Treason is Never An accident

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Okay, it’s on the face of it hilarious, which is why people are responding the way they are.

My friend, Stephen Green makes much hay out of it in this column: The Marines Need Help Finding a Lost Stealth Fighter and Nobody Can Stop Laughing.

However, let’s be real here: there are limits to incompetence. Yes, even the incompetence of our government.

There is also, no shit Sherlock, limits to what you should be willing to swallow. Even if the plane was left on autopilot, it would have crashed by now. And someone would have seen/felt the crash. Or a fire would have started where it crashed.

After the bravura insanity performance of our media over the covidiocy, the stolen election, their attempt to sell us on the idea that the most armed people in the world tried an insurrection on Jan. 6th with no weapons, their attempt to sell us on the idea that Bidenomics is wonderful, etc. etc. etc. are we just going to believe this?

After the upper echelons of our military have proven themselves utter traitors and rank idiots by opposing Trump and going all in on Biden, they don’t deserve to be believed either.

So, yeah, the Stealth Fighter is missing. And they had to report it, because there are still sane people and patriots in the military (everyone below the political ranks, would be my guess. And a few of those who are stealthing.)

So they had to announce it. On Twitter, of course, where it rapidly becomes a joke.

But seriously, in a country under invasion by hordes of military age males, some of them from our declared enemy, China, a top of the line stealth jet is missing. Um…. where could it be.

I don’t — understand me — know anything about the capabilities of this jet, or whether it could be programmed to land. I suspect some of you know. I also don’t know if WE — not the military, mind, we — have proof the pilot ditched, instead of landing in a secluded location. Some of you might have some idea.

But what I’m sure of is that some way this plane is now in the hands of China and getting headed for their chop shop, to be duplicated, partly to furnish Russia which is buying armament and war vehicles from China.

If I’m right, China will “develop” a model comparable to this within three months.

Though of course it’s possible that the jet was simply diverted to the hands of Iranian fighters also pouring over the border. After all Joe Biden, like his owner, Obama, has a strange and almost painful fondness for Iran.

I guess I understand it, for Obama, since his declared intent was to be the anti-Reagan. So his goal was to reverse the defeat of the USSR and the humiliation of Iran.

Anyway, that, weirdly, is the best case scenario, because frankly under inshallah maintenance it won’t do much, and they certainly can’t replicate it. So our tech gets used against us once.

However: and this is very important: Even though it sounds funny, we should be mad. And we should be demanding answers.

Like the spy balloon they’re trying to memory hole (Maybe it was scouting a place to swap a plane, eh?) this is very serious, can’t be accidental, and is proof of treason from the highest levels of government and our military.

Treason: aiding an enemy in a time of war.

And it should be treated as such. Or all of us are going to have to go in pilgrimage to Benedict Arnold’s grave to say “never mind. Just kidding.”

254 thoughts on “Treason is Never An accident”

  1. From what I’ve read, the pilot did indeed eject. Since there doesn’t appear to be any obvious crash site, and given that the pilot ejected near two large lakes, my bet is that the aircraft went down into the water.

    Speaking of incompetence, the F-35 has been a clusterfrak practically from the word “go.”. Wouldn’t shock me at all if it suffered a catastrophic mechanical failure.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Water, or a remote mountain area. IIRC, South Carolina’s got some of the latter. Drones could presumably find it in the mountains eventually. But unless it caused a fire, the drone would likely need to fly almost directly over the crash site to spot it. In a big enough area, that’s like the proverbial needle in the haystack.

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      1. Lake Moultrie and Lake Marion area is where they are currently looking, from what I hear. Could well have dropped in the drink. If it kept going in that general direction, it’d have passed over Columbia, and that area is quite a bit more built up. Somebody would have seen it, if it came down there.

        However if it went on a bit farther, that’s national forest area and there is absolute feck-all around there. Hikers have got lost and never found in the deep hills around there.

        Time was, that was prime moonshiner territory in the Southern Appalachians for a reason. Revenuers were highly unlikely to make (or survive) the trip back when.

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    2. Why in the world would you believe anything you’re being told about the pilot ejecting? This is a serious question. Why believe the media or the military?

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      1. Hmmm. Because that information is important to the family of the aviator? Because they took him to be medically checked? (Ejecting from aircraft isn’t as “safe” as sky diving, if only because you have a canopy being explosively jettisoned around your head, and a rocket going off under your ass.) The fact that they even told us argues it happened.

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      2. Because if they say he’s alive and has been recovered, then sooner or later they’re going to have to produce him, either to his family , or to his squadron, or to a board of inquiry, or to the media. And if they say he’s alive and well but then NOBODY ever sees or hears from him again, well, that’s going to raise some eyebrows and somebody’s going to start making noise about it.They’re stupid, but they’re not all THAT stupid.

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      3. If you’re going that far, why have they said anything at all? A whole fighter plane vanishes, if the military doesn’t say something then we don’t know about it.

        On the other hand, given WuFlu I am definitely coming closer to your viewing angle.

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    3. Before you could “meet your maker in a Martin-Baker” you would set the auto-pilot to give you some chance of being able to bail out. With ejection seats, there is no reason to do so.

      I’m betting it is under water as well.

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    4. Speaking of incompetence, the F-35 has been a clusterfrak practically from the word “go.”. Wouldn’t shock me at all if it suffered a catastrophic mechanical failure.

      About the same level of clusterfuck as all the other planes before it which everyone knew were unbelievably terrible until they became amazing.

      It’s Previous Republican President syndrome, but for hardware.

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  3. Only thing I can think of is that it went down at sea. But you’d think there would be SOME way for our military to track the thing unless it was on a stealthy exercise. GPS pinger, radar transponder, something. They know how much fuel it had (roughly) when the pilot punched out and probably what the expected autopilot track is, and what the autopilot should do after it hits the end of that track, so hopefully they can figure out a rough area where to look. Yeah, there’s some rural areas in the Southeast, but not THAT many where somebody wouldn’t hear an earthshattering kaboom. Hopefully an aerial search turns it up in a while.

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    1. The transponder was not working “for some reason we haven’t yet determined,” according to one spokescritter.

      You’d have to go a fair bit more north and west to get to those unpopulated areas, though. The spot where they are looking is not that empty. Lesesne airport is a smidge south of Lake Marion. The area is rural, but there’s little houses and such all over.

      And 80 million worth of high tech and metal makes a pretty big boom when it hits dirt at speed. I’d expect somebody to have heard that, were it in their backyard.

      Thus, looking in deep puddles as they are, I think.

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      1. It’s actually pretty amazing how hard it is to find something in untouched wilderness. At least 80% of tank warfare is about sneaking about, and we’re talking about something the size of two school busses that sounds like an army of garbage cans rolling down hill when it’s moving.

        And yet, you’d be amazed at how easy it is to lose track of one or a bunch of those in a combat zone. Usually to show up where you really didn’t need them…

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  4. Actually, if it went into a swamp, there would be even less evidence of a crash than a pure water/lake impact. I recall a nose-in crash in the Everglades a few decades ago, and the pond scum and weeds basically closed back over the impact spot, almost completely concealing it. If that’s the case, the searchers will need to be on the lookout for, hopefully, a jet fuel slick. Thank God it looks like they don’t have to do a body recovery.

