F-35 pilot held 50-minute airborne conference call with engineers before crash

> But those attempts failed to recenter the nose wheel and resulted in both the left and right main landing gears freezing up and not being able to extend fully to attempt an actual landing.

> At that point, the F-35’s sensors indicated it was on the ground and the jet’s computer systems transitioned to “automated ground-operation mode,” the report said.

And there wasn't a way to override that? I get that "manual mode" may not be a thing for a SaaS product that isn't critical, but there not being an immediate way to turn off the "drive mode" is quite surprising.

Potentially it happened so quickly the pilot had no way to respond before they lost control of the aircraft and had to hit the eject?

Still you'd hope transitions between major operation modes could have some manual confirmation. Is there some essential reason the aircraft has to automatically transition to 'automated ground operation mode' when it thinks landing is complete? Could you not just expect the pilot to punch a button to do it instead?

For airliners, it's critical for the aircraft to know when it's on the ground because it kicks on autobrakes, and unlocks the thrust reversers for landing.

I'm very curious what the reasons would be for a military aircraft

If either of those accidentally triggered in the air would anything catostrophic happen? Auto breaks I guess have no effect in the air as they break the wheels? Thrust reverse unlock sounds like it allows thrust reversers but the pilot would still have to manually activate them?

Someone else was talking about a WoW (weight on wheels) sensor that locks the landing gear down with no manual override but again doesn't sound like a catastrophic thing to accidentally trigger in air (indeed this particular aircraft had a landing gear that was stuck so a faulty WoW sensor wouldn't have made the problem worse).

This particular mode switch thing sounds like it does something to the flight control that immediately causes catastrophe if turns out you're still in the air.