F-35 tail pipe fire? Ok but why? Is it solved?

via Defense Tech.

“The initial feedback from this is it was not an engine fire; [investigators] are calling it a tailpipe fire,” said Brig. Gen. Scott Pleus, a former F-16 Fighting Falcon pilot who directs the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program’s integration office for the Air Force.
“A tailpipe fire is a result of some form of fuel getting ignited in the back-end of the airplane that is not necessarily in the engine, so this was not an engine problem. There was some excess fuel that pooled in the back of the airplane and then ignited” before takeoff, he said in an interview with Military.com on Wednesday.

Story here.

What is going on with defense journalism today?  No one thought to ask the good General how or why fuel would pool in the tailpipe?  Obviously this isn't an ordinary thing or we'd see tailpipe fires all over the place so that question seems obvious.  Additionally no one asked about maintenance practices or preflight checklists that failed to catch this before flight?  I've never worked on a plane but I've seen crew chiefs basically stick their entire heads into tailpipes (and even do crazy eyeball exams on the nozzles of the Harrier) before the planes take off.  After that the pilots do a walk around too...so WTF happened here?

We're seeing a couple of things going on here.  First we expected the professional defense journalist to keep the Generals, program office, Pentagon and Lockheed Martin's feet to the fire when it came to the most expensive defense project in history.  The second is more troubling.  We have leadership from 3 of the services not being actual and factual about the issues with this airplane.

We're seeing a HUGE scandal here and the ramifications of this will be with us for decades.