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    1. That was Value Jet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ValuJet_Flight_592 I remember the day, the hour, the minute. I knew people … onboard. They were running up to someplace in Georgia for a college graduation. Next Sunday at Church (St. Margaret’s Episcopal in Miami Lakes) we had 6 empty chairs in the front. We had a memorial mass for those who would not be able to get to the actual day of the funerals.
      It was hell for the first responders as there was nothing to rescue but bits.

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        1. I do believe there was a case where they lost a bomber with two nuclear bombs on board in the swamps of the Carolina’s in the 1950’s. A B-47 if I am not mistaken. Swamps have a way of making things disappear, not just bodies.

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          2. Offshore, Georgia. The near-shore seabed ate the weapon. That one was supposedly lacking the core of the primary, so no possible detonation. There is, however, some dispute about the core.

            Of the two fully-armed weapons accidently dropped on North Carolina near Goldsboro, one activated its “laydown” parachute and soft-landed. The other free-fell to impact and augured in so far they never did get it all back out of the ground. They did get the key bits of primary. The USGov has an easement on the impact site, so no one can legally dig up the secondary chunk.. (Which would count a mining at that depth.) The recovered soft-landed bomb came within one low-voltage safety switch of triggering detonation. We almost nuked Goldsboro with a 5MT weapon. The resultant surface burst would have been a fallout nightmare.

            Marvin the Martian: “Where’s the Kaboom? I was expecting an Earth-shattering Kaboom…”

            We have whoopsied a number of nukes over the years. Spain is probably still a little P-O-ed at us. They got four in one very bad day.

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              1. The Georgia incident was a B-47. The Goldsboro one was a B-52. The one in SC was a B-47. Spain a B-52.

                There was also a Titan-II that blew up in a silo in Arkansas in 1980. Those puppies can carry a huge warhead. The reported one was 9mt. That is some serious boomstuff.

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          3. Also one in Mars Bluff South Carolina. Hit the playhouse of some kids, and detonated its high-explosive filler. Miraculously, the kids survived.

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      2. I understand your feelings. I also understand too much about aircraft crashes from my 22 years in the U.S. Air Force. A “soft” landing after abandoning a malfunctioning aircraft is literally a 1 in a million event. Last time I can recall that happening was to a bomber coming back from a mission over Germany in WWII. I know there’s a lot of talk about how some passenger jets have enough computer control that they could land themselves; and the F-35b has vertical landing assistance, but the pilot would have to set that up, I don’t think it has the capacity to do it autonomously. Finally, these aircraft have a, to me, distressingly high accident/incident rate. I doubt the Chinese pulled a Clint Eastwood Firefox on us. But that doesn’t preclude them rushing their assets in country (maybe as many as 20,000) to the accident site to scoop up materials before our own people get there.

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        1. I think if something corrupt happened, the plane would just be handed over with a “the pilot bailed out and we lost it” cover story.

          Mind you, I would need some evidence of it beyond “It could have happened,” before I started believing it.

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            1. The F-35 is new enough (and expensive enough) that Congressional eyebrows would likely be raised if someone tried to claim one was unrepairable. Without an accident of some sort (or maybe a bird strike), questions would start getting asked.

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        2. The “Corn Bomber” incident!

          F-104 in an unrecoverable flat-spin. Pilot ejects, which was a violent enough event to recover the plane from the spin. it subsequently flew straight and level to fuel exhaustion, and soft-landed itself under control in a cornfield. it was repaired and put back into service.

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            2. Indeed pilot got the F-106 into an unrecoverable state and so ejected. Somehow the plane ultimately recovered and flew on and crashed in a cornfield. And that particular F-106 after being restored to service ultimately was retired and is currently in the National Museum of the USAF ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber), with the markings painted as it was on the day it went on it’s little jaunt.

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              1. The belief is the thrust from the ejection process kicked the nose down so it was in a conventional stall instead of a flat spin, and without control inputs it recovered aerodynamicaly.

                In a flat spin you’re generally facing flat side to the airflow so your controls get no useful airflow so you can’t actually do anything, but in a conventional stall/spin most planes will recover on their own, given enough time/altitude.

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      3. There’s no benefit of the doubt to give.

        In the event of a crash, the black boxes’ transponders begin pinging out their location. This system is as hardened and redundant as human ingenuity can make it. (There’s also one built into the ejection seat. Recovering pilots downed in enemy territory is a military priority.)

        That no such signal has been received from the plane, is evidence that the plane did not crash.
        (Or that the F-35 is such a cockup that Lockheed-Martin deliberately abandoned best engineering practices and actively sought to undermine failure analysis.)

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        1. Military is different.

          One does not want to broadcast a crash location to the opposition. Else finding the pilot is easier, and finding/recovering the aircraft is trivial.

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          1. Is this the same military that puts FAA -compliant lights on aircraft that don’t officially exist?

            Different is not absent.
            Military aircraft absolutely have transponders, and one of them is part of the pilot’s SERE kit. They broadcast in very short bursts, at irregular intervals, freq hop, and the pilot’s is partially manual. They’re set up to make triangulation hard, unless you have a satellite net, know what you’re looking for, and have the processing power to filter out the noise.

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      5. I don’t understand why no one understands your post, Sarah. It’s making me feel gaslit. Does it make you feel that way? Resist.

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        1. I understand her post. And I understand why she’s spooked. Most of us would like to take a 2×4 (or something stronger and more permanent) to everyone in the Biden Administration, and the Pentagon, for their disastrous mismanagement of our military. But all noises in the basement aren’t necessarily from the creeping doom. Some of them are from the cat playing with that piece of plastic.

          Liked by 1 person

          2. I’ve spent some time dealing with suspicions and fears over the years.

            Sometimes distrust is absolutely warranted, and I was very very fortunate to be taking those precautions.

            Sometimes the mad suspicion is really just mad, and I find actual rational counter arguments quite helpful.

            Save energy for the concerns that I absolutely need to act on, and fast.

            The more officialdom proves itself untrustworthy by blatantly and unnecessarily lying, the more everyone distrusts everything. This has the effect of breeding rumor and paranoia.

            Creates some need for better sorting methods, even if the ‘just trust x’ models are clearly flawed.

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          3. The deep state has still has not figured out that we see threw their bullshit. That is what is really driving them nuts. All of their sycophant followers believe it, why shouldn’t we? And with each day they get more and more paranoid, and more and more out of touch with reality. Ergo, more crazy.

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    2. With aerial refueling meaning that the only real range limit is pilot endurance? Yes, they have autopilots on those things. More time with the plane flying itself during the lulls means less pilot fatigue after hours in a cramped cockpit up in the air.

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    3. Certainly many of the Century series had crude Autopilots, Not sure if P-47, P-51 or P-38 had them, I think many of the bombers of that period had crude ones. Once you come up to fly by wire hardware like F-16/FA-18 and later you already have so much avionics and flight data that adding an autopilot just kind of makes sense.

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        1. The issue is less did they exist but did they get put in WWII class fighters. Looks like from harryvoyager’s post they get put in at least one late model P-47. Modern fighters with their in air refueling often do long missions (e.g. ferrying to reposition) where it is nice to give the pilot relief. And of course modern fighters are almost exclusively fly by wire so controls are already under computer direction at some level connecting it to one more system and using the usually existing INS and GPS hardware is less of an issue.

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          1. That would certainly explain why the A-10 doesn’t, since it very much is not fly by wire — it’s a classic pushrod control system (with hydraulic boost but it can fly perfectly adequately without that).

