After technical malfunctions forced an emergency landing, a South Korean fighter craft went “belly up.”
A South Korean F-35A stealth aircraft made an emergency “belly landing” on Tuesday after suffering a malfunction in its landing gear, the first of its kind among the country’s air fleet.
“The radar-evading jet made the belly landing on a runway at an airbase in Seosan, 151 kilometers south of Seoul, at 12:51 p.m. after the issues caused the landing gear to momentarily malfunction,” a South Korean Air Force spokesperson told Yonhap News Agency.
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The pilot was uninjured, they added.
The Air Force mobilized a fire engine to apply special foam on the runway to prevent the jet from sustaining damage, officials noted. However, officials were unwilling to confirm if the fighter had suffered any damage through the landing.
South Korea’s Air Force and the U.S. military intend to host a joint investigation into what went wrong with the stealth aircraft and will suspend all F-35A fighter flights for the time being, officials stated.
This is the first F-35 accident in South Korea but not the first accident worldwide. There have been at least eight other incidents, according to records kept by the crowdsourced F-16.net. The most recent incident involved a British F-35 crashing into the Mediterranean sea in November while attempting to land on an aircraft carrier. In May 2020, an F-35 crashed at a Florida base due to various factors. In September 2020, a Marine F-35 crashed in California after having issues refueling.
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South Korea received its first U.S.-made F-35 in 2019 and has ordered 40 to date under a 2014 deal worth around $6.4 billion, reports Defense News. Thirty of those fighters are currently in use.
Versions of the F-35 are being used worldwide by the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marines, as well as U.S. allies such as Japan, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Canada.
