A retired military official is warning on Wednesday that China could claim salvage rights to an F-35 stealth fighter jet that crashed into the South China Sea earlier this week.
Carl Schuster, former director of operations at the US Pacific Command's Joint Intelligence Center in Hawaii, told CNN that China's likely game plan will be to capitalize on its territorial claims in the South China Sea and claim it's salvaging the craft for environmental purposes.
'Salvaging the plane with commercial and coast guard assets will enable Beijing to claim it is recovering a potential environmental hazard or foreign military equipment from its territorial waters,' the former Navy captain said.
The U.S. faces a race to beat Beijing in recovering the military plane after it plunged into the South China Sea on Monday following what the Navy termed a 'landing mishap' aboard the USS Carl Vinson.
The pilot was forced to eject and seven military personnel in total were injured.
But as the U.S. military works to recover the craft, Schuster warned that China 'will try to locate and survey it thoroughly using submarines and one of its deep diving submersible' to find it first.
The timeline for search and recovery could stretch across months, the retired military commander said.
Salvage ships could take between 10 to 15 days to arrive at their destination, he explained, after which point recovery could take as long as 120 days.
The Navy has not revealed where the crash occurred, and a vast majority of the waters have been claimed by Beijing.
The Chinese government has yet to make an official comment on the matter. DailyMail.com has reached out to China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Chinese Embassy in the United States.
Sailors taxi an F-35C Lightning II, assigned to the 'Argonauts' of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 147, on the flight deck of the USS Carl Vinson on January 22
At least one geopolitics expert believes China will be more cautious, despite the potential boon of classified technology the wreckage could present.
'To overtly go about doing this may risk worsening tensions with the US. I don't believe Beijing has stomach for that,' Collin Koh, research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told CNN.
He added: 'However, we can expect the Chinese to shadow, hang around and keep tabs on any such American salvage and recovery operation.'
The $100m warplane, customized for naval operations, plunged overboard - making it the second time in three months that an F-35 has been lost at sea.
'The U.S. Navy is making recovery operations arrangements for the F-35C aircraft involved in the mishap aboard USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) in the South China Sea, Jan. 24,' a spokesperson for the US 7th Fleet told DailyMail.com on Tuesday.
'We cannot speculate on what the PRC's intentions are on this matter.'
DailyMail.com has reached out to the 7th Fleet for an update to the search on Wednesday.
It leaves the Navy with a complex salvage operation if it is avoid its most sophisticated warplane, crammed with futuristic technology, falling into the hands of the People's Republic of China.
The F-35C is the only long-range stealth strike fighter designed to operate from aircraft carriers.
The pilot of the F-35C deployed his landing hook to catch the deck and stop his jet, but something went wrong and he ejected and skidded over the side
June 23, 2014: A USAF F-35A had a catastrophic engine fire caused by a fractured rotor which saw it turn into a blaze as it took off in Florida.
October 27, 2016: A US Marine Corp F-35B set alight mid-flight due to a fire in its weapons bay before the pilot landed safely in Beaufort, South Carolina.
September 28, 2018: All operational F-35s were grounded while a probe was launched into why a fuel tube failed in flight after a horror crash at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort in South Carolina.
April 9, 2019: Parts of the tail of a Japanese F-35 were found in the sea around 85 miles east of Misawa during a training mission.
May 19. 2020: This F-35 crash on landing was caused by a tired, distracted pilot and unresponsive tail glitch.
September 20, 2020: A F-35 stealth fighter jet fell out of the sky and exploded on the ground after hitting a KC-130J tanker in a mid-air collision near the Salton Sea in Imperial County, California.
September 20, 2020: A F-35 stealth fighter jet fell out of the sky and exploded on the ground after hitting a KC-130J tanker in a mid-air collision near the Salton Sea in Imperial County, California
November 17, 2021: An RAF F-35B toppled into the Mediterranean Sea after the pilot tried to abort take-off from HMS Queen Elizabeth. Early reports suggested its engine sucked in an are inlet cover.
January 4, 2022: South Korea grounded its F-35s after an F-35A suffered an in-air malfunction. Its pilot made an emergency belly landing when its landing gear failed to extend.
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It carries an arrestor hook - to help it land on aircraft carriers - and the expanded wingspan needed to be launched by catapult.
As well as its radar-avoiding design, it is crammed with sensors that beam updates directly to the pilot's helmet.
The Navy has yet to offer an explanation of what went wrong.
'An F-35C Lightning II assigned to Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 2, embarked aboard USS (CVN 70) had a landing mishap and impacted the flight deck and subsequently fell to the water during routine flight operations,' it said in a statement to US Naval Institute News.
'Impact to the flight deck was superficial and
