this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2025
286 points (99.0% liked)

Canada

10730 readers
253 users here now

What's going on Canada?



Related Communities


🍁 Meta


🗺️ Provinces / Territories


🏙️ Cities / Local Communities

Sorted alphabetically by city name.


🏒 SportsHockey

Football (NFL): incomplete

Football (CFL): incomplete

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer


💻 Schools / Universities

Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.


💵 Finance, Shopping, Sales


🗣️ Politics


🍁 Social / Culture


Rules

  1. Keep the original title when submitting an article. You can put your own commentary in the body of the post or in the comment section.

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca


founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Archived link

  • European nations and Canada are “pushing away” from the F-35, motivated by a desire for “strategic autonomy” and political friction with the Trump administration

  • Spain officially canceled its F-35 purchase in August 2025, opting for European-built alternatives. Switzerland is now also reviewing its 36-jet deal after being hit with a “shocking” $1.3 billion price hike and new 39% U.S. tariffs, and recent reports suggest that Portugal has not opted to purchase the U.S. jets

  • Instead of the F-35, they are increasingly looking to European alternatives, such as the Eurofighter Typhoon and the Future Combat Air System (FCAS).

  • Canada’s 88-jet deal is also in “limbo,” as PM Mark Carney, angered by Trump’s “51st state” comments and trade disputes, ordered a review of the 72 un-committed jets

  • Technological and industrial sovereignty are significant reasons why some countries are opting not to purchase the F-35. Some European nations prioritize developing their own defense industries and technological bases. Buying American-made F-35s would make them dependent on US supply chains and could suppress the development of their own next-generation aircraft programs. ...

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] cassandrafatigue@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 4 weeks ago (18 children)

Well, there's the very real possibility of having to fight the americans, who install kill switches and make everything proprietary so you can't make your own parts.

So, go without planes, or pay your most likely military enemy for the privilege of going without planes?

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (17 children)

No credible expert believes that the US has any kind of "kill switch" in the F-35, for the record. Such a system would be almost impossible to completely conceal from the engineers who would have to maintain these planes in service and the risk of that being discovered and instantly tanking the entire project would far exceed any benefit. Remember, the point of the F-35 was to arm the whole of NATO with a single attack fighter. The US benefited plenty from the project as it was, they didn't need to install kill switches, and back under Bush and Obama there was zero motivation for them to do so. People forget how long projects like the F-35 take. They didn't just start building this thing yesterday. The plane first entered production in 2006, and that was after a lengthy design and development phase stretching back well into the nineties.

The concern is not that there might be a "kill switch", but that the US insists on controlling the supply of firmware updates, which would represent a serious risk in its own right, not in a "planes falling out of the sky" way but definitely in a "We can continue to upgrade our planes while locking you out of upgrades" way. It's the sort of thing that, if applied over a decade, could create a serious capability gap between the US and anyone else with the F-35.

NB: To clear up another point of confusion, it is very specifically the firmware that the US controls. Everyone can make their own parts, but they have to load US firmware onto those parts. This another reason why it would be basically impossible to conceal a kill-switch; everyone has the full technical package, they know what's in this thing. Even a tripwire hidden in the firmware would still need some means to be remotely activated, which would be very obvious. This is a stealth plane, all forms of communication in and out are very, very tightly controlled. You can't just slap an extra radio in there.

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 weeks ago (13 children)

No credible expert believes that the US has any kind of “kill switch” in the F-35, for the record. Such a system would be almost impossible to completely conceal from the engineers who would have to maintain these planes

A kill switch strawman implies crashing the plane in mid air. It is fully 100% confirmed that every single time you turn the plane on, your plane talks with Lockheed Martin in order to obtain permission to turn on. Israel, by coincidence, is the only country allowed to bypass this permission loop, with a special version of the F35.

Any country not a slave colony of the empire would demand the same ownership functionality instead of disguising their colonial tribute with useless military hardware.

[–] spamspeicher@feddit.org 2 points 4 weeks ago

fully 100% confirmed

Citation needed.

load more comments (12 replies)
load more comments (15 replies)
load more comments (15 replies)