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            1. Has nothing to do with that; the A-10 was designed to land and takeoff from dirt roads within 100 miles of the front. Distances like that an autopilot really isn’t needed.

              Escorting bombers from England to Berlin, or Iwo to Tokyo? Different parameter.

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      2. The very last production P-47, the P-47N model has one. They existed but were quite heavy, so fighters didn’t usually use them. The only reason it got added to the P-47N was it had the engine power and was going to be flying extremely long over water escorts where nav errors were also total loss events.

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        1. And honestly add even 1000 lbs to a P-47 and no one will notice much :-) They were immense for a WWII fighter.

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          1. Yup. A big brute of an airplane with a big brute of an engine. Fast, tough, maneuverable and with a massive ordnance capacity. The P-47’s only weakness was being a gas hog. Even that got fixed with more and bigger gas tanks.

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            1. Early models (B and C) had two weaknesses. visibility to the rear was poor although this was common across many early WWII fighters. The other weakness was until it got the upgraded prop it had a sluggish climb rate. With that and water/methanol injection it became a real beast.

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  7. I don’t blame people for being suspicious but if an aircraft impacts vertically it can be very difficult to find later. An example that comes to mind is a WWII plane that dove vertically into a cleft in the rocks in wilderness mountains. They lost a thermonuclear weapon in the same region some years ago and never found it. If the muck in a river delta is several hundred feet thick a heavy object can penetrate well beyond the ability of sensors to find it passively.

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      1. There were planes that crashed during WW2 that weren’t found until the ’90s. There are probably some that haven’t been found yet.
        ———————————
        It’s dark here. You are likely to be eaten by a Grue.

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    2. There was a plane that sank in Folsom Lake back in the 60s (I think) that they only discovered in recent years with the huge draw-down. It was still in 300 feet of water at the lowest the lake has been since it was built.

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  8. South Carolina? Headed east? Thinking it ditched in the Atlantic. Thus crash observed by fish, sharks, dolphins, and whales.

    Love the responses posted. Don’t have VIP membership so can’t see the responses there. Don’t log into Twitter so missed most those comments too.

    Smells like treason. Although why would China bother? Be easier to just to pirate the plans, if they haven’t already.

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    1. Hmmm. Let’s try the other option. Already getting new postings via email. I wonder if the comment ‘new posts’ really means ‘new comments’?

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Quite possible. BUT– And this is very important, yesterday in posting the promo post it took almost 7 hours because it came up with new and exciting issues I’d never seen before, like posting a little blank square instead of the cover. And assuring me it was the cover it posted.
        So, you know….

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    2. The Chinese hacked the unclassified nets of the Pentagon and ALL the Great Big Defense Contractors about 15 years ago. Lots can be pieced together from seemingly unrelated unclassified material

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      1. yes, but please consider that the current Chinese technicians aren’t that good. Xi has been purging the rebellious ones, which is usually covalent with the smart/competent ones. (Same as in the first cultural revolution).
        This means it might NEED a physical example.

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        1. Even with a physical example, replication isn’t going to be easy at all. There is a lot of weird materials science that goes into those things

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        2. China cannot duplicate the electronics, not even close.

          China cannot duplicate some of the chip-dependent manufacturing processes.

          They might benefit their detection efforts with samples.

          On the gripping hand, watching China duplicate the most expensive boondoggle we ever managed will utterly bankrupt them. So maybe net-plus after all. (grin)

          Liked by 2 people

            1. Hey, now, I resemble that remark. Worked on the system. Have the coffee cup.

              Israel is very grateful for Iron Dome. So are our carriers at sea. CONUS? I suspect we have several interesting lumpy objects at strategic points here and there. America burned a lot of money to develop SDI. Some of it paid off.

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              1. No worries. I was rather fond of the idea of SDI. We got some really useful stuff out of it.

                Also seemed more moral than mutual extinction as a game plan.

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          2. Dunno how accurate this is now, but years ago I heard that the ChiComs also had serious problems with the fancy alloys used for modern high performance engines like those used in fighters.

            Quite a bit of a step up from airliner engines, where you don’t normally have to worry about a sudden need to go from cruise performance to “run like hell”.

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            1. Yeah, China’s flagship 5th generation fighter, the J-20, initially had to be powered by a Russian engine. The Chinese reportedly have one of their own engines powering it now, but the fact that they initially couldn’t put one of their own engines into their premier air to air platform is telling.

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            2. The Speed of Heat.

              Hotter = more power = faster

              But learning to grow exotic alloy turbine blades that can handle serious-thosands F is truly metallurgical wizardry. Making them all precisely alike in shape and weight, hardness and toughness, balance and duability, etc. And costs like madness …

              SciFi

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        3. We are saved by the fact that our enemies are more inept than we are. Not that Joe Biden is not giving them a run for their money. But as bad as we are, they are worse.

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      2. Bill Clinton handed ALL of our classified military manuals and blueprints over to the communist Chinese in the mid-90s. I’ve heard from people who were there when a bunch of Chinese came in and hauled away whole filing cabinets full of classified material. Plans for M-1 tanks, aircraft, submarines and multiple-warhead nuclear missiles which the Chinese couldn’t figure out on their own. They’ve got ’em now, though.

        Clinton was the worst U.S. President in history — until 0bama.
        ———————————
        There are forms of stupidity that businesses can’t indulge in. There are no such limitations on the stupidity of government.

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        1. And Obama in turn was the worst president in history…until the FICUS, Biden. (He may be occupying the office, but I refuse to apply the title to that traitorous human-shaped piece of excrement.) And worst president in history is a very difficult bar to clear when Franklin Pierce and Jimmah Carter are also in the running.

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      3. It’s been noted that China’s J-20 (I think), it’s relatively new 5th Generation fighter, looks similar to the F-35, but with canards. I suspect that the Chinese already have most of the important blueprints for that plane.

        Although it seems to me that the F-22 is the more interesting plane where pure air combat capability is concerned.

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        1. I have a vague memory that some of the Chicom hacks managed to get a chunk of the F-35 details. One wonders if UAV capability was built into the plane; with fly-by-wire coughAirbuscough, some interesting things could be done. OTOH, the aerodynamics of the plane without canopy would suck rocks…

          I gather that the F-22 was damned hard for us to make; even with an example, it would be a challenge to reproduce.

          An airbase not overly far from here is training F-15C pilots, and was supposed to get F-22s until the the program got trashed. So, they’ll be getting the F-35 training job job as the consolation prize.

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            1. Oh, @#$%^&*!

              In 2001-2 I had three round trips to Bavaria. Usually we’d fly to Frankfurt and take a short haul Airbus flight to Munich, but once we got stuck with Air France and its long haul Airbus. This after an interesting crash (carbon fiber doesn’t behave well with sudden extreme control inputs. Go figure.) but before the Crash-by-wire system failures.

              It’s been 21 years since I’ve set foot in an airplane, and I’m hoping to keep that streak a lot longer. “Forgetting” to get RealID or a passport helps…

              Liked by 1 person

          2. I would expect that the F-35’s UAV management stuff would require chip components that China simply isn’t capable of manufacturing at the moment.

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      4. The final version of the JSF didn’t go into design until the award of the competition to Lockheed in 2001. What they would have gotten back then probably would have convinced them that this (https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44157/test-pilot-explains-why-the-x-32-lost-to-what-became-the-f-35) was going to win the competition based on the Clinton Crime Family’s fondness for Boeing back then. (Don’t ask the Reader how he knows of such things). Pretty sure the ‘Pregnant Guppy’ (as some of us called it) would have been worse than what we got.

