It's fly-by-wire, far more likely a simple malfunction only made noteworthy because contact was lost with the aircraft (because it's Stealth) after the pilot ejected until the debris field was located.

Just read an article "with the latest" info on the events. The story as written states this is one of the Marine F35B's, which are capable of VTOL operations. They have Martin Baker ejection seats. The difference is that with the F35B, the seat can automatically deploy by itself, reasoning being the pilot may not be able to react fast enough during a VTOL landing mishap. Apparently, according to the article, this appears to be what happened and the ejection happened around 1,000 ft AGL and a mile north of charleston international airport. If the plane ejects the pilot and then continues on by itself for an hour at 1.000' AGL I can see how they lost it pretty quickly.

I'd be surprised if there was not at least an attempt to hide software in some chips somewhere in this machine.

I do not give the report any credence but will note that there is a "claim" floating around that the aircraft was conducting "hovering" maneuvers near some sort of militia training camp and was hit by .50 cal fire.

question:

IF
truly 1 mile from CHS ,
therefore, within TCA (Class B) controlled airspace to surface
(or even 1200 in outer ring)

1.) WHY no transponder or IFF transmission ?
2. ) Since over American soil, and presumably not on a "clandestine " mission-
why no ERIB or ELT?

(some ERIB's are programmable to fire upon ejection or BPS deployment)

Does make one wonder-
exactly what the plane/pilot were doing at the time of the incident.

My guess is the ELT would be attached to the ejection seat. 1 mile away at 1000 makes me think he was landing,logic would say you're definitely talking to approach at that point. Don't know why autopilot was on but practicing a zero zero approach would be plausible.

About the only thing we DO know is there's a lot of money riding on the F35, so odds of getting a straight answer out of anybody are never going to be good.

have not flown Uncle's equipment in decades-

once upon a time- yes, we (the spam) had ELT and
a small radio,
as well, the can had ELT/ERIB, etc-
which could be set to fireup at ejection (or so we were told)

it now appears this was a 2 ship sortie, in a "missed approach" scenario @ CHS in IFR ( low ceiling and heavy rain)
-with the wingman(or lead) aircraft taking over as RESCAP onsite recovery scene director/command (though not truly a "combat" sortie)

this "B" model has " auto-eject" in STOVL mode.
(to my knowledge the only AC in the inventory having this "feature")
&
there are rumors(some from USMCA ) that the craft's ALIS "possibly" was hacked
or
Hal,sent Dave out the Pod Bay Door

I don't know if it will turn out to be relevant but the Marine version of this aircraft, the F-35B, is equipped to eject the pilot automatically in certain circumstances. Apparently, when hovering, a loss of stability can make it turtle faster than human reflexes could react, resulting in a pilot ejecting himself into the ground.

Maybe he just got bucked off...