A multimillion-dollar stealth fighter went down in flames near the flight line at MCAS Miramar — but the Marine pilot survived, saved by an ejection seat with a hard-won safety history.
A Marine Corps pilot ejected safely Friday morning just before an F-35B Lightning II stealth fighter crashed near the flight line at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, destroying the jet, the Marine Corps said.
The Marine Corps classified the crash as a Class A mishap, the Pentagon’s most severe accident category, reserved for incidents involving a death, a permanent disability, the destruction of an aircraft or at least $2.5 million in damage. With the F-35B’s price tag estimated around $109 million, the loss represents a substantial financial hit even though no one on the ground was hurt.
“We can confirm a Class A mishap involving a Marine Corps F-35B in the vicinity of [Marine Corps Air Station] Miramar. The pilot ejected and has been recovered. More information will be available as the situation develops,” the Marine Corps said in a statement.
The crash happened at approximately 10 a.m. PDT as the jet, flying under the callsign “NIGHTMARE 21,” was on short final approach to land, according to air traffic control audio. The Marine Corps said it did not immediately know the purpose of the flight. The aircraft came down in a dirt field on the base, south of Miramar Road near Mitscher Way, according to Times of San Diego, breaking into two major sections on impact and igniting a vegetation fire that spread across an area roughly the size of a football field.
“It just blew up, it was crazy,” said Wade Lott, a witness quoted by KMJ News.
A driver on nearby Interstate 15 reported seeing the jet fly over the freeway with its canopy open before it plunged into a fireball, and spotted a parachute carrying the ejected pilot drifting to the ground. “The pilot ejected, was transported to a local medical facility in stable condition for evaluation and treatment of non-life-threatening injuries,” the Marine Corps said in a statement posted to its official social media account.
Military crash crews and the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department responded to the scene, though the military maintained lead command over the response. Firefighters used white fire-retardant foam and high-pressure water to douse the smoldering wreckage for more than an hour, and the brush fire was fully contained by early afternoon.
The Marine Corps said the jet belonged to Marine Aircraft Group 11 within the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing but did not identify the squadron. The “NIGHTMARE 21” callsign heard on air traffic control audio corresponds to Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 502, known as the “Flying Nightmares”. The squadron, which traces its lineage to a World War II-era unit, serves as the Marine Corps’ second F-35B Fleet Replacement Squadron, training pilots transitioning to the fifth-generation platform. It relocated to MCAS Miramar from MCAS Beaufort, South Carolina, in December 2021 after being recommissioned in 2020.
The pilot’s survival hinged on the Martin-Baker US16E ejection seat, which has zero-zero capability, meaning it can safely extract a pilot even from a stationary aircraft at zero altitude and zero airspeed. The seat has a fraught history: 2015 testing found that lighter pilots weighing less than 136 pounds faced a heightened risk of fatal neck trauma during low-speed ejections, prompting the military to ground those pilots from flying the F-35. Martin-Baker and Rockwell Collins later added a parachute-deployment timing delay, a fabric head-support panel and a lighter helmet to fix the problem, and the U.S. Air Force lifted the weight restriction on May 2, 2017, certifying the seat safe for pilots between 103 and 245 pounds.
The F-35B is the Marine Corps’ short takeoff and vertical landing variant, distinct from the Air Force’s conventional F-35A and the Navy’s carrier-based F-35C. Its vertical lift capability comes from the Rolls-Royce LiftSystem, which works alongside the aircraft’s Pratt & Whitney F135 engine to generate more than 40,000 pounds-force of total vertical thrust — 20,000 pounds-force from a forward LiftFan powered by 29,000 shaft horsepower diverted from the main engine, 18,000 pounds-force from a swiveling rear exhaust nozzle, and roughly 1,950 pounds-force from each of two wing-mounted roll posts that stabilize the aircraft.
Estimates of the F-35B’s unit cost vary. Some sources put it at roughly $109 million, while others cite figures upward of $130 million, a discrepancy that typically reflects whether the estimate covers only the “flyaway” cost of the airframe and engine or the broader weapon-system cost that includes support equipment and spare parts.
