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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
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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
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Instead of the F-35, they are increasingly looking to European alternatives, such as the Eurofighter Typhoon and the Future Combat Air System (FCAS).
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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
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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. …
I’m curious what countries like Spain, Italy, and the UK will do. They all have smaller aircraft carriers that require short takeoff / vertical landing planes, a role currently being filled by the F-35B. I’m unaware of anything similar from other western aircraft manufacturers.
The Saab Gripen has had some studies around whether it would be possible to adapt to carrier operation. Several countries seem to have expressed interest, but no commitments have been made yet. From wikipedia:
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?
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.
Pentagon officially denies its existence, and the concept is seen as a security vulnerability. However, reliance on US-controlled software, mission data, and the supply chain for maintenance and upgrades means that the US could effectively disable a foreign operator’s F-35s by withholding these critical components over time. The Pentagon denies “a physical kill switch” but that’s just semantics, and the Pentagon lies every day.
We are simps for buying these planes.
You’re mistaking my correcting one common misunderstanding that gets spread about the F-35 for me somehow being a stalwart defender of the entire program. You can check my comment history and see that I’ve repeatedly expressed my feeling that we should kill the deal and get the Gripen instead.
But, as I’ve already laid out in replies to your other comments repeating the same claim, as well as several other comments I’ve made here, there is absolutely zero credible evidence that a “kill switch” exists, and a mountain of evidence for why it would be almost impossible to achieve such a thing without discovery, and for why no one would ever bother in the first place.
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.
Every version of this claim that I have ever seen has been flatly refuted or denied by every credible source.
If you’d like to offer a source for this, I’d love to see it.
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/u-s-f-35-fighter-jets-canada
No, there is not a big red flip switch but the operation of these aircraft 100% rely on only US made parts.
All they have to do is stop sending a critical wear part and the planes are junk. You are taking the “kill switch” literally , or purposely making a strawman argument. We cannot have F35s and have a sovereign air force.
From your source:
Emphasis mine. Countries can produce their own hardware replacements for the F-35; even without domestic manufacturing, we can source parts from any other country that has the F-35. The issue isn’t maintenance in the sense of keeping planes flying, it’s maintenance in the sense of keeping them relevant. And that’s a very real issue, and very real reason to consider shutting down the deal. But to call that a “kill switch” is to stretch the English language to absurdity.
To some people, credible sources on government shutdown is the democrats fault for wanting free healthcare for illegal immigrants.
Just because something 100% factual wants to be suppressed doesn’t make the suppression credible sources. While F35s are free for Israel, there would not be a demand to customize the electronics as a deal breaker to accepting free aircraft with the F35I. All denials that F35s are “permission to use” diguised tributes to empire are complete lies. Denying that there is a kill switch is a distraction that its advanced avionics/electronics work only through LM permission.
https://www.defensenews.com/air/2016/04/27/could-connectivity-failure-ground-f-35-it-s-complicated USAF concerns with the phone home system that Israel demanded to not be beholden to.
From your cited source;
…
(emphasis mine)
In short, the article you’re citing directly refutes your claim.
you are not reading your own quotes.
[I can] take a part and replace it …if I have the spares there
This is the claim I responded to:
That claim is, according to every source I have seen, entirely false. Humanspiral offered an article as a source to back up the claim, and I pulled out several quotes from the article that, rather than supporting the claim, directly refuted it. That’s what we’re discussing in this particular comment chain. Not whatever you’re bringing up.
My claim was never a kill switch or remote control/detonation switch. That is what scum denies to distract from the point that the advanced electronics systems ((ALIS) requires permission every time they are turned on. I am not denying that you can still make a sporty trip to Epstein’s Island with the plane, if Canada were to resell it to you.
No. It doesn’t. The article that you cited directly disproves that claim. I pulled several relevant quotes, in the comment you literally just replied to, which you apparently either didn’t read, or lacked the capacity to understand.
I’m happy to have someone disagree with me and show their arguments for why they think I’m wrong, but if you’re going to throw out sources you haven’t read, then refuse to read the relevant parts of those sources when I spoonfeed them to you, we’re past the point of “discussion” or “argument” and well into “I could literally have a more enlightening conversation with my dog.”
Citation needed.
There’s nothing similar stealth-wise, either, at least for that kind of aircraft.
