Today’s Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force depend on the F-35 as the workhorse of the modern American military. The loss of an F-35B over South Carolina will surely raise questions about the entire fleet.

The F-35B model used by the Marine Corps is one of three versions in service. The F-35B is the successor to the AV-8B Harrier jump jet and can similarly take off and land vertically or on a conventional runway. The A model used by the Air Force takes off and lands conventionally and is replacing older model F-15s, while the Navy’s F-35C is replacing the F/A-18 E/Fs in the fleet inventory.

While we don’t have any firm details on what happened, one possibility is that the F-35B was somehow hacked and taken down.