Three weeks after an F-35C Lightning II fighter bounced off the deck of a ship and sank into the South China Sea, the U.S. Navy determined to focus on its salvage and deep-sea restoration capabilities in a press occasion for reporters Wednesday whereas insisting the 2 weren’t associated.
On Jan. 24, an F-35C fighter crashed onto the usCarl Vinson and slid off the flight deck, into the South China Sea. Photos of the airplane floating within the water, full with lacking ejection seat and surrounded by particles, have been later leaked on-line. After the crash, the Navy introduced that it was “making restoration operations preparations” for the plane however gave no different particulars.
However at the beginning of Wednesday’s occasion, Alan Baribeau, a spokesman for Naval Sea Methods, famous that they have been “not going to reply something that is tied to something of an ongoing, current-day, real-world nature.”
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“No hypothetical questions, please,” he added.
Capt. Jay Younger, the Navy’s supervisor of Diving & Salvage, defined that main deep-sea restoration operations are usually damaged up into two components — the search and the salvage parts.
To find something the Navy desires introduced up — like an F-35C — the group can use a really environment friendly and deep diving autonomous underwater car referred to as the “Hugin,” which may go 20,000 ft under the ocean’s floor.
“In a 20-hour interval, with the Hugin, we are able to search an space about 25 sq. miles, and with our towed system, that very same space would take a couple of month,” Younger defined.
Then, to convey up your underwater merchandise of curiosity — for example, an plane that had fallen off the aspect of a ship — the Navy has a remotely operated car referred to as the CURV 21, which can be in a position to dive to twenty,000 ft. Younger defined that the CURV and different remotely operated autos are used to the “go down … validate the item is what we’re trying to get well. It should join rigging to the item … to help connecting to our salvage system to convey the item as much as the floor.”
Then, all that is left is to let the Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System — “a conveyable motion-compensated raise system linked by means of the ship’s crane increase,” to listen to Younger describe it — raise your sunken merchandise, maybe a stealthy multirole fighter, to the floor.
Final yr, the Navy confirmed that these depth limits are removed from aspirational by recovering an MH-60S helicopter from a depth of 19,075 ft off the coast of Okinawa, Japan, and setting a salvage depth document for the group alongside the best way.
On Jan. 29, the Japanese Coast Guard posted a maritime navigational alert to remain away from an space west of the Philippines and south of Hong Kong, the final space the place the F-35C crash occurred, as a consequence of “salvage operations … till additional discover,” nevertheless it didn’t explicitly reference the Vinson mishap.
The deepest a part of the South China Sea is about 18,000 ft and, based on Google Earth, the depth on the coordinates for the Japanese navigational alert is about 13,000 ft.
Bradley Martin, a Rand Corp. researcher and former Navy captain, instructed Army.com in an interview that attempting to convey up misplaced plane just like the F-35 “is a very regular response to the mishap.”
He added that “one thing related would most likely happen no matter what plane is likely to be.”
Martin famous that the wreckage may assist investigators get a greater understanding of the crash however added that there are safety concerns as nicely.
“It is form of harking back to the Chilly Struggle … the race to get well the sunken fighter airplane,” Steven Wills, a naval historian and researcher for the assume tank CNA, instructed Army.com. “It is not only a easy salvage; there may very well be a race on the market.”
Wills defined that there’s a good precedent for adversaries and even allies of comfort to nab navy gear — particularly planes.
“You’ll be able to reverse engineer it. … Traditionally, a few of our buddies have been actually good about that,” Wills mentioned.
Particularly, Wills famous two incidents. Within the closing months of World Struggle II, the Soviets held on to an American B-29 bomber that was compelled to make an emergency touchdown close to Vladivostok. That airplane can be meticulously copied to make the Soviet Tu-4 bomber.
The long-range bomber, a primary for the Soviets, would go on to be a robust device in early days of the Chilly Struggle.
Extra not too long ago, Wills famous the 2001 Hainan Island incident wherein a Navy EP-3 alerts intelligence airplane collided with a Chinese language jet and was compelled to land on the Chinese language island. The airplane was finally returned to the U.S. however in items, and by the Russians.
“All that comms stuff and the way we encrypt communications … that is most likely larger precedence than the airframe or any of the avionics or weapons or the rest,” Wills defined. “Simply getting ahold of that, I feel, can be an actual Intelligence coup for individuals who aren’t pleasant to us.”
Fortunately, Younger says his group recovers all types of issues pretty frequently from the ocean’s depths. In 2021, they carried out 5 operations, six in 2020, and 4 in 2019 and 2018 every. Up to now, none appears to have been an F-35, nonetheless.
— Konstantin Toropin might be reached at konstantin.toropin@navy.com. Observe him on Twitter @ktoropin.
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