Elephant walks are the most common way for the United States to show off its aerial prowess. At present, the United States has released a set of photos showing the US military's F-35A stealth fighter, F-22 stealth fighter, F-15 and F-16 two fourth-generation aircraft, as well as electronic reconnaissance planes and unmanned aerial vehicles, walking on elephants at the Kadena base. According to the U.S. side, the elephant walk at the Kadena base was an elephant walk in which all types of aircraft deployed by the United States at the Kadena base participated, and more than 40 warplanes appeared in the picture, and the United States tried to show off its air power in front of China through this elephant walk. The Kadena base is very close to the East China Sea on the mainland, and of course it only takes about 10 minutes for these fighters to fly from the base to Taiwan Island.
Just after the United States showed off the elephant walk in which the F-22 stealth fighter was involved, according to the information disclosed by the media, the F-22 stealth fighter had an accident at the Kadena base at around 9 a.m. on April 11. Judging from the photos released by Japanese photographers, the F-22 stealth fighter appeared on its stomach on the runway contact road and knelt on the ground, and it was obvious that the nose landing gear was broken. Some analysts believe that the accident of the F-22 stealth fighter occurred in the process of towing the tractor, and the F-22 stealth fighter as a fighter that has just been deployed in the Kadena base for less than a month, after coming from the Hawaii base, it quickly appeared in Kadena, of course, in addition to the F-22 stealth fighter accident in Kadena, the F-35B vertical short take-off and landing fighter also had a similar accident in the Kadena base.
In addition to F-15C/D fighter jets, the Kadena base will also rotate many fighter jets, including the U.S. Marine Corps' F-35B VTOL fighters. Previously, an F-35B VTOL fighter suddenly broke off its landing gear during deployment, and then lay on its stomach on the taxiway. However, in 2024, the landing gear break of the fifth-generation aircraft only occurred at the US military base in Japan, which is already the second case, and the US military base in Japan also has a large number of fifth-generation aircraft, and according to the information obtained by the War Research Institute, there was an F-35A stealth fighter that had a landing gear break at the US military base in Japan, and then lay on the runway, and this incident also caused some civil aviation flights at the Iwakuni base in the Iwakuni base to be unable to fly normally.
The F-22 stealth fighter originally wanted to show off its strength in front of China, but now the F-22 stealth fighter has been directly lifted by a crane in order to get out of trouble. As the second fifth-generation aircraft accident in Japan in the United States in 2024, the War Research Institute believes that the United States should also attract enough attention today. The United States is frantically flaunting its military might around the world, but in fact, the US military's weaponry and equipment adequacy rate is getting lower and lower, on the one hand, because many US-made equipment has become relatively old, and on the other hand, it is also because the US military's actions are too high-intensity; in addition to the landing gear accidents of two types of fifth-generation aircraft, the US military even had four 22-class helicopter gunships crash in two months.
The F-22 stealth fighter has been in service for a very long time, but the United States is currently trying to extend the life of the F-22 stealth fighter, including adding IRST infrared search and tracking devices to these F-22 stealth fighters, which first appeared on the Russian-made Su-27 fighter, and the United States is trying to maintain the air superiority of the F-22 stealth fighter by upgrading the F-22 stealth fighter. Text/Iris