
Japanese F-35 in the Pacific, cue biggest counter-espionage ops since Cold War - vinnyglennon
https://www.businessinsider.com/japan-lost-an-f-35-in-the-pacific-russia-or-china-may-find-it-first-2019-4
======
myrandomcomment
Found.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-
defence-f35/wreckag...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-
defence-f35/wreckage-confirmed-to-be-from-crashed-japanese-f-35-fighter-
idUSKCN1RM011?il=0)

------
vezycash
The first thought that popped up in my mind while reading this was, "Why
doesn't this plane have self destruct mode?"

~~~
mieseratte
In this case, I believe that "self-destruct mode" is called "crashing into the
Pacific Ocean."

This article feels disingenuous. They make it out like they Chinese or
Russians are going to just stumble upon a nice, neat F-35, ready for
inspection.

~~~
mc32
There was an incident some years ago where an EP-3R recon plane was forced to
land by PLA fighters. Flight crew had a few mins to destroy critical
components but the Chinese gathered some tech from that incident. Also, the
unlucky Gary Powers.

~~~
bgee
> was forced to land by PLA fighters

I won't necessarily say the landing was forced by PLA fighters; that would
imply PLA intentionally did this (to obtain tech?) while in fact that J-8
crashed and its pilot was killed/missing. US recon planes fly near China's
(and other countries') coastal line with PLA's fighter near by all the time.

My point is that incident looks more like an accident to me even though China
may have gained some tech out of it while losing one pilot and plane.

------
imtringued
Can Russia even afford to build an aircraft as expensive as the F-35?

~~~
crowdpleaser
Probably not at any scale beyond serial production, even then, there isn't a
Russian powerplant that would offer the thrust/weight performance required for
the plane to perform.

I'm sure some of the materials on the F-35 would be very difficult for other
countries to make at scale, figuring out how to fabricate parts out of those
unusual materials at tolerances required for low-observability would be really
tricky. I'm sure there are machinists anywhere who could figure it out, but at
that point we're talking about bespoke part production using 98th+ percentile
operators. Although skilled labor is cheap is China and Russia, it's pretty
untenable to use it to produce a knock-off that'll eventually hold an inferior
Chinese/Russian engine.

~~~
dikei
While Russian doesn't have a powerful engine as the F-35, their newer planes
have twin engine with a combined output larger than the single engine of the
F-35.

~~~
crowdpleaser
Yeah, but thrust to weight really matters too. I'd be floored if two Russian
engines had anywhere near the power to weight ratio of the F-35 engine.

But the Russian engineers are very good, they've done a great job of designing
competitive planes with those constraints. I wouldn't cast stones at the
prototype Sukhois or MiGs.

------
daniel-cussen
"But the jet's all-important software and programming would likely be hard to
reconstruct given not only the likely damage from the crash and salt water in
Pacific but also the way that the jet's sensitive systems are designed to be
very hard to decipher and reverse engineer to make it more suitable for
export."

Funny I thought the software was repeatedly reported as being its greatest
liability.

