A US Marine Corps F-35B stealth fighter jet crashed on Friday near Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, California, after the pilot ejected moments before impact. The pilot, whose identity has not been publicly released, was transported to a local medical facility in stable condition with non-life-threatening injuries. Aerial footage captured a plume of black smoke rising from the wreckage in a dirt field, with military and firefighting vehicles surrounding the site and flame retardant blanketing the ground.
An eyewitness driving to work near the base described watching two jets descend toward the runway together. The first landed without incident, but the second slowed sharply — almost as if attempting to hover — before the pilot ejected at around 100 feet above the ground. The parachute deployed as the pilot rose briefly into the air, while the jet struck the ground and exploded. San Diego Fire Department spokeswoman Candace Hadley confirmed that firefighters responded to a vegetation fire sparked by the crash near the base perimeter.
The Marine Corps classified the incident a "Class A mishap," the most severe category, applied when damage exceeds $2 million, an aircraft is destroyed, or a service member is killed. The cause of the crash remains under investigation; such inquiries typically take several months to complete. The F-35B, one of several variants of the advanced stealth fighter, is designed for short takeoffs and vertical landings, and costs approximately $109 million per aircraft. The US Air Force alone has recorded at least 17 Class A mishaps involving F-35s since 2000.
Miramar, known historically as "Fightertown USA," once hosted the Navy fighter pilot training school made famous by the 1986 film Top Gun, before the school relocated to Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada in 1996 when the base was transferred to the Marine Corps. The US military's combined F-35 fleet — shared across the Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force — numbers more than 630 aircraft, with a programme cost estimated at roughly $2 trillion when future purchases and decades of operations are factored in.
Despite Friday's crash, defence analysts note that the F-35 has a comparatively strong safety record. The Lexington Institute, a think tank focused on defence technology, describes the F-35 as the safest and most capable fighter jet currently in the US military's fleet, with fewer crashes recorded since its adoption in 2015 than other fighter types experienced when they were first introduced. Fatal crashes involving the aircraft remain rare. Friday's incident nonetheless adds to a sobering year for US military aviation: at least seven other military aircraft mishaps have occurred domestically in 2025, following a spike in accidents recorded in 2024.