<p >Footage released from Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska has shown a U.S. Air Force F-35A spinning into the base’s runway area with its gear extended, and exploding in a large fireball upon impact. The pilot is confirmed to have survived the ejection, and was transported to Bassett Army Hospital. The 354th Fighter Wing based at Eielson received 54 F-35As between April 2020 and April 2022, with the unit allocated a high priority to receive the aircraft due to its strategic location for power projection both into the Arctic and into Northeast Asia. F-35s based at the faclity frequently exercises with the 24 F-22 fighters based at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, with the two facilities ensuring that Alaska hosts one of the&nbsp; highest concentrations of fifth generation fighters worldwide. The F-35 has faced a number of safety issues in the past, largely due to design flaws with both its hardware and its software. One <a href=" target="_blank">software issue</a> in October 2022, for example, saw a fighter’s flight controls to register incorrect flight data, cease responding to pilot attempts at manual control, and sharply bank to the left and ignore the pilot’s efforts to abort the landing sequence, resulting in a crash. Although the fighter at the time continued to suffer from&nbsp;<a href=" >close to 800 performance bugs</a>, with new ones continuing to be discovered, its crash rate has not been exceptionally high particularly when compared to older fourth generation fighters such as the F-14 and F-15.&nbsp;</p><p ><img src=" title="F-35As at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska"></p><p >The F-35’s complexity has drawn significant criticisms for the wide ranging issues it has caused. An interview with an F-35 pilot in January 2021, for example, showed that many have <a href=" target="_blank">struggled</a> with the fighter’s interfaces and cockpit displays. “At present I am pressing the wrong part of the screen about 20 [percent] of the time in flight due to either mis-identification, or more commonly by my finger getting jostled around in turbulence or under G. One of the biggest drawbacks is that you can’t brace your hand against anything whilst typing—think how much easier it is to type on a smartphone with your thumbs versus trying to stab at a virtual keyboard on a large tablet with just your index finger,” he stated.&nbsp;As the Western world’s only fifth generation fighter class in production, however, the U.S. and its allies lack alternatives to the F-35 that have comparable combat potentials. The perceived importance of the F-35 fleet has grown as China has fielded <a href=" target="_blank">increasingly capable variants </a>of the J-20 fifth generation fighter, and has <a href=" target="_blank">expanded orders</a> to procure the aircraft at over double the rates of the U.S. Air Force. The F-35 is considered the only fighter with comparable capabilities to the J-20.</p>
U.S. Air Force F-35 Filmed Crashing at Key Arctic Air Base
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