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    3. The sea occurred to me. But in that case, why not say so?
      Also, you’re overestimating CURRENT DAY Chinese competition. Remember what Xi has been doing to the ranks of the smart and competent there.

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      1. Also thinking an undercurrent of sabotage on behalf of US forces. Could not find what I thought I read to quote, but something along the lines of the plane is a POS and always glitching. Because Xi “what Xi has been doing to the ranks of the smart and competent there.”

        Agree on odds of plane ditching in the sea, they should have reported that.

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        1. We also have great difficulty tracking our own stealth, so we may never know where it landed until someone stumbles over it. And at sea, that somone is far less likley.

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          1. Note the Reader’s comment below. If the JSF was flying without radar enhancing reflectors in civilian airspace, something was seriously hinky.

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              1. The passive radar reflectors are mounted on the body of the aircraft and are separate from the active transponder which broadcasts position, altitude and velocity. The plane would have been clearly visible on air traffic control and en route surveillance radars in the area until somewhere between 2000 ft and 1000 ft depending on the terrain even if the active transponder wasn’t working. The military took a belt and suspenders approach to flying stealthy planes around civilian airspace after some close calls with the F117 in the 80s. If they were ‘left off’ something bad is going on.

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                1. The transponder detects the signal, amplifies it and rebroadcasts it. Physical reflectors are not needed when it is on.

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          2. Do they still attach a radar reflective plate to stealth aircraft operating domestically?

            If so then not being able to track it is doubly suspicious or evidence it went down right away.

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        2. I don’t think the pilot ditched near the sea. But if the plane stayed aloft longer than expected, it might have made it there.

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      1. I don’t remember reading direction. Just speculation. N/NW then there are some really big lakes where a lot of ships/boats and planes have also been lost, depending on how far plane can go on auto pilot.

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  9. The Reader notes something odd about this. There is an ASR-9 air traffic control radar at Charleston’s airport and 2 ARSR-4 en route radars within 100 miles. A JSF operating in civilian airspace is supposed to have it’s radar cross section enhancing reflectors on and should have been visible to all of them to within less than 1000 ft above the ground. (See https://theaviationist.com/2022/11/20/u-s-and-dutch-f-35s-flew-without-radar-reflectors-during-falcon-strike-2022/)

    Insert conspiracy theory here…

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  11. As weird as it all sounds, it’s possible (depending on the actual problem) that once the pilot ejected it stabilized and flew on for awhile. This could expand the search area considerably.

    Ref: Cornfield Bomber (F-106 landed itself in a field after the pilot ejected)

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      1. We famously had an airplane crashland in our high school’s parking lot. The pilot was trying to get it into fields, but it kinda kept going.

        Right between the cafeteria and the main building.

        Also everybody lied for decades about what kind of plane it was (it was actually experimental), which was kinda hilarious because everybody in town above a certain age (or with enough aviation interest) knew it.

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      2. On November 3, 1944 a B-17 landed at an Allied airstrip in Belgium. Half an hour later, it was still sitting there. Someone finally climbed aboard and found it was completely empty, and all pararachutes were present and accounted for.

        Oddly, I found several pages about it online, but none of them mentioned the name of the airstrip or any of the crew. Hopefully it’s not one of those fake stories that propagate around the web.

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    3. It’s not weird it flew somewhere it’s “weird” “our people” asked on twitter where it flew to. Because NORAD doesn’t know what’s flying where Cross our airspace? Because the military doesn’t have satellites? Because the pilot in the plane RIGHT NEXT TO IT didn’t follow it?

      I’m not sure who assumes the thing crashed. I think the phrasing is intended to suggest it crashed, but doesn’t say that.

      But I’m not confused that it flew somewhere.and I am not at all confused that it ended up where someone intended it to.

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      1. Satellites are largely useless for tracking an individual high-performance aircraft. The aircraft moves to fast for the satellite to track. Their primary use in this instance would be checking a remote, hard to reach location for wreckage.

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      2. Lot of our sense of how sensors work is from hollywood.

        Hollywood can drastically misvalue sensors, implying that they are better than they could possibly be.

        Now, military has a lot of sensors, and they can be pretty good. But the data processing is not perfect, and they are apparently working very hard on trying to process more quickly and effectively.

        So the sensors and especially some of the processing are not so good that the services /have/ to be able to find anything.

        Liked by 1 person

  12. With fly-by-wire, the controls may stop taking direction from the cockpit, but they can still take direction from their own computers…. do you know what’s in YOUR microcode?

    Why there isn’t a physical pin that pulls from a thermite charge if the ejection seat is launched after takeoff….?

    Like

    1. “Why there isn’t a physical pin…”

      Can you imagine the stress nightmares the mechanics would have? Ejection seats have been known to accidentally go off inside hangars, which is bad enough. But then the whole aircraft melts at thermite temperature? That’s an oopsie right there.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Well, since you disarm the ejection seat inside the hanger (or at least you’re supposed to) since it’s basically a rocket motor anyway…. point being that if the pilot is no longer with the aircraft, you really want to have a “scuttling charge” somewhere so an enemy can’t salvage your tech.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Yes indeed, “supposed to” is the operative phrase there. I know of at least one RCAF incident where the seat got launched, and one that was a single lever-pull away from launching a mechanic into the ceiling. I’m sure the US military has examples. Monthly.

          I also know of situation up by CFB Petawawa in the 1980s where an artillery round went off the far end of the range instead of the distance it was supposed to go. Wrong powder charge AND wrong elevation. I was not there, but the story made the rounds as they say.

          I was eyewitness to officer ranked -idiots- detonating several dud 3.5″ rocket rounds in too shallow a hole too close to me and the rest of the troops. BOOM! and shower of rocks. No shrapnel, thank God.

          Those things, and the way APC drivers weren’t too careful of what they drove over, strongly influenced my decision to seek a career elsewhere. ~:D

          I believe putting a scuttling charge on an aircraft not flying in enemy territory would be -fantastically- dangerous from screwups alone.

          Liked by 1 person

    2. “…thermite if the ejection seat is launched…” is NOT something you want on an aircraft. WHY would you want to add a bomb to the aircraft that you can’t get rid of? Things sometimes come loose or get stuck when they shouldn’t. Most pilots don’t sign up to commit suicide. It’s bad enough that half the crew on a B-52 ejects downward and thus requires significant altitude to do so safely.

      Plus, there are times when one person ejects and the other doesn’t. There was at least one instance with an F-14 Tomcat that was then safely landed. And the modified F-104 of Adams and Scott that crashed in ‘63 where they BOTH made the right decision that saved their lives.

      Like

      1. Is the tech worth keeping out of enemy hands? If so, you ensure it’s destroyed. When the pilot is ejecting, he’s leaving the plane behind.

        Like

  14. These comments were in zerohedge last night:

    Fun fact: The F-35 cannot fly through lightning storms. In fact it must go hundreds of miles out its way just to avoid going NEAR them. The reason is complicated but boils down to weight limits prohibiting the kind of fuel safety system that keeps the tanks from exploding when hit by lightning.

    In retrospect, calling it the F-35 Lightning was a pretty stupid move, huh.

    Interestingly, there was a line of severe storms that came through the area when this happened.

    Sure would explain a lot. The plane is not rated for such conditions.

