7mo ago

European countries deny claims Trump could cripple air force with F-35 ‘kill switch’

www.independent.co.uk

Summary

European nations refute claims that the U.S. has a "kill switch" for F-35 fighter jets, despite concerns raised after Trump suspended military aid and intelligence support to Ukraine.

While no evidence confirms such a switch, experts warn the U.S. could limit access to crucial software updates.

Belgium and Switzerland assert their F-35s remain autonomous but acknowledge reliance on U.S. data systems.

Set to receive 35 F-35s in 2026, some German politicians are questioning whether the purchase should have been made amid these concerns.

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Set to receive 35 F-35s in 2026, some German politicians are questioning whether the purchase should have been made amid these concerns.
Yeah, I'd probably at least question a purchase of 35 $100mil items when the seller casually states they can just arbitrarily make them stop working on a whim.
- Time to remove all the anti hacking tool laws and give nerds a go at the firmware for these things. Open source that shit and allow everyone to install a non backdoored version to their US equipment.
  
  Or just let the US know that if they're gonna tamper with your F35s you'll put one F35 in a box and ship it to China. They'll have a copy ready by next year and software cracked within the week
  
  This 100%.
  The US bullied the rest of the world into passing these anti-circumvention laws that make it illegal to modify the appliances you buy. Stick it to them and let us run our own firmware free of US cloud services.
  https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/15/radical-extremists/
Whether or not a “kill switch” exists is frankly rather immaterial. The fact remains that we control a LOT of the essential tech that goes into those things, and considering we’re basically turning into an adversary towards most of our former allies, it’s not a super great idea to have us be a core part of your logistics pipeline - especially when it comes to one of your most advanced strike fighter.
Sure, it’s great tech… but what happens when Trump decides in 6 months to stop shipping engines and engine parts and software updates and encryption keys and the myriad of little doodads that go into the thing? That’s right: it’ll stop working quite as well as it’s designed to, and ultimately will need to be grounded until operators can find a side-channel to get the things it needs (or replacement/aftermarket parts + software, though frankly I don’t think the second part is feasible, knowing the ludicrous size of the codebase that is absolutely for sure NOT something that can be easily or quickly replicated).
- That goes both ways though. Not every part of an F35 is made in the US. In fact, the supply chain is pretty spread out over a dozen countries.
  
  Oh, I know. That’s the funny part.
  And it’s deeper than that. Our military industrial complex has a SHITLOAD of customers in Europe by virtue of NATO system integration. I predict that American defense companies aren’t going to be winning any contracts amongst our (former?) allies for the foreseeable future. I furthermore predict that more than a few nations will eventually drop existing deals if we continue to be a massive dick to everyone - and we will, unfortunately, continue to be a massive dick to everyone.
  Idk maybe we’ll start selling shit to Russia…? That would be fucking wild. But I honestly wouldn’t put it past Trump, and congress is some combination of enthusiastically fascistic, abysmally stupid, or deeply, fundamentally, fecklessly useless, so I don’t expect they’ll actually stand up to pressure from our new dictator once push comes to shove.
- but what happens when Trump decides in 6 months to stop shipping engines and engine parts and software updates and encryption keys
  Soon we'll return to what was when Microsoft had a separate Windows NT 4 High Encryption release
- F35 is a major maintenance time sink. Something on the order of 10 mechanic-hours of maintenance for every flight hour. I've heard it costs something like 12k USD in maintenance just to start the engine and bring it to low idle.
  I suspect it would take a lot less than six months to ground a fleet when the spare parts get cut off.
  
  Spare parts are being manufactured in Europe too though. There's a big maintenance hub in The Netherlands and Italy is producing complete F35s. I'm sure Europe can figure it out if when the US goes completely off the rails.
  
  My understanding is that it's because it's new and they haven't optimized repair workflows yet (or hadn't at the time all that reporting was being done).
I don't like that Britain is buying American jets and that our subs are designed for US nukes. We can do both ourselves and we were once very good at it.
Maybe the Tempest project should be sped up considerably and we should be working on our own warheads at the very least.
We're just weeks away from Germany canceling the order followed by a same day announcement by Trump that Russia has agreed to purchase 150 of the F35s to replace those illegally lost to Ukraine.
Clip from the press conference in front of an American flag draped over the Statue of Liberty: Waves arms around like accordion
Trump: Many people say it's the biggest bestest deal in US history. Strong men, brave men in the Panagon have come up to me, tears in their eyes, saying to me 'Sir, we have never seen such amazing deal making in our lives, never could have imagined it!'
- You mean like Mirage 2000 or Rafale? France was right on this at least, they have their own jets, tanks, even nuclear aircraft carrier
- The Germans wanted that, but the US told them that their nukes stationed in Europe will only be allowed to be loaded onto a US-made jet.
  So in order to not lose a large part of the current nuclear deterrent, and to not strain relations with the US, one of Germany's closest allies, they agreed to buy the F-35.
- There are already some: Eurofighter, Saab Gripen, Dassault Rafale.
  Although I remember a news story from like 7 years ago, where Austrias new Eurofighter jets couldn't fly because they did not receive the GPS license from the US in time... So still dependent on the US, even for "domestic" jets, though that problem could probably be solved
- SAAB Gripen: Am I a joke to you?
  https://www.saab.com/products/gripen-e-series
I call bullshit on them being able to rule that out. The software is closed source and, even if they've reverse engineered it, amounts to ~8 million lines of code.
Edit: As far as I can tell, despite the headline they did not actually claim they have ruled it out.
I mean, having a kill switch would be pretty weird since it'll open the jet to cyber warfare. It would probably be it's weakest defence then.
They don't have the source code for the various firmwares, so they are saying that completely out of their ass so they don't look like they just got taken for a ride...
why in the absolute fuck would the United States want to cripple the European military?
- There is no "why" only the mad king's whim.
  
  I'm angry too but circle jerk comments like this are not very insightful
- Why would the US want to abandon Ukraine and undermine NATO by threatening EU countries that "don't pay enough"?
  
  So the US can pull their own troops out.
- I see a lot of discussions about why MAGA-fascists have flipped sides, but few talk about ideological alignment: they haven’t changed sides, they are just revealing their alignment with dictatorships. It’s workers against oligarchs, across the globe. This is the actual New World Order.
- Easier for Russia to either invade or exert power?
- Because they're besties with Russia now.
it doesn’t exists until it’s found.
They don't need to have a Killswitch. Just a transmitter for the f22s to lock on to.
- F22 is also stealth, plus higher thrust to weight, maneuverability and supercruise. It would swat the f35 in a dogfight, but now it's about locking on from miles away. The f32s radar is shrouded in secrecy, and though the f35s unit is 'newer', the us chose to keep one and sell the other to other nations, so I'd put my money on the f22.
plausable
Big if true

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