A Bad Week for American Stealth Fighters: F-35 Crashes Four Days After F-22 Raptor Went Down at Florida's Eglin Airbase

On May 19th an F-35A fifth generation single engine multirole fighter assigned to the 58th Fighter Squadron crashed when on a routine night training sortie near Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, with the pilot successfully ejecting and confirmed to be in a stable condition. The accident comes four days after an F-22 Raptor also operating from Eglin Air Force Base crashed, an incident in which the pilot also survived. The F-22 is also a fifth generation aircraft but is considerably heavier and more expensive than the F-35A and is specialised in air to air combat. The two are the only fifth generation aircraft in operational service anywhere in the world outside China, which since 2017 has begun to field fifth generation aircraft of its own. The cause of both crashes has yet to be determined, and it remains uncertain whether there is any connection between them. Fifth generation fighters have overall had much lower crash rates than their fourth generation predecessors, and the F-35’s safety record has been relatively good for a new design with only three crashes since the platform first entered service in 2014. These included one Marine Corps F-35B crashing in September 2018 and one Japanese F-35A which crashed at sea in April 2019. The production rate for F-35 fighters has increased drastically in recent years with over 100 now being manufactured per year, which has brought the flyaway cost for the F-35A down to just $80 million per fighter. Production schedules for the aircraft are expected to be seriously disrupted in 2020 due to ongoing issues with the COVID-19 pandemic.