JAKARTA - The US Navy said on Tuesday it was making arrangements to evacuate an F-35C fighter jet that crashed into the South China Sea after a landing accident.
Seven US military personnel were injured in Monday's crash on the deck of the carrier USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70), while the pilot survived using the ejection seat, the Navy said.
"I can confirm the plane hit the flight deck on landing and then plunged into the water," US 7th Fleet spokesman Lieutenant Nicholas Lingo said, citing Reuters January 26.
"The US Navy is making arrangements for the operation of the F-35C re-lift."
Asked about unsourced media reports indicating there was concern the plane could fall into the hands of China, which claims most of the South China Sea, Lingo replied, referring to the People's Republic of China: "We cannot speculate about the PRC's intentions in this matter."
Although the Navy has not disclosed where in the South China Sea the accident occurred, Beijing claims nearly all of its 1.3 million square miles (3.3 million square kilometers) of waterway and has strengthened its claim by building and militarizing coral reefs and islands. -island there, as reported by CNN.
There has been no official Chinese comment on the crash, with state media reporting only citing foreign media. But China will almost certainly want to see the missing F-35, analysts say.
"China will try to find and conduct a thorough survey using the submarine and one of its deep-seated submarines," 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 was possible China could claim rescue rights based on its territorial claims in the South China Sea.
"Rescuing the plane with commercial and coastguard assets would allow Beijing to claim it has recovered potential environmental hazards or foreign military equipment from its territorial waters," Schuster said.
But such an operation would pose political risks, said Collin Koh, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.
"To blatantly do this could risk exacerbating tensions with the US. I don't believe Beijing has the will to do that," he said.
"However, we can expect China to shadow, roam and oversee such American rescue and recovery operations," Koh continued.
Schuster said the US Navy is likely to remain in the area where the debris is believed to be in an operation that could take months, depending on how deep the F-35 is under the South China Sea.
US rescue ships may take 10 to 15 days to transit to the site, Schuster said, and recovery once there could take up to 120 days.
Asked whether the US could destroy the debris with torpedoes or explosives, analysts said it was unlikely.
"My question is did you really not leave anything that could potentially be a source of intelligence wealth among the debris scattered on the seabed, that any interested party with that capability could still retrieve?" Koh said.
This US Navy evacuation attempt will mark the third time a country flying the F-35 has tried to tow it from the depths.
Last November, a British F-35B crashed while taking off from the deck of its carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth into the Mediterranean Sea. The British Ministry of Defense confirmed to news outlets in early January that the jet had been found in December amid fears the sunken plane could be a target for Russian intelligence.
While much earlier, a Japanese F-35A fighter jet crashed into the Pacific in 2019, raising fears it could become a target for Russian and Chinese intelligence.
But only small pieces of the Japanese plane were found by the Japanese as it was expected to hit the water at full speed. In the case of the Mediterranean crash and this week's crash, the plane was moving more slowly, so more debris is expected to be found.
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