Badly damaged Korean F-35 gets a second life after crash

There is the new ability to reproduce a damaged F-35 Lightning II-Stealth fighter.

The F-35 Joint Program Office and the US Air Force recently helped South Korea to win a second life for a damaged F-35 by removing its wings and performing again, a new maneuver. With additional support for the US Navy and Lockheed Martin maintenance experts, the team of the Republic of Korea Air Force helped an F-35A that was badly damaged after converting a bird in flight in the flight in the flame in the flame by 2022 by converting it into a maintenance training platform. However, the team had to remove the shift of the jet three years ago to another ROK Air Force base.

Seosan, a city on the west coast of the country, is about 60 miles from the perspective of the aircraft, the perspective of the air base's perspective. With only two-lane motorways along the route and the fighter's 35-foot wing span, the team confronts with “considerable costs and feasibility problems”, the joint program office said in a press release. They decided to transport the fighter by removing the wings and starting them again.

The procedure was successful and is now part of the standard maintenance, repair and reusing protocols of the F-35 program, added the F-35 JPO. This paves the new way to fix future wing damage for us and the stealth fighters of the partnerships.

The US Air Force and the F-35-JPO were able to build on an earlier remarkable performance: to combine two destroyed F-35 to create a fully operational aircraft, which is called “Franken jet”. The project was to remove the damaged nose from a beam and replace the intact nose section of another aircraft that had suffered a motor fire. They were able to bring the two crippled jets together into a single operational stealth fighter. This USAF jet carried out successful functions for functions at the beginning of this year.

“This was an important challenge because it was the first attempt to remove F-35 wings as part of a concept demonstration,” said Matt Trodden, lead engineer for aircraft accidents with the F-35 JPO, about the Korean fighter.

The efforts concern the members of the 309th expedition of the Air Force, the stormy maintenance relay, the forward striker for combat repairs and willingness to fleet in the southeast, Lockheed representative and the F-35 JPO. The team worked with the ROK Air Force to remove both wings from the aircraft body within several weeks.

However, this time the memorial of the wing structure turned out far more complex than anything the engineers and engineers had previously hit.

“Despite early doubts, the team worked seamlessly and completed the company a few weeks before the schedule, which confirmed the feasibility of removing wings and reinstallation,” said Trodden.

The 2022 accident came with a strong price for South Korea; The state's Ministry of Defense said that an eagle was sucked into the left engine inlet of the jet with a weight of around 22 pounds and transferred a force that corresponds to around 33 tons in the aircraft cell. The plane then landed an emergency belly, with the chassis being withdrawn. The bird's carcass pierced the inlet channel and damaged almost 300 components, including the individual main motor and the electronic systems of the JET. The total repair costs were estimated at over $ 100 million, which exceeded the costs of a brand new F-35.

In 2024, the South Korean Ministry of Defense decided not to restore the Jet for operational use. At the beginning of this year, the F-35 JPO and ROK Air Force decided to represent Korean maintenance staff as a training platform instead of reducing or selling them for parts.

An air bridge plan was initially considered in which the CH-53K King stallion of the US Marine Corps was involved, a helicopter with heavy lifts that previously transported the US Navy F-35C on the peninsula. However, the US armed forces Korea ultimately rejected this option and compared ground transport as the only practical solution for the moving of the damaged jets compared to the South Korean military spokesman for the local media.

The country's stealth fleet is currently 39 and plans to acquire 20 additional jets, whereby the deliveries are to begin in 2027.