Navy Racing To Reach Sunken F35-C Fighter Jet, Before China...

Keneci Channel

Somewhere deep in the South China Sea, the $100m plane is taking water, after it came down on Monday, during a military exercise.. The large-winged advanced jet struck the deck during take-off from United States Navy's aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson. Seven sailors were reportedly injured.

The F35-C is one of the Navy's most advanced plane, crammed with classified equipment. Its first "low observable" carrier-based aircraft which can operate undetected in enemy airspace. The plane -- which can carry up to two missiles on its wings and four inside -- has the most powerful fighter engine in the world with speeds of up to 1,200 mph, or Mach 1.6. It also has a network-enabled mission system that allows real-time collection and sharing of information while in flight.

U.S. military forces are frantically racing to get to the plane before Chinese forces do. The Navy acknowledged in a statement that a recovery operation was under way following the "mishap," but will not confirm either where it came down or how long it will take to retrieve it.

The incident occurred in international waters, and the race is on: it's winner-takes-all for whoever gets to the plane first. China baselessly claims sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, refusing to recognise a 2016 international tribunal ruling against the claims. However U.S. and other countries have dismissed such claims and freely operate in the sea.

Military experts say that while it is suspected that through cyber espionage, the Chinese may already have some knowledge of the plane's interior, layout and workings, they would still want to see actual parts of the plane, to better understand how it is built and find its vulnerabilities.

U.S. rescue vessels are reportedly a few days away from the crash site. If the plane is located, a team from the US Navy Supervisor of Salvage and Diving will be primarily responsible for the retrieval operation.

The military winner-takes-all cat and mouse game between U.S. and China to get to the plane is not without precedent.

At the height of the Cold War in 1972, the Chinese military secretly salvaged the United Kingdom submarine HMS Poseidon which sank off China's east coast. Two years later, the CIA secretly pulled a Russian submarine from the sea floor off the coast of Hawaii using a giant mechanical claw.

It is also widely believed that China got its hands on the wreckage of a secret US 'stealth' helicopter that crash-landed in the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in 2011.

Monday's incident in the South China Sea comes as President Joe Biden faces criticism for his administration's focus on pushing woke propaganda in the military instead of focusing on force readiness. The incident also comes just months after the botched U.S. military pull out from Afghanistan.

The U.S. and NATO allies are also involved in last ditch diplomatic effort to stop a possible invasion of Ukraine by Russia.