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.
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.
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!’
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
China isn’t an ally of Europe. This would also be damaging us.
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
Conquer and divide Russia? Everything west of the Urals gets to join the EU, and everything east can uhhhh remain rural Russia, ally with Mongolia and China?
Hey if normal people are willing to do it with printers, I’d expect countries led by those people the same with their fighter jets
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.
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It hardly matters at this point. Europe, collectively or individually, should start working on their own jets. Just to be safe, or just to spite the orange cunt. Any reason is good, it’s high time anyway.
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
You mean like Mirage 2000 or Rafale? France was right on this at least, they have their own jets, tanks, even nuclear aircraft carrier
SAAB Gripen: Am I a joke to you?
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.
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?
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.
Easier for Russia to either invade or exert power?
Because they’re besties with Russia now.
They don’t need to have a Killswitch. Just a transmitter for the f22s to lock on to.
Isn’t the f35 all about stealth? Which one actually wins?
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
