The U.K. Royal Air Force F-35B stealth fighter that was forced to make an emergency diversion to Japan last week is still there, the U.K. Ministry of Defense has told TWZ.
The F-35B in question, from the Royal Navy carrier HMS Prince of Wales, landed at Kagoshima Airport, in Kirishima City, southwest Japan, at around 11:30 a.m. local time on Aug. 10, following an in-flight malfunction. No injuries to the pilot were reported, and although six flights in and out of Kagoshima were said to be delayed, the airport was soon operating normally again. In the meantime, the F-35B was moved from the runway to a taxiway. Its exact location at the airfield is not currently known.
While the U.K. Ministry of Defense offered no further detail to TWZ about the nature of the technical issues affecting the aircraft now in Japan, it did say that it was completely unrelated to the fault encountered earlier in the cruise, which required a different F-35B to divert to an airfield in India, where it was left stranded for over a month.
The U.K. Ministry of Defense also confirmed that the aircraft in Japan has been assessed by Royal Navy and Royal Air Force engineers; it is now awaiting spares, after which it will be repaired. In the past, the global supply chain of F-35 parts has been questioned, although both the U.S. Marine Corps and Japan itself have F-35Bs based locally.
The two F-35B diversions come during what is one of the highest-profile cruises for the type in British service.
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The two F-35B diversions during Highmast are, in themselves, nothing extraordinary. Such incidents are part and parcel of carrier-based aircraft operations. When not executing blue-water operations, a precautionary emergency landing is often the safest option, bearing in mind the many technical, human-factor, and ship-operational issues that make recovering on the carrier a higher risk. This can include low fuel states.
However, given the turbulent history of the F-35 program and persistent questions about the future of the procurement of this aircraft in the United Kingdom, they are subject to additional scrutiny.
The United Kingdom also lost an F-35B in a well-publicized accident during a previous cruise, when an example crashed in the Mediterranean after an aborted takeoff attempt from the carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth in November 2021
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Source: UK F-35B Still Stranded In Japan Is Awaiting Spare Parts
And recently the UK has announced that they will be purchasing the A variant, exposing them to much larger logistics chains difficulties. And as TR03 is still not problem free (after several years), they won’t be able to fly it operationally for the foreseeable future either. The US must have some serious boot on the neck of the UK for them to keep using these lemons.
Robin Edgar
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