Military Watch:

Stranded 39 Days: British F-35 Incident in India Could Not Have Come at a Worse Time

South Asia , Aircraft and Anti-Aircraft

Military Watch Magazine Editorial Staff

July-23rd-2025

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British Armed Forces F35B

A British F-35B fifth generation jet that was forced to land at Thiruvananthapuram Airport in southern India on June 14 has finally departed, after remaining grounded for 39 days. “A UK engineering team, deployed since July 6 completed the repairs and safety checks, allowing the aircraft to resume active service,” a British High Commission spokesperson confirmed. The aircraft departed for Darwin, Australia, where it may rejoin the air wing of the carrier HMS Prince of Wales. It was previously expected that the fighter would need to be partly dismantled and flown to the United Kingdom on a C-17 Globemaster transport. The incident has drawn attention to the deficiencies in reliability which have plagued the F-35 program for close to two decades, as well as the complexity of its maintenance which have resulted in by far the lowest availably rates in the U.S. Air Force other than those of the heavier and more problematic F-22. A far higher proportion of the world’s F-35 fleets remain grounded compared to other American fighters such as the F-18E/F and F-16.

F-35B During Vertical Landing

The protracted grounding of an F-35B in India has drawn significant ridicule from local netizens and media outlets, at a time when the United States had escalated efforts to market the F-35 to the country. The timing of the F-35’s prolonged grounding was particularly unfortunate for these efforts, with a sale to India having already been considered unlikely due primarily to the extensive controls the United States imposes on how its fighters are utilised. The highlighting of the F-35’s issues is expected to provide new opportunities to the fighter’s Russian rival, the Su-57, to gain Indian orders. Indian interest in the Su-57 was already expected to have risen due to the perceived insufficiency of its Su-30MKI and French supplied Rafale fighters to counter advances in Chinese and Pakistani air power, which was demonstrated in early May after Pakistan Air Force J-10C fighters were credited with shooting down at least one Rafale. The shortcomings of these older aircraft were previously expected to provide both the United States and Russia with opportunities to market their fifth generation fighters.