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Comment by estearum | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised no one is mentioning this, and the fact the article says this is the second of such incidents...

I don't know if this is what actually happened, but it would appear to be a very effective method of sabotage... Simply putting some water in the hydraulic fluid container destined for an F35 is an extremely high risk-adjusted ROI for any saboteurs.

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For counterbalance to this point, it is very common for water to get into hydraulic fluid. Moisture from air condenses in containers when they transition from hot to cold environments.

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That’s interesting. Can this effect pretty easily achieve the reported 30% water content?

It would depend on how many months the barrel was subjected to thermal cycling. A more likely cause would be a technician leaving the cap off the barrel during a rain storm (noted in the report).

Sabotage vs incompetence is a tricky question to balance. The DoD has undergone a lot of controversial leadership changes recently, and it is entirely likely that people have now been promoted beyond their level of confidence.

> very effective method of sabotage.

No need for sabotage on the F-35. It's perfectly capable of destroying itself without any third-party interference.

The F35 is deployed at scale and has fairly normal accident rates for a new, maintenance heavy plane. You just don't hear about every single F16 that crashes.

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