The US Navy wants to recover its crashed stealth fighter plane… before China does

(CNN) –– The US Navy is trying to retrieve its most advanced fighter jet from the depths of the South China Sea – an extremely complex operation that analysts say will be closely watched by Beijing.

The F-35C, a single-engine stealth fighter aircraft and the newest in the US Navy fleet, crashed Monday on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson during routine operations, authorities said.

The $100 million fighter jet slammed into the flight deck of the 100,000-ton aircraft carrier and then fell into the sea, its pilot ejected, Navy officials said. The pilot and six sailors aboard the Vinson were injured.

Damage to the Vinson was only skin deep, and both the vehicle and the carrier’s air wing resumed normal operations. Yet the Navy now faces the daunting task of trying to get the F-35 off the ocean floor in some of the most contested waters on the planet.

The Navy has released scant details about its plans to recover the F-35C, the first of which It only started operating in 2019.

“The US Navy is organizing recovery operations for the F-35C aircraft involved in the incident aboard the USS Carl Vinson.” That’s all a US 7th Fleet spokesman, Lt. Nicholas Lingo, told CNN on Wednesday.

Although the Navy has not disclosed where in the South China Sea the accident occurred, Beijing claims almost the entire 3.3 million square kilometer waterway as its territory. It has even reinforced its claims by building and militarizing reefs and islands there.

In fact, Chinese Coast Guard and Navy vessels maintain a constant presence in these waters.

The United States Questions Those Chinese Territorial Claims and uses displays like Vinson’s to push his case for a “free and open Indo-Pacific.”

There has been no official comment from China on the accident. Furthermore, state media reports that they only cite “foreign media”.

But China will almost certainly want to search for the missing F-35, analysts said.

“China will try to locate it and thoroughly examine it using submarines and one of its deep-sea submersibles,” said Carl Schuster, former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center in Hawaii.

Schuster, a former US Navy captain, said it is possible that China could claim salvage rights based on its territorial claims in the South China Sea.

“Salvaging the aircraft with commercial and coast guard assets will allow Beijing to claim that it is retrieving a potential environmental hazard or foreign military equipment from its territorial waters,” Schuster explained.

But such an operation would carry political risks, warned Collin Koh, a researcher at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

“By doing this openly you risk worsening tensions with the United States. I don’t think Beijing will have any resistance to that,” he said.

“However, we can expect the Chinese to follow, stay and monitor any American rescue and recovery operations,” Koh said.

Schuster mentioned that the US Navy will likely maintain some presence in the area where the wreckage is believed to be, in an operation that could take months, depending on how deep the F-35 is in the China Sea. Southern.

US salvage ships take 10 to 15 days to reach the site, Schuster said. And recovery once there could take up to 120 days, he said.

When asked if the United States could simply destroy the wreckage with a torpedo or explosive charge, analysts said that was unlikely.

“My question is do you really leave none of the potentially consequential intelligence bonanza among the bits scattered on the seafloor, which any interested party with the capability can still retrieve after all,” Koh said.

This US Navy recovery effort will be the third time a country that flies the F-35 has attempted to pull one out of the deep.

Last November, a British F-35B crashed on takeoff from the deck of his aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth in the Mediterranean Sea. Britain’s Defense Ministry confirmed to the media in early January that it had been recovered in December, amid concerns that the sunken plane could have been a Russian intelligence target.

and after that a Japanese F-35A crashed in the Pacific in 2019, concerns were raised that it could be a target of Russian and Chinese intelligence.

But Japan only recovered small pieces of the Japanese plane, as that plane is believed to have hit the water at full speed.

In the case of the Mediterranean accident and this week’s mishap, the planes were moving more slowly. So it is expected that more remains will be found.