Good thing the pilot manage to escape. I could never imagine something like this happening with a plane in good condition!
Apparently the flight computer took a dump, the (C)F-18's need the computer to work properly in order to stay airborne, otherwise they are not flyable (The system is called fly-by-wire)... In fact just about every fighter developed in the last 30 years or so is that way. In order to make the plane faster and more manouverable they have to alter the body and wing shapes, but this makes the plane very unstable at low speeds. The computers are constantly adjusting things to stay airborne.
Anyway, with that said, most of these planes in the Canadian military are 20+ years old. We just spent 16 billion dollars on some F-35's, though
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