The US military lost all trace of one of its fighter jets worth tens of millions of dollars on Sunday. The missing plane is said to have been involved in an accident, and the authorities are now calling on the public to help find the lost plane. The F-35 fighter plane is said to be “invisible” to radars.
The F-35 disappeared Sunday afternoon while the pilot was flying over the US state of South Carolina. It is not yet clear what happened, but the authorities claim that the plane was involved in an “accident”. The pilot managed to eject himself from the plane, jump safely with a parachute and is in a stable condition in hospital, they said.
While the pilot survived, the US military has not yet found the plane, which is why they asked the local population at the Charleston Air Force Base for help, foreign news agencies report.
The call to the public was also posted on the X social network. “If you have any information that could help our rescue teams find the F-35, please call the base’s Defense Operations Center,” they wrote.
The search for the missing plane is focused on an area around two lakes north of Charleston, according to military base officials.
The F-35 Lightning II is a fifth-generation low-observability multirole fighter aircraft developed by Lockheed Martin. It costs around 80 million dollars, and it is characterized by “stealth” technology, as its frame, sensors and systems are designed in such a way that they cannot be detected by radars.
