UK ‘confident’ of beating Russia to find crashed jet
BRITAIN and its American allies are confident they will beat Russia in the race to recover the RAF’S crashed F-35 fighter jet.
Senior military figures dismissed concerns the £100million stealth aircraft could fall into enemy hands, despite the whereabouts of the sunken jet still unknown after it crashed last week soon after take off from HMS Queen Elizabeth in the Mediterranean Sea.
“We’ll get it first, I promise you that,” Brig Gen Simon Doran, of the US Marine Corps, told The Daily Telegraph.
“I’m not concerned about the aircraft at all.”
US military personnel are leading the recovery operation amid reports that Russian and Turkish forces are seeking to lift the F-35B stealth fast jet from the sea off the coast of Egypt.
There are concerns that Moscow is vying to secure technological secrets from the jet, which is considered the UK’S most complex and sensitive aircraft.
The Ministry of Defence does not comment or speculate on matters that could affect operational security, but military leaders confirmed the salvage operation remains a priority.
It is believed the aircraft, one of the RAF’S eight F-35B fighter jets, plunged into the sea close to HMS Queen Elizabeth last Wednesday during a routine training exercise with fellow Nato members. The cause is not yet known.
The pilot ejected and was safely rescued. Jeremy Quin, a junior defence minister, who was hosting Nato ambassadors on board the ship, said: “There is work in hand to effect a recovery. We have no concerns about being able to affect that and affect it properly.
However, none of the senior figures involved in the operation was able to confirm whether the recovery team had located the sunken fighter jet.
It is understood that the Royal Navy has identified a circle of four miles diameter where the aircraft could have come to a rest, about 1.24 miles under the surface.
The Uk-led Carrier Strike Group restarted launching the F-35B from HMS Queen Elizabeth in recent days.