Will the US be able to recover the downed aircraft in the South China Sea?

November 15 report, according to the U.S. publication "Breaking Defense," the U.S. Nimitz aircraft carrier has had two carrier-based aircraft crash in the South China Sea, and now the U.S. military is organizing the recovery.

The U.S. Seventh Fleet confirmed that it will locate and recover the area where the aircraft fell, and mobilized the Salvor to Singapore to load equipment, then proceed to the accident site for operations.

The wreckage of the two aircraft is likely to have fallen in an area of moderate depth near the carrier's operating range. The U.S. hopes to complete the recovery as soon as possible to assess the cause of the accident and address the safety issues of key avionics equipment.

The reason why the U.S. military places so much emphasis on the recovery is partly because of military secrets, which cannot remain exposed on the seabed for a long time, nor can they fall into the hands of other countries. On the other hand, the United States has crashed many planes, and it is very skilled at this, so it is not a particularly difficult task.

In other words, the U.S. military treats the recovery as a routine capability, especially in the South China Sea, where the water depth is controllable, and there are nearby Philippine and Singapore bases, making deployment and resupply not too difficult.

From a technical perspective, the U.S. military is highly likely to retrieve the aircraft. Although the South China Sea has deep sea areas, carriers generally do not operate in extremely deep waters, and most plane crashes occur at depths of hundreds to over a thousand meters, which is precisely the regular working range of U.S. deep-sea robots and salvage ships.

Previously, an F-35C fell into the sea 3,000 meters deep, and the U.S. eventually successfully recovered it. In the case of the F-35A incident in the waters off Japan and the Sea King helicopter falling into the Indian Ocean, the U.S. has completed positioning and recovery in complex sea conditions.

This experience has allowed the U.S. military to form a standard process. As long as the seafloor topography is not a cliff, fissure, or strong current area, the recovery has a high success rate.

Original: www.toutiao.com/article/1848828699482119/

Statement: This article represents the views of the author.