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EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE— An Air Force F-16 chase plane crashed in a remote mountainous area of eastern California on Tuesday, killing both men on board. 

The crash was the fifth of an Air Force F-16 in as many months. 

The Lockheed Martin Corp.-built F-16B took off from Edwards Air Force Base at about 6 a.m. It was on a photo mission to record the test flight of another F-16 that was testing an air-launched missile radar decoy. 

It went down about an hour later in a valley some 30 miles east of the China Lake Naval Air Warfare Center. The F-16 it had been monitoring returned safely to Edwards. 

“The two air crew members have been confirmed dead at the scene,” Maj. Dennis Mehring said. 

Killed were Maj. Aaron George, a pilot with the 416th Flight Test Squadron, and Judson Brohmer, 38, of Tehachapi, Calif., a subcontractor aerial photographer. George’s age and hometown were not immediately available. 

It was not immediately clear whether the two had ejected from the two-seater jet before it crashed, Mehring said. 

A board of officers will investigate the crash of the roughly $30 million plane. It was the Air Force’s second F-16 crash this month and the fifth since March. 

On July 6, an Air Force pilot was killed off the coast of South Carolina while on a training mission out of Shaw Air Force Base. 

In June, an Air Force pilot was killed in a rural area of southern South Korea while on a training mission out of Kunsan. Witnesses said the plane hit an electricity pole before crashing into a rice paddy and exploding. 

In April, a pilot based at Misawa Air Base, Japan ejected safely before his plane crashed into the sea off the coast of northern Japan. 

In March, the pilot of an F-16 fighter out of Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico ejected safely before the jet crashed near a bombing range. The pilot, who was treated for minor injuries, told investigators the jet’s single engine failed during the routine training flight.