Originally Posted by
rickair7777
ATC radar may or may not be of any help, depending on if it had radar reflectors installed. I would suspect they would, for routine training, as a flight safety measure.
They're removed for real ops obviously, and some select exercises.
They (ATC) should have a pretty good idea where that jet plopped down from the M3/C track (always squawking in civil airspace) until it dropped below radar coverage, which is probably less than 1K AGL in that flat swampy area North of Charleston where he/she punched out. The NAS’s ability to solely skin-track any aircraft, let alone an F-35, is severely hampered without the “woobie” of IFF tracking.