Safety concerns raised after a US F-16 crashes in Yellow sea waters off South Korea

Following the death of eight US airmen in the crash of an Osprey aircraft near a Japanese island last month, there are now fears for safety as a US F-16 fighter appears to have crashed into Yellow Sea waters off the coast of South Korea. Following takeoff Monday morning from Gunsan, some 180 kilometers (110 miles) south of Seoul, the F-16 crashed into the sea, according to Yonhap News Agency, which cited unidentified sources. It stated that the pilot had been rescued from the sea, had ejected, and was conscious. A request for comment was not immediately answered by US Forces Korea. The US military eventually grounded all several hundred of its Osprey aircraft after one of the aircraft crashed off the southwest island of Yakushima. This was done to investigate the possibility that an equipment malfunction may have contributed to the accident, according to military officials. Prior to the decision to ground the fleet, the Japanese government had requested that US military personnel stationed there halt operations of the Osprey, which is manufactured by a division of Boeing Co. and the Textron Inc. unit Bell Helicopter, in order to conduct inspections. The Osprey is a tilt-rotor aircraft that can fly like an airplane and land and take off like a helicopter. The crash in Japan brought this aircraft back under investigation. A major Pentagon review and subsequent design changes for the aircraft that served in Iraq and Afghanistan were brought about by a string of early setbacks and accidents, particularly in 2000 when two crashes claimed the lives of 23 Marines.