Britain’s F-35B Style Fighter Jet had to make an emergency landing on Sunday due to a malfunction at Kagoshima Airport in Southwest Japan. In June, emergency jet was landing in Kerala. Standing there for more than a month. Now the latest incident took place at around 11:30 am local time. The runway remained closed for about 20 minutes and several commercial flights lasted late. During this time there is no news of anyone being injured.

Accident during joint military exercise
The malfunction occurred when the British Army was participating in the joint exercise started on August 4 with Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force and the US Army. This practice will run till Tuesday. For this exercise, Britain has sent an aircraft carrier strike group to Western Pacific.

HMS Prince of Wales Operation
According to Japanese broadcaster NHK, the Ministry of Defense said that it was operating from Jet Royal Navy’s aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales. This career has been on Indo-Pacific deployment since April and has stayed at many ports in the Mediterranean, Middle East, South-East Asia, Japan and Australia.

Second case in two months
This is another such case in the last two months. Another British F-35B, which flying from HMS Prince of Wales on 14 June also, had to make an emergency landing at Thiruvananthapuram Airport in Kerala due to hydrophic malfunction.

Chinese and Russian media
The government media of China and Russia has taunted the latest incident. Russia’s Sputnik India account posted on X, “British F-35 again Emergency Landing … A few weeks ago, a F-35 was stuck in India, now the second was forced to emergency landing at Kagoshima Airport in Japan. Emergency landing is gathering like a memorial.”

China explained complex technical and maintenance challenges
China’s official Global Times claimed that these malfunctions highlight the “extremely complex systems and difficult maintenance” of the F-35B, which the UK marks can make it difficult to deal with “distant marine missions.” The Beijing-operated newspaper quoted Chinese expert Wang Yanan as saying that F-35B is the most technically complex edition of the family and offers “serious maintenance challenges during a long career operation”.

F-35B fifth generation fighter aircraft
F-35B is the fifth generation only fighter aircraft, which has a capacity of short takeoff and vertical landing (STOVL). It is highly capable of operating with small decks, limited locations and vessels. In the British Army it is called ‘Lightning’ and is specially designed to fly and land from short-field base and naval ships.