A British F-35B Lightning stealth fighter jet was forced to make an emergency landing in Japan on Sunday after developing a technical fault.
The £88m aircraft, one of the world’s most advanced combat jets, landed at the Kagoshima international airport at around 11.30am local time.
It was operating from the HMS Prince of Wales as part of the UK Carrier Strike Group in the Indo-Pacific.
Runway operations were suspended for nearly 20 minutes while the jet was moved to a taxiway for checks, Kyodo News reported.
The Japanese defence ministry confirmed the plane had suffered an engineering issue and was undergoing inspections to enable it to rejoin the carrier group as soon as possible, according to the Telegraph.
Footage showed the plane parked near the international airport’s runway with no visible damage.
The UK Carrier Strike Group, which includes the HMS Prince of Wales and multiple escort ships, is carrying out joint exercises with Japanese and American forces under Operation Highmast, aimed at demonstrating Britain’s security commitments in the Indo-Pacific.
The drills began on 4 August and were scheduled to run until 12 August.
This is the second such incident involving a British F-35B fighter in less than two months.
Another F-35B jet from the same strike group was stranded in India for more than five weeks following an emergency landing in June.
That jet had diverted to the Thiruvananthapuram airport in the southern state of Kerala on 14 June due to bad weather over the Indian Ocean and low fuel, before reporting a hydraulic system fault that affected its landing gear, brakes and control surfaces.
British engineers carried out extensive repairs on the aircraft at the Indian airport before it flew out on 22 July.
The British High Commission in New Delhi thanked Indian authorities for their “support and collaboration” during the repair and recovery process.
The F-35B is a short take-off and vertical landing variant of the American fighter made by Lockheed Martin and designed for use on aircraft carriers.
Britain operates 37 of these jets between the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, with a total of 47 expected in service by the end of 2025.
In June, the UK government announced plans to purchase at least 12 F-35As, a conventional variant capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
Although marketed as the most advanced fighter plane in the world, the F-35 is plagued by reliability concerns.
A declassified Pentagon report earlier this year found that the “overall reliability, maintainability and availability” of the US F-35 fleet remained below service expectations.
The UK one F-35B in November 2021 when it crashed into the Mediterranean shortly after take-off from the HMS Queen Elizabeth.
AloJapan.com