Program’s Ongoing Issues
Built from Scraps: F-35C Crash Exposes Program’s Ongoing Issues
US Navy F-35 crashes in California, pilot ejects safely | CNN
Last week, a U.S. Navy F-35C fighter jet crashed in central California near Naval Air Station Lemoore. The $100 million aircraft went down in farmland southwest of Fresno, igniting a fire and sending thick black smoke into the air. The pilot ejected safely and received medical attention on-site. This marks the second F-35 crash in 2025 alone — an Air Force F-35A went down during a training flight in Alaska back in January.
Notably, the crashed F-35 had been pieced together from salvaged parts of two other wrecked F-35 Lightning II fighters. Despite its cutting-edge technology, including stealth capabilities and multirole functionality, the F-35 continues to struggle with operational issues. A Pentagon report released in January 2025 revealed that all three F-35 variants still fall short of reliability, maintainability, and mission-capable rate requirements.
According to F-16.net’s database, at least 20 F-35 incidents—including accidents, fires, and crashes — have occurred between 2014 and 2024. The alarming accident rate has raised concerns not only among military officials but also taxpayers, given the program’s staggering cost, estimated in the hundreds of billions.
While the F-35 remains officially the 'cornerstone' of U.S. combat aviation, each new incident erodes confidence in its reliability—with potential consequences that go beyond financial losses to strategic implications.
So, you must also keep in mind that (per Wikipedia) over 1,200 have been produced, and the 3 US military branches that use these operate over 620 in aggregate, and that number is going up.
For a relatively new and highly advanced airframe, this sort of crash/failure rate - while obviously not ideal - is very far from a “catastrophic failure rate”. Calling it “alarming” is, imo, borderline sensationalist editorializing.
For reference the infamous Starfighter with the number of Aircraft lost due to crashes often in the range of 30-45% per operating country, killing dozens of pilots.
Except for Spain, who had no aircraft losses, mainly because it used them as interceptors, which was really what they were, despite the name.
On top of that its not like military maintenance is the best in the world, except for maybe the U.S. Coast Guard.
Probably also worth mentioning the majority of accidents with the F35 have been ruled pilot error.
Military maintenance is worse than what?