Japan grounds F-35 fighter jets after an aircraft crashed over the Pacific

The Japanese Defence Ministry has grounded all F-35 stealth fighter jets after a Japanese F-35 with one pilot on board disappeared from radar while on a training mission over the Pacific on Tuesday night.

It is not clear what happened. The aircraft went missing about half an hour after takeoff as it flew east of Misawa, northeastern Japan.

Search and rescue teams found wreckage belonging to a Japanese Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter that disappeared on Tuesday over the Pacific Ocean close to northern Japan but the pilot was not found.

Japanese Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya said the country’s military was grounding its 12 other F-35As while the incident was investigated.

Japan, a close US. ally, started deploying its US.-developed F-35As, a fifth-generation fighter jet made by US. aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, in January of 2018.

Each one of the state-of-the-art combat aircraft costs more than $90 million.

Via CBS News