Is that a stated fact that somewhere that the US can remotely disable the f35s?
While I understand that f35 needs constant maintenance, tooling and spareparts, which are bought from the orange man, is the remotely disabling part assessed somewhere? Because I find it unlikely that partners would buy f35s if so
They don’t have a killswitch (for what I know) but softwate is updated all the time, for example you’d update the soft after an enemy encounter, because you have new information about how the enemy now.
Not doing so “degrades” the capability quickly compared to a fully functional jet.
Also, all attack plans are uploaded to the pentagon so they know where when what you are intending to strike. A no no if you don’t trust them 100% ir you don’t trust they’re professional (like sharing warplanes on unprotected devices hrmmm).
So basically it’s a shit system for any European IMO.
The head of communications at Hensoldt says it’s more than just a rumour
It is rather unclear.
The mentioned maintenance and hardware is one aspect. Another one the software suite. Buyers like Germany and UK claim that sensor fusioning is processed in national clouds, but e.g. Bundeswehr heavily relies on American infrastructure.
So I guess in the end there doesn’t have to be explicit kill switch if you can starve out the maintenance or software support (e.g. updates or processing)
Ditto Canada. We’re already contractually obligated to buy something like 16 of them, but Grippens are the way to go for the remainder.
What if we bought from China, just to scare the USA