    “In the early 2010s, the Pentagon imposed flight restrictions on the F-35 after its independent weapons tester discovered the fuel tanks weren’t receiving enough nitrogen-enriched gas to make it completely inert. ”

    ” During an Aug. 3, 2021 incident, lightning hit an F-35 during flight, damaging the jet’s canopy and panels on its fuselage. The pilot was unharmed, but the Air Force categorized the event as a Class B mishap, with the estimated cost to fix the aircraft amounting between $600,000 and $2.5 million, according to the report. ”

    Here is a link: https://breakingdefense.com/2022/11/pentagon-wont-lift-f-35a-lightning-restrictions-after-hardware-and-software-fix/

    On top of this, the Air Force is trying to retire the Warthogs “with prejudice” to be replaced with this outrageously priced piece of junk. Someone should suggest giving the Warthogs and all their support to the Army. They love them.

    Like

    3. Fun fact: The F-35 cannot fly through lightning storms. In fact it must go hundreds of miles out its way just to avoid going NEAR them. The reason is complicated but boils down to weight limits prohibiting the kind of fuel safety system that keeps the tanks from exploding when hit by lightning.

      Fun Fact: this is true of all aircraft.

      Just about everything that Everyone Knows about the F35 is rank bullshit of the highest order.

      Like

      1. Commercial jet aircraft are struck by lightning all the time, with minimal effects. They’re designed to withstand it.

        But then, they were designed by competent aeronautical engineers, not a government committee.

        Like

        1. Yes. Planes are designed to withstand it. But they still avoid storms when possible.

          Unless of course it is the CURRENT_NEW_PLANE, and then this is a horrendous unheard of problem and we need to make up stories about it being even worse.

          Tell me; do you also fall for the “ZOMG NAVY ONLY AT 32% READINESS?!!?!?!?!one!!?” articles as well?

          Like

  15. As others have mentioned, it very likely crashed into a swamp or ocean, which would hide it pretty effectively. Especially if it flew on until running out of fuel – then there would be no explosion, fire, or fuel slick to help find the site.

    Like

  16. I don’t know. Seems too complicated for these folks to plan and pull off.

    Plus, usually whenever we’re sending stuff to US enemies, it’s heralded with fanfare and trumpets, like when the UK gave the Nene engines to the Soviets, or when we gave the SRBM enabling tech to the Chinese, or the latest $6B check to the Mullahs…

    This sounds more like one of the Super Helpful! ™ setting on the plane was less than predictable when the pilot ejected and sent the plane somewhere weird.

    That’s more or less what lead to that ramp strike last year.* Would be unsurprised to discover more issues like that.

    *The F-35 has a carrier landing mode that changes the control law to make it a lot easier to line up and stay on the glide slope. Catch is the control inputs are the opposite of what you need to use in a go-around when that mode has disconnected or not been enabled. The pilot was practicing a high speed recovery, didn’t realize he was in the wrong mode, and instead of doing a go-around, the control inputs stalled the plane and pancaked it on the ramp.

    And rather that reviewing whether the stick inputs they were using were the right human-machine controls for that system, the Navy just banned high speed recoveries.

    Why yes, I do have thoughts. How could you tell?

    Like

    1. Modal controls are evil!
      /Soapbox.
      Ahem. Sorry. But if I was designing hell, it would have Heaven Mode -if- you can figure out the menus to get there before the next software update…

      Liked by 1 person

  17. At this point?

    1-Never assume malice where incompetence will suffice.
    2-…but these idiots have a lot of malice as well.
    3-The F-35 program has had so many issues that I’m surprised that there haven’t been more scandals and disasters. And I know that the legacy gear has a lifespan (I love the F-15 and F-16, but there’s only so much you can do with an airframe design that is maybe two years older than I am), that the Reform Mafia is full of idiots that I wouldn’t trust with a cookie tray, but the issues don’t ever seem to be resolved.
    4-I’m thinking that the Ukraine War has put a major kibosh on Xi’s plans to start expanding China’s “natural borders,” because his army is essentially the luxury version of the Russian Army, they haven’t fought a real war in at least thirty years, and a lot of the doctrine that was developed is what the Russians are using and failing with.
    5-And there seems to be some pushback against Xi’s efforts to try and be Mao 2.0, which is going to be interesting…and I think he was hoping to use the “reclaiming” of Taiwan and establishing China’s “natural borders” to deal with the people complaining.

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    1. I remember reading that after Gulf War 2, the PLA was supposedly shifting more toward a Western-style of tactics.
      I don’t know what came of that, however.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. The biggest issue of switching over to a Western-style of warfare for China (and Russia) is the simplest of things.

        You have to train people in how to think to make that kind of warfare work. And the moment you start teaching people how to think…a lot of them won’t stop thinking.

        That is rarely good for the average dictatorship.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. The core of the US Army is our NCOs, and how they are utilized. It is almost impossible for a dictatorship like Russia or China to create those NCOs or to utilize them.

          And the whole “without even asking permission, heavily improvise solutions in the heart of the chaos-malestrom” is totally alien to their thinking.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. It’s apparently not enough for thinking like that to lead to winning a war. See, e.g.. Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Vietnam, Libya. Or, perhaps, our NCOs have been dismantled by our current dictatorship. When the USG asks for help finding an f35 doesn’t seem like the moment to be commenting on other military’s failures.

            Like

            1. Why not? Fair game.

              NCOs didn’t lose our wars. Fucking idiots in Washington did. See my various posts on failure to define Victory in a meaningful way.

              “Nation building” isn’t victory. Nation destruction can be.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. Yep. The NCOs figure out how to stick a pole in it. It’s the job of the commissioned officer corp to figure out where the pole needs to go.

                If they can’t figure out of it needs to go on that hill or up someone’s back side, that on them. The NCOs are just there to make it happen.

                Like

          2. It’s a cultural thing, along with “command” cultures like Arab nations and such.

            My research has shown that an American sergeant probably has more authority than a general in an Arab army. It’s that bad.

            Like

    2. Re: 3:
      Seeing as the F-16 and F-15 were/are capable of more performance than the human operating them could endure…
      I don’t see a lot of upside to replacing them. Especially with weapons systems that cost magnitudes more, require more maintenance that’s magnitudes more expensive, and arguably* don’t actually perform as well.
      Updating and improving the avionics? Makes sense.
      Scrapping and replacing? Not so much.

      *Anecdotal evidence. But even though the specs are STATE SECRETS, we know the F-35 doesn’t have the acceleration and climb of the F-16, the speed and ceiling of the F-15, and likely can’t out-turn either one.

      Like

      1. The F35 pilots the Reader knows (and he knows a fair number from his involvement in both the current and new radars for the F35) have a comment for air to air combat with 4th Gen fighters. They call it ‘clubbing baby seals’. There is a lot of bad information about the F35 in the uninformed internet that can’t be corrected without using classified information, but I’ll just note this. All of the aero comparisons between and F35 and 4th Gen fighters are are based on published numbers for ‘clean’ airframes, i.e. planes not carrying ANY weapons. That condition only exists in combat for a 4th Gen fighter when it has used all its weapons and is running for home. The F35 can carry 6 air to air missiles or an assortment of precision air to ground ordinance it its ‘clean’ condition. The 4th Gen numbers for aero performance with loadout ARE classified but obviously are nowhere near the ‘clean’ numbers.

