I discover the crashed F35 in my lone walk in the woods. As I start to take it apart for parts, a woman catches me. She tells me to stop. It's her father's business. She's Lockheed. I say no. We make love all night. In the morning, the feds come and I escape in one of their uniforms. I tell her to meet me in Mexico, but I go to Canada. I don't trust her. Besides, I like the cold. Thirty years later, I get a postcard. I have a son and he's the chief of FBI. This is where the story gets interesting. I tell Lockheed to meet me in Paris by the Trocadero. She's been waiting for me all these years. She's never taken another lover. I don't care, I don't show up. I go to Berlin. That's where I stashed the F35
turns up with weirdly f35 fighter jet shaped stomach.
No, officer! I have never seen any jet, none at all! Nope, not a single tasty fighter jet around here! hic
Ha, I thought nobody would ask. It probably will be quite a disapointing story though, sorry.
Anyway, I was on holiday in Slovakia and basically, they just have old sovjet jets sitting around. We visited a very small "airport" (the runway was grass) used for skydiving. And they just had a MiG-21 sitting behind the building. No fence or anything. One of the Skydiving company staff said I can sit in it, if I want. So I did. He didn't come with me or anything. It was also out if sight from anyone on the airfield.
Apperently this isn't unusual at all and these planes are just sitting around in random fields as "decoration".
Knew you meant it as a joke but i thought it interesting to share that Fighters don't have a simple "start" button, here's a F-16 startup sequence for reference.
Most of that isn't involved in actually starting the plane.
They are things that would be good to have done to fly safely. Something analogous to turning on and tuning the radio in a car. You can absolutely start the engine and drive the car without doing that.
Ejection seats often cause career-ending musculoskeletal injuries to the lumbar spine and hips. It's is a very violent way to leave an airplane, but much less violent than the alternative.
Since it tricked the pilot into ejecting, I assume it's gone feral and is still buzzing around looking for a mate. If I didn't have a big net to snag it in, I'd have to build a wooden decoy or perhaps just leave a paddling pool full of jet fuel out in a clearing. I'd keep my distance at first and try to gain it's trust.
Use it to fly back home, realize I don’t know how to fly. I’d assume crash after that, but there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be able to figure out how to turn it on, in which case I’d take a bus.
If perfect: I'd totally try flying it. Probably crash, but it would be worth it to see how good all those flight sims where I've flown an F-35 stand up to reality.
Loot it for cool stuff, then just walk away and call nobody, because it’s not my problem. Calling someone would basically be volunteering for an interrogation. Fuck that noise.
Grab any modular electronics, charter a boat to the Bahamas, divert to Cuba after stashing them on a deserted island along the way. Use a thumb drive of pictures to bargain for the gps coordinates to China.
Unless I thought of something better along the way.
China has probably gotten more from their various intel ops in the US supply chain. There isn't a lot they could get in the field without risking serious repercussions.