That nose gear collapse is a perennial mishap in aircraft large and small. In this case it appears that the frangible nose gear towing pins that the tow bar hooks to sheared as advertised but unfortunately not before pulling the F-35's nose gear up. I notice that the towed F-35 starts to bounce noticeably in the seconds before assuming the Marine short field landing configuration. The gear pins are not installed for this tow, the large red flags would be very visible if they were.
In this case my initial guesses would be a miscommunication between the brake rider and the tow driver about whether to stop, an inadvertent application of the emergency brake in the F-35 or a hydraulic fault. I can think of incidents over the years where each of these were cited as the cause. I'm guessing Terry Pavlick has anecdotal knowledge of this subject from his work as well.
In August 1999 I was in the crew van in Singapore and we came across the mishap scene below moments after it happened. There was a maintenance procedure to pressurize the hydraulics for the nose gear door with the nose gear pinned so that it would not retract. SIN was an outstation with contract maintenance and they did not have a Boeing 747 nose gear pin. So, they took an Airbus pin, which is smaller, and attached a handle to it. What could possibly go wrong?
When the nose gear doors were cycled by raising the gear handle in the cockpit, one of the doors snagged the handle on the improvised gear pin and pulled it out. A mechanic (known as a 'ground engineer' in Singapore) saw what was going to happen next and departed the gear well moments before the nose gear collapsed. Nobody was hurt, thankfully, and I took out my new Nikon N950 digital camera and took a few pictures before airport security encouraged us to move along, 'nothing to see here folks'.
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