        The program has had its problems with schedule and cost but every military program since WW II has. Those issues are baked into peacetime acquisition processes in the 5 Sided Puzzle Palace and aren’t going away (don’t get the Reader started on the Navy).

        Like

    3. China lost a war with Vietnam. They ran around the country for a while, getting their asses progressively more kicked, until finally declaring “victory” and un-assing the AO.

      They are still un-f-ing themselves. Vietnam hurt their pride/face far worse than our fiasco there did ours.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. I would imagine that all but the most junior PLA officers during their Vietnam misadventure are out of the service by now.

        Of course, that also means that China’s “veterans” nowadays are survivors of a handful of firefights.

        Like

        1. Does China posture well? Yes.

          Whom have they fought lately in a sustained fight?

          Can they raid? Sure. Can they nuke, probably. Can they sustain a protracted conflict, especially across open water? I have doubts. Many.

          Liked by 1 person

            1. Themselves. The Qing Dynasty put down a number of rebellions during that time period (including the famous Taiping Rebellion, which was led by a guy who claimed he was the brother of Jesus).

              As far as foreigners are concerned, a quick check suggests that the Ten Campaigns were the last time they defeated foreign armies in a campaign. They defeated an army of Ghurkas invading Tibet in the 9th Campaign (late 18th Century). Shortly before that, they launched a campaign that snatched up the last part of Mongolia they gained control of.

              However, you may have noticed that I said “Ten Campaigns”, and only described what happened during the 9th Campaign. It turns out that the 10th Campaign was against Vietnam…

              Though the PLA did manage to stalemate the UN forces in Korea. Unfortunately for those currently living in the northern part of that peninsula.

              I’ve read that the PLA sent special forces to help against the ISIS groups operating in Syria. I haven’t seen anything that mentions how effective they were in that role.

              Liked by 1 person

    4. Damned it I know who said it, but “A sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.” The saving grace is “Oft evil will shall evil mar.”

      Liked by 2 people

  18. My addition to Monday morning quarterbacking; I know nothing about trim adjustments on an F-36 but I suspect even w/o autopilot, based on trim adjustment it may have traveled quite a distance before crash or splash.

    Not faulting my fellow quarterbacks, BTW, a number of astute, interesting observations here in the comments!

    Like

  20. The only way the scheme would work reliably is if there was no ejection from an F-35. In such a scheme, the plane was already shipped out – or never existed – and the ejection seat was dumped out a private registry plane.

    People directly involved would include the fake pilot, his actual superior, the plane crew, and a prep squad for the seat so it looked like it had ejected.

    We’ll see what becomes public and I’ll make up my mind then.

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    1. Nah. Transfer the plane and pilot TDY. Pilot gets “sick” and another moves it elsewhere. Reassigned again. Sent for msintenance. Shuffle shuffle. Gone.

      Ask any good supply senior nco. Or S-4 officer. Heh.

      They don’t know where everything is normally. I drove an M-151 jeep we were not supposed to have. We changed table of organization and equipment, and someone “forgot” it. At least that was the explanation I received why it always was dead last for parts, frequently robbed of parts, and not replaced with a Humvee when we received them.

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      1. Thiat is how a sensible criminal would do it.

        This lot have their noses so far in the air their septum has sunburn.

        There’s a claim the wreckage has been found. We’ll see what is shown.

        Like

        1. Yep; one article here:
          https://notthebee.com/article/debris-from-the-missing-f-35-has-been-found-

          There are others today; apparently it went down in a remote area around Lake Moultrie and Lake Marion.

          When I was stationed at MCAS Beaufort in the ’60s we lost an F8-U on a training flight. That one went down near town and the pilot, who maneuvered to miss a populated area before ejecting, survived. We lost another, flown by a reservist in training, over the ocean off Hunting Island. The only thing ever recovered from that one was part of a flight jacket.

          Stuff happens.

          Like

  23. And someone would have seen/felt the crash.

    Hmmm. Maybe, maybe not. Sunday afternoon, lots, if not most, wouldn’t have paid any attention to it unless they actually saw it crash, or saw smoke coming up from the crash site. Charleston airport shares the runway with Charleston AFB. And the Marine base is sort of SSW of there, but not very far away. Point is, residents are used to hearing and feeling a lot of low flying planes and booms.

    Or a fire would have started where it crashed.

    See the part about lots of swamps and water.

    Like

  24. It would be different if the Military didn’t throw their credibility away for Biden’s Afghan Surrender. What little they have left is woke dancing as a drag queen on the surgeon generals lap. The government could come out tomorrow and tell everyone the Aliens are coming, and no one would believe them. May their woke hearts burn in hell for an eternity.

    Like

      1. “That’s the Generals, and they were weeded during 0bama for compliance to the leftoid points,”

        And the Cols who want to make general, and, and, and.

        Once you have control of officer evaluations, you can weed at any level you please.

        Liked by 1 person

    2. I will tell you what. Now that the #Let’sGoBrandon! administration is talking about UFOs, if St. Elvis himself with Marylin Munro as co-pilot crashed an alien UFO in the Reflecting Pool in Washington DC live on CNN…

      … I’d be skeptical.

      Liked by 1 person

  25. Never attribute to treason that which can be explained by the limitless ability of the American service man to screw up. There will be an explanation, and it will cause you to shake your head in wonderment.

    Like

  26. I read the pilot ejected and the plane continued so it likely augered in on autopilot in the hills (if what I read about the direction of flight is right) but it brings about a LOT of questions. How was it bad enough to eject, but able to continue on? I though they’re not supposed to fly with the transponder off so they show up on ATC screens even though they don’t show on radar. Why was that off, if it was, if not, where did it disappear? I think looking near there would be a good starting point.

    And last but not least, why, in spellcheck, when you flip the doubled consonants ala Dissapear, the word Disappear is NEVER one of the selection for correcting it? Why?

    Like

    1. There have been cases before when, for whatever reason, the pilot’s ejection actually helped the airworthiness of a plane, and the empty plane sailed onward for quite a while, like Gaudenzia at the Palio.

      Obviously this is a bit embarrassing for everyone involved, but it can happen.

      Like

  27. From what I understand, building modern jet engines is hellishly difficult. India’s “domestic” fighter has European engines (German or Swedish, iirc). Having one to look at isn’t the problem. It’s the crazy alloys (for heat resistance and strength) and the precision machining required (which requires crazy alloys in one’s tools) that cause issues.

    I don’t think China needs one. Even if they did, they’re all over the world, now. There are (probably) easier places to steal one from.

    That said, with cocaine in the White House, everything is on the “it’s not impossible” table.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Copypasta from a gab/twit posting:

      Looks like the found the runaway F35

      Listing Port 45°, Comrade Capitan Ziiggii
      @realZiiggii
      ·
      23m
      Replying to
      @realZiiggii
      and
      @TheLastRefuge2
      All Civil Air Patrol aircraft are on the ground. I think they found it. NW of Stuckey,SC between SC State HWY 261 and Old Georgetown Road.

      Looks like pine farm/logging area.

      Like

  29. I myself am skeptical that the Chicoms would learn much that they don’t already know about the F-35 by stealing one. With that thing it isn’t so much “what did they do?” and more “how the hell did they do that?”

    Just an aircraft frame section alone is a piece of tech that having one doesn’t help you make one. They’re forged out of unobtanium-grade aluminum using some kind of zillion ton press in a process that includes an augury using chicken guts to determine whether the shaman waves the rattle to the left or the right when he commands the spirits.

