European countries deny claims Trump could cripple air force with F-35 ‘kill switch’
European countries deny claims Trump could cripple air force with F-35 ‘kill switch’
Reports Ukraine could soon be unable to properly use its US-supplied F-16 fighter jets have left Europeans concerned the same could happen to them
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.
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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.
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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
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I hate to break it to you, but China already stole all the data on F-35s years ago: https://www.reuters.com/article/business/theft-of-f-35-design-data-is-helping-us-adversaries-pentagon-idUSL2N0EV0T3/
And yes, I'm sure a lot has changed since 2013, but there have been numerous breaches since then, so it's silly to think they haven't conducted similar espionage operations in more recent years.
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I'm sure a lot has changed since 2013
I highly doubt that. The initial development phases of these things are so expensive and complicated. They probably dont change even a single screw unless it is absolutely necessary. All the replacement parts and repair training would be wasted if they constantly changed stuff.
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Hardware wise, I doubt much, if anything at all, has changed. But software and firmware most certainly has been updated. Part of what makes these platforms so powerful is their anti-radar, auto-targeting, and auto-identification capabilities.
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Having an actual functional f-35 to train against and have for testing countermeasures against would be very helpful though.
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China isn't an ally of Europe. This would also be damaging us.
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imagine if China did ally with europe though, they could put russia under their thumb within a year and eurasia would become the sole world power
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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.
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I have been linking this blog too much already so i didnt link it this time but yes, thats exactly what i was thinking about.
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