Friday’s crash marks the 14th F-35 to be completely destroyed since the platform entered service in 2015, and the 18th total hull loss when non-crash incidents such as ground fires are included. Despite the visibility of such crashes, the F-35B has a Class A mishap rate of about 1.5 to 1.6 per 100,000 flight hours — lower than the F-16 Fighting Falcon’s 3.55 per 100,000 hours and far below the more than 31 per 100,000 hours logged by the Marine Corps’ Harrier fleet in its early years, according to published safety analyses. The F-16 number is a lifetime average, while the Harrier figure covers that type’s early service. The only fatal F-35 crash to date occurred in April 2019, when a Japanese F-35A went down in the Pacific Ocean.
Miramar, long known in aviation circles as “Fightertown USA” and the former home of the Navy’s Top Gun school, has seen rare but deadly aviation incidents before. On Dec. 8, 2008, a Marine F/A-18D Hornet suffered dual engine failure on approach and crashed into the University City neighborhood two miles from the base, killing four civilians across three generations of one family; the pilot, 1st Lt. Dan Neubauer, ejected safely. The crash galvanized local advocacy groups, among them Citizens Advocating Safe Aviation, which monitors military flight paths near the base. A 2018 CH-53E helicopter crash in Imperial County, about 100 miles east, killed four Miramar-based Marines, and in August 2023 an F/A-18D Hornet operating out of Miramar crashed on government land east of the air station, killing the pilot.
Friday’s mishap comes as the broader F-35 program navigates persistent readiness and production troubles. The Pentagon halted acceptance of newly built jets equipped with the Technology Refresh 3 upgrade — a $1.8 billion hardware and software package needed for the future Block 4 modernization — in July 2023 after software instability surfaced. Deliveries resumed July 19, 2024, under an interim software package with limited combat capability, and Lockheed Martin reported a record 191 F-35 deliveries in 2025 as the delivery backlog cleared. Full combat certification has slipped again. The Pentagon’s testing office reported this year that no combat-capable TR-3 jets were delivered in fiscal 2025 and that the software remained unsuitable for dedicated operational testing.
“TR-3 and Block 4 represent a critical evolution in capability and their full development remains a top priority for us,” Bridget Lauderdale, then Lockheed Martin’s vice president and general manager of the F-35 program, said in July 2024, when deliveries resumed. “These and further software updates over the life of the program will ensure the F-35 continues to be an effective deterrent and the cornerstone of joint all-domain operations now and decades into the future.”
Fleet readiness has fallen alongside the software delays. The Government Accountability Office reported in June that the fleet’s mission capable rate fell to 44.1% in fiscal 2025 from 66.8% in fiscal 2021, while the full mission capable rate — the share of time a jet can fly every assigned mission — dropped to 24.6% from 38.1%, far below the services’ 65% goal. “The operational suitability of the F-35 fleet remains below service expectations and requirements,” the Pentagon’s Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation said in an earlier annual assessment. GAO has estimated the F-35 fleet’s lifetime sustainment costs at $1.58 trillion to $1.6 trillion, part of a total program cost estimated at $2 trillion to $2.1 trillion.
The Marine Corps said it has opened an aviation mishap investigation into Friday’s crash. Lockheed Martin had not issued a public statement on the loss as of Saturday.
Key Takeaways
- A Marine Corps F-35B was destroyed in a Friday crash near the flight line at MCAS Miramar; the pilot ejected safely with non-life-threatening injuries.
- The Marine Corps classified the crash as a Class A mishap, its most serious category, which the destruction of an aircraft triggers on its own.
- It’s the 14th F-35 destroyed in a crash since 2015, though its mishap rate remains lower than legacy fighters like the F-16 and the Marine Corps’ Harrier fleet.
- The crash comes amid ongoing F-35 program struggles, including TR-3 software delays and fleet availability below Pentagon targets.
- The Marine Corps has opened an investigation into the cause.