    Not to mention the software is probably getting up over a billion lines of custom code, and very idiosyncratic to the aircraft itself.

    I’m more inclined to believe a confluence of forgetfulness, bureaucracy, laziness and ‘not my job’ came together and broke something important. I’ve been in the military (briefly) and seen people so stupid they couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the heel, so there is no f- up so appalling I wouldn’t suspect incompetence over foul play.

    But I’m willing to be surprised by the patented “stupidity PLUS malice” of the #LetsGoBrandon administration.

    Like

      1. What little I know about it suggests they might have thought of it.

        I think I’ve mentioned the SIP Hydroptic Jig Borer 6A and 7A here before.

        https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=SIP+Hydroptic&atb=v226-1&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fportal-images.azureedge.net%2Fauctions-2021%2Fbritan10010%2Fimages%2F966c6ecb-e77f-4ef5-8ec4-ad21010dc063.jpg%3Fw%3D1920%26h%3D1920%26mode%3Dmax

        That’s a machine that built parts for jet engines in the 1950s and 1960s. Examples are still around today, and still work just fine. The machine can create holes and surfaces accurate to within 0.00001″. That’s 1/100,000 of an inch.

        What they do now is at least another decimal better than that, probably two decimals, and all computer numerical control (CNC). You can’t even sneeze next to a machine working to those types of tolerances. That’s the type of thing making the guts of an F-35. Just the cutter tools and grinding wheels are bleeding-edge tech.

        They don’t have that type of capability in China, they have to buy it from Germany or the USA.

        Like

        1. Yep, “It ain’t what you’ve got; it’s how you got it”; Heinlein’s (?) classic “stone age native with a complete car except for the spark plugs”. Get it running? Not a chance in hell.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. What would Leonardo da Vinci make of an iPhone? What could he learn by taking one apart?

            The tools to make the tools to make the machines to make an analog voltmeter were still 400 years in the future, and that still wouldn’t do him much good. He’d need a 5 GSPS digital storage oscilloscope to make any sense of the circuits.

            Liked by 1 person

    1. “Treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it Treason.” – John Harington

      Like

    2. That is overbroad.
      The British considered George Washington et al. to be traitors. (Not to mention William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, Simon de Montfort, Oliver Cromwell, etc.)

      Like

      1. True; treason is in the eye of the beholder. But I forget; which circle of Hell is reserved for “those who betray their benefactors”? That would seem to apply to anyone who betrayed their nation for personal gain, which arguably does not apply to those you mentioned.

        Like

      2. Early Romans considers Christians to be atheists because they did not worship Caesar. Your arguing over semantics gain you no points here, Skywalker.

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        1. It’s not just semantics, but a question of what is owed from ruled to ruler — and vice versa. Did the British Crown fail in it’s duty to provide right governance to Washington and everyone else in the colonies? Whose treason was first? Or are you saying that doesn’t matter?

          Dante’s Inferno is not Scripture.

          Like

  31. Hm…

    On the one hand, if true would vindicate one of my ‘I told you so’.

    Other hand, /if/. THere are enough moving parts that I would both not be certain of being able to find the airplane in case of normal accident, and might doubt management ability to pull the conspriacy off. Maybe something like the hypothesis for Fat Leonard that it was downstream of Billy Jeff or congress deliberately promoting scumbags.

    Gripping hand, my first conspiratoral take on this was PRC part supply sabotage.

    Like

    2. Parts sabotage? It isn’t even sabotage, it is crooked Chinese manufactures producing Grade 3 bolts with Grade 8 makings, knowing that nobody ever checks. Charge for Grade 8, make it cheap, nobody cares. Right? That’s how they do it.

      So now, thanks to them screwing their customers for 30 years, most shops have a hardness tester for things like that. They check -every- bolt, nut and washer. Because you never know if you got a real Grade 8 or the Chinesium Grade “8”.

      This happens with all sorts of things.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Back in the day we caught a third tier parts supplier foisting COTS bolts instead of space rated material in the construction of the support structures for pallet Spacelab missions. Saved them considerable money and time. When caught those profits weren’t even close to covering legal fees and If I recall correctly a bit of jail time for the company official responsible.

        Liked by 1 person

        2. It takes a special kinda special to swap in substandard parts for the -space program-. But there they are, doing it.

          Sometimes it amazes me that we ever get anything built, you know?

          Like

          1. Dumb crooks cheat and steal.
            Smarter ones become lawyers and politicians then find ways to cheat and steal legally, or at least with far lesser chance of getting caught. But eventually even those chickens come home to roost. Case in point that faint crowing of a rooster in the Biden family compound.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Reminds me of a scene in Blake’s 7:

              Cally: [long litany of atrocities the Federation committed against her family]

              Vila: “And it wasn’t even a crime!”

              Cally: “You mean it wasn’t against the law.”

              Vila: “Uh, yeah, that’s what I meant.”

              Like

        1. AOG Technologies, which supplied the parts and falsified the airworthiness certification, is registered in Virginia but — am I being paranoid to suspect it’s owned by the communist Chinese?
          ———————————
          I used to be afraid I was paranoid.
          I thought people were out to get me.
          Now I know the truth — they ARE out to get me!
          I feel so much better. :-D

          Like

          1. The Reader assures you that you are not being paranoid. The Great Big Defense Contractor the Reader worked for had a case of counterfeit integrated circuits around 2007. They passed initial tests but would not work in the system (see ECL logic). The management had no hesitation about fixing the problem but didn’t want to inform the customer, as none of the assemblies had been delivered. The Reader understood – we were working for another prime who didn’t want us; the Navy, who was the public customer had forced us on them. To make matters worse, the Navy was not the bill payer; an unnamed three letter agency was. Somehow, the Navy found out about the issue…

            If anyone is curious the program was https://www.secnav.navy.mil/rda/Pages/Programs/CJR.aspx

            Like

          2. A Seattle Times article I just glanced at suggests that most, if not all, of the published employee roster is fake. Executive Sales Representative Johnny Rico probably doesn’t exist.

            What is known is that the company was originally registered with a British address, supposedly by someone named Jose Yrala. The address has changed a few times, and is now apparently linked to a British company that specializes in virtual office space. Pretty much everything else about the company (and I do mean everything) is under investigation right now.

            Like

      1. Of course.

        We are blessed that most truly power mad folks just are not terribly bright, and ruin themselves with the perks of power. Even the occasional evil genius tends to fry their brains on the power drug and all its temptations.

        Thus the rest of us have decent chances to win.

        Liked by 1 person

          1. We should set aside October 28th as evil defeats itself day. That is the day Italy invades Greece in 1940. It results in Hitler having to bail them out, delaying the invasion of the Soviet Union for a month, and smashing the Nazi’s only parachute division that could have captured Malta.

            Evil defeats itself, it just does a lot of damage in the course of crashing. Just ask those who trusted Jim Jones. Lies can only be defeated by Truth, so it takes a while for it to catch up.

            I appreciate every day that hot civil war has not started. Just was talking to someone from Bosnia who came to America 25 years ago to escape their civil war. Every day I pray that those with the power (the Left) will turn from their evil, knowing hardened hearts are nothing new.

