Japanese authorities have launched an underwater search and recovery operation in order to retrieve wreckage from a F-35A fighter jet that crashed in the Pacific Ocean earlier this week, Japanese Minister of Defence Takeshi Iwaya announced on Friday. Commenting on the matter, he stressed that the government wants to locate the crash site as soon as possible.
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At the moment, there is no information about the fate of the pilot.
The crash, meanwhile, has led Tokyo to ground all F-35 flights until the cause of the incident has been determined. Japan had initially ordered 42 jets but recently expanded the order to include another 100 planes with the additional order's cost estimated to exceed 1 trillion yen (nearly $8.9 billion), becoming one of the stealth jet's main foreign customers.