The Military Lost an F-35

I hope it's still on autopilot and still cruising around.

Sep 20, 2023

Missing F-35 May Have Kept Flying After Pilot Ejected Like Soviet Jet During Cold War

“He among you who’s never lost a jet fighter, let him cast the first cluster bomb.”
—The U.S. Military

I would like to say that nothing could prepare you for how long and how detailed a news cycle could be for the U.S. military managing to lose an $100 million fighter jet, but that would be untrue. There are actually kind of a lot of things that could prepare you for this, the most obvious of which would even be the most cursory familiarity or prior experience with the 24/7 news cycle, which as a matter of course is deranged in precisely the sort of way that sprawling and richly detailed reporting of a missing fighter jet is deranged. So it is maybe more accurate to say that, bearing in mind that this story is one of the more deeply if benignly perverse news stories of the year, I was startled by how much of a gag this topic is.

When a workday is frantic or loosely organized, many of us have thought about bailing on a meeting, and this fighter pilot actually launched himself out of an F-35 and it just kept doing its thing apparently. If it’s still flying around, as some on social media have speculated, then either AI is replacing pilots, or we are witnessing the first-ever ghost fly the whip. Also, I didn’t know that once a pilot ejects from a plane, the plane just goes on and becomes Pixar’s Planes and grows eyes and flies away as its own autonomous being with hopes and dreams. Glad the military fixed the decapitation bug.

For the remainder of this week, I kept having recurring visions of one of those “missing” posters with a fucking jet on it while anticipating an incoming Amber alert. Then, I considered the F-35 resell value if Xzibit and West Coast Customs jacked it and put Daytons and hydraulics on it. Or even imagine how much copper wire you could strip off that bad boy.

I am impressed with the gall of the military, which isn’t exactly an institution struggling for money, to issue a 1-800 number to ask American patriots to go on an adventure into the woods and help them find the missing plane. Is this a “Hardy Boys” adventure? Or, will we get on bicycles like the kids in Stranger Things? Maybe America’s enemies will go full Scooby Doo and say, “And we would’ve found the F-35 if it wasn’t for you meddling kids!!”

The U.S. Government: “Social programs are too expensive, people need to take on more personal responsibility.”
Also the U.S. Government: “Whoops! We may have lost our $100 million plane, can you help us find it??”

The military should’ve incentivized us and Willy Wonka’d the situation. This could’ve been an ad campaign that rewards a Golden Ticket to whoever finds the plane. And this Golden Ticket will grant you an all-day tour of the Pentagon, where you get to find out who really killed JFK, or if 9/11 was actually an inside job. The military should offer floor seat tickets to a Taylor Swift concert, and the F-35 would be found in record time.