            Perhaps as an experiment we should pick one of the left controlled cities to experience 4 weeks without electricity, as an example of why an American civil war is a very bad idea for ALL. It might save a few billion lives.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. I nominate Washington DC. It’s full of the ones most responsible for this idiocy.
              ———————————
              Some folks can be taught. Others can learn by example. The rest have to piss on the electric fence for themselves.

              Like

              1. But that’s just where they accumulate. Need to shut the supply of craziness off at the sources – places like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, etc.

                Like

              2. The White House, Executive Office Building, and the Library of Congress have (or at least, had) their own generators, starting a century ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if other buildings can make their own electricity if needed.

                Like

      2. This day and age I’m of a mind that paranoia is a necessary survival skill. And that just because you’re paranoid does not mean someone isn’t out to get you.

        Liked by 1 person

    3. Local congresscritter Nancy Mace and her staff had a briefing from the Marines, and she reported it was pretty much useless.

      Like

  33. Does anybody else remember that Malaysian Air flight that went Twilight Zone a few years back? AFAIK they’ve never found enough clues to even piece together where it went, much less what happened to it. An experimental, hot-rod airplane can have a great deal go badly wrong very quickly.

    Like

  35. I don’t know whether to be glad or sad that I was not the only one whose first response to the missing plane story was “I don’t know ’bout that.”
    Now that it has allegedly been found (“residents were being asked to avoid the area while the recovery team worked to secure it”), this is the part of the news story that concerns me the most.
    “It’s the third event documented as a “Class-A mishap” over the past six weeks, according to a Marine Corps announcement. Such incidents occur when damages reach $2.5 million or more, a Department of Defense aircraft is destroyed, or someone dies or is permanently disabled.
    Commanders will spend the stand-down reinforcing safe flying policies, practices and procedures with their Marines, according to the Monday release.”

    @ thereadersittingindarkness > the time between a conspiracy theory and it’s validation is approaching zero, according to Not the Bee on multiple posts.
    They had a good round-up of memes.
    https://notthebee.com/article/the-memes-are-here-about-the-pentagons-missing-f-35-and-the-internet-didnt-miss-as-usual-

    But General Milley says our forces are in the best shape evah (he’s retiring the end of September, which would be good news if we weren’t reasonably sure his replacement will be worse, which seems almost impossible). Also posted at Not the Bee.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Never say impossible. If the Leftroids have a superpower, it’s always finding somebody even worse. Who would have imagined they could find 3 presidents worse than Jimmeh Cahtah?

      If the Democrats win next year, they will somehow manage to dig up a collection of incompetent idiots even worse than the current Biden* Regime.

      None of them will ever be held to account for their failures.
      ———————————
      They’re the Experts! They only sound stupid to you because you’re not as Educated as they are.

      Like

    1. You’re assuming these public health criminals had any idea what the vaxx would actually do out in the population, which is in fact not the case. Insufficient testing means -nobody- knows what will happen. What is the five-year result of the MRNA vaxx shot? We don’t know, because its only been three years. (That’s why I didn’t get one.)

      They didn’t know, and clearly they didn’t care. Short term money making operation, given cover by the ruling regimes of the West.

      Now, faced with the -results- of the vaxx, some public health weenies are busying themselves trying to look like they’re doing something, and trying to look like they care. But they still don’t.

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      1. “You’re assuming these public health criminals had any idea what the vaxx would actually do out in the population, which is in fact not the case.”

        No, I’m assuming they’re malicious enough to try something like that, and too incompetent to realize that highlighting a new disease instead of tampering say with the flu vaccine at the source (made in China) would invite extra scrutiny.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. But they couldn’t have raised a panic over the flu, granted themselves tyrannical powers, and wrecked the economy to make Trump look bad. They couldn’t have imposed their ‘mandates’ to make sure they poisoned everybody.

          They might have shot themselves in the foot, though. They got the sheep, but us suspicious curmudgeons avoided their experimental inoculations. Our determination not to take them was only reinforced by their increasingly hysterical insistence.
          ———————————
          A good Zombie Apocalypse novel is at least as believable as anything we’ve heard out of the ‘Publick Health Authoriteez’ over the last four years.

          Liked by 1 person

        2. Ah, so the WuFlu -and- the jab were a put-up job, and they knew ahead of time what the jab results were going to be because they tested it clandestinely.

          IMHO that assumes a much higher level of competence and coordination than we see displayed out there. I could believe a small group capable of something like that (if they had the tech for it, which I’m not sure anyone does), but the Chicom government? Or the US government?

          Not to mention, why would they choose such a weak-sauce virus?

          I don’t disagree that the “authorities” contain people vile enough to do that, which is a new realization for me. Previously I wouldn’t have thought that.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. The “weak-sauce virus” was their mistake, as I said. I linked to an article where the latest thing is being pushed in India. Claim is 45-70% mortality; actual rate so far as can be verified is 33%.

            Liked by 2 people

                2. And those were the 6 that felt sick enough to go to a doctor. In India. Which does not have the world’s greatest health care.

                  Don’t underestimate the effects of first world nutrition, either. We might not eat healthy but vitamin and mineral deficiencies are rare. I’ve heard that most Chinese peasants have multiple vitamin deficiencies, bad enough to present symptoms. Then we found out vitamin D pretty much prevents COVID19, and our public health organizations tried to put restrictions on vitamin D.

                  Liked by 1 person

          2. All of this.
            However I don’t think they knew the virus was weak choice. They trusted Chinese “scientists” which are basically confucionists under the lab coat. So, you know glued pieces of the AIDS virus not effective where they were but supposed to make the whole thing SOMEHOW extra lethal by proximity

            Liked by 1 person

  38. On a more serious note, I advise waiting for the mishap investigation. This is a Very Embarassing Incident for the Marine Corps…meaning that the pilot will be lucky to keep his wings at all. Certainly he can expect his next posting to b to someplace like Twentynine Palms (the middle of the desert). Or perhaps an exchange tour with the Air Force, to Grand Forks or Malstrom.

    But this is Very Odd. You eject from an airplane for one of two reasons – either it is on fire, or has unrecoverably departed controlled flight. Either way, it should come down fairly close to the ejection site. It’s possible that the onboard computers were providing bad information to the pilot, but he had a wingman who should have been providing information (like “Hey, you’re on fire, EJECT!”).

    I’d dearly love to be on the mishap board. But I won’t be.

    Like

  39. More on the missing airplane’s problem; link came from another blog board, so I can’t vouch for the author, but there is plenty of room for more conspiracy theories on board this flight.

    SANTINO
    @MichaelSCollura
    DEVELOPING ALERT‼️
    CHINA 🇨🇳

    This article explains what the issue was with the missing F35 US military plane, and why it is rumoured that all aircraft are grounded in the US for the next 2 days (unconfirmed).
    The problem starts & ends in CHINA 🇨🇳

    The F-35:
    Made in China?
    We Explain.

    The circuit boards control many of the F-35’s core capabilities, including its engines, lighting, fuel and navigation systems, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) said in a press release

    On Jun. 14, 2019 Sky News reported that a Chinese-owned company has been manufacturing key circuit boards for F-35 Lightning II fifth generation fighters flown by the U.K. and U.S.

    Exception PCB, based in Gloucestershire, southwest England, which produces the parts was acquired in 2013 by its Chinese parent, Shenzhen Fastprint.
    (This article by Dario Leone originally appeared on The Aviation Geek Club in 2019.)

    The circuit boards control many of the F-35’s core capabilities, including its engines, lighting, fuel and navigation systems, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) said in a press release.

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