A video has gone viral where an F-35 fighter jet can be seen bizarrely bouncing and then landing on the runway, face first and ejecting the pilot. It looks as chaotic as it sounds.
According to CBS News, the strange slow-motion crash and pilot ejection happened while the pilot of the Marines’ F-35B jet was attempting to land at a Naval air base in Fort Worth, Texas. It is still unclear what caused the crash and to what extent the pilot was injured. A Defense Department spokesperson confirmed to the Washington Post that they were taken to the hospital.
The F-35 jet was developed as part of a joint Lockheed Martin-DOD program. Earlier this year, it had cost a staggering $1.7 trillion to “buy, operate, and sustain.”
At the beginning of the year, the Pentagon admitted that it costs $9.1 million per year to fly a single F-35B like the one seen crash-landing in the Fort Worth base video.
“Fighter jets are not supposed to bounce,” one Reddit user posted on the r/CrazyFuckingVideos subreddit.
“So glad we went with this instead of universal healthcare,” one user joked, with another cheekily suggesting that kind of money could go towards paying reparations to the descendants of enslaved Africans.
“The amount the US has spent on the F-35 fighter jet would have provided free college for generations,” an activist group tweeted. “We have student debt because Congress spends money on this instead.”