It’s a really really good plane, like you’d expect from however many trillions spent in project money. It’s just that the Americans control the software running on it.
it’s not?
https://www.navylookout.com/us-watchdog-warns-of-growing-risks-to-f-35-programme/
“The U.S. Navy has faced numerous problems with the F-35, including significant issues with its high operating and maintenance costs, software and hardware deficiencies like overheating and landing gear problems, and complex supply chain challenges that impact readiness and delivery schedules. The F-35’s stealth capabilities require costly upkeep, its internal weapons can limit payload, and its reliance on software creates vulnerability to cyber threats. Additionally, some naval variants have experienced issues like structural damage from supersonic flight and difficulties with the helmet-mounted display during carrier landings.”
It’s a fucking lemon. We are better off with older gen planes we can independently maintain, because even the fucking US NAVY can’t get these planes to fly reliably.
It’s so effective in wargames it’s basically cheating. In the one actual deployment it’s seen it has an uptime as good as or better than older models. It now has a unit cost comparable to the Gripen, which is built in a much less high-tech way (for the sake of ruggedness and maintainability, on which it does still have the advantage).
I’m reading complaints here, but you can complain about anything. I’m not even clear on how many are current, since it had a very rocky development and the article is mostly about the Block 4 upgrades.
It’s a huge problem. There is no other fifth gen option available to NATO. The Gripen is one of the best choices out there, and it does have a lot of stealth and EWAR capabilities that other fighters lack, as well as really impressive radar, but that’s not the same thing as the kind of stealth that the F-35 and F-22 have.
On the other hand, I can absolutely see how the F-35 now presents an unacceptable security risk.
The good news is that Russia has nothing even close to the F-35, and its honestly unlikely that most of their stuff can even stand up to the Gripen. Their purported fifth gen fighter just isn’t. It has a radar cross section over a thousand times larger than that of any US fifth gen, that’s according to Russia’s bullshit propaganda numbers. And they’ve only made about 6 of those. The rest of their fleet is slightly upgraded cold war surplus, maybe at the level of the F-16 if you’re being really generous, and the Gripen wipes the floor with the F-16 in combat testing (Gripen pilots shoot down F-16s at a ten to one ratio IIRC).
If we assume that Russia is the main threat, then the Gripen will serve very well for now (at least for Canada, with no need for a carrier launch capability) until we can get a sixth gen fighter; Europe has two such projects in the works. If we assume the main threat is the US, then the F-35 would still be a bad idea, since even putting aside any issues with supply of firmware, they would know its capabilities and weaknesses intimately. China is the wildcard and we just don’t know what the capabilities of their craft are. OTOH its extremely unlikely that there would be a conflict with China that didn’t involve the US as the primary combatant, so I think that’s less of a concern for the rest of NATO.
I would be surprised if China doesn’t have an F-35 equivalent at this point, though realistically I think they’re betting on their ability to backdoor and take down adversary electronics as being part of that ‘stealth’ solution.
Shengyang J-35, which American propaganda says is not as good, but I seriously doubt that.
Well, we know that they do, but we don’t know very much about its real capabilities.
However I don’t think there’s any realistic way to backdoor a fighter jet in flight. That’s one of the myths that was being pushed by people like Burton and Sprey because they were opposed to any kind of advanced technology in a fighter plane. We’re talking about people who literally thought that planes shouldn’t have radar.
In reality, these things aren’t flying around hopping WiFi. Every single electron of communication into and out of a stealth fighter is more tightly controlled than gold bars in Fort Knox. There’s basically no more tightly controlled communications and electronics platform in the world than an airborne F-35.
you guys are taking kill switch too literally. They cannot have a software kill swith OTA, because that would be too vulnerable.
F-35s burn through parts that need changing almost every flight, they could be disabled easily just by not sending parts. These are the most expensive aircraft in history to maintain, the insane price tags are just the start.
Countries can make their own parts for the F-35. It’s firmware the US controls, not hardware.
I’m nitpicking a bit, but like you mentioned, China and Russia have limitations. I don’t really buy that the J-20 is on the same level, and the Russian thing is an actual joke. So, “to anyone”.
EWAR sure, but it’s totally unstealthy AFAIK. Survivability would depend on hitting something, landing in a field and getting back onto a truck before a counterattack can arrive. Which works for SAM units and artillery, I guess.
Which, maybe we should just invest in SAM units and sensors, honestly, if we’re worried about a hostile US. I’m guessing it’s a lot more cost effective, and would be nearly as effective early in a defencive conflict. The other medium-term option would be a jailbroken F-35 of some kind, but that’s only possible once the alliance is well and truly dead. All the physical parts are available from somewhere else.
It’s not “stealthy” in the same way that am F-35 is, but it’s got a few tricks to minimize its overall emissions profile, mess with enemy detection systems, and generally be harder to pick up than, say, an F-16. I’m not suggesting that this is anything close to the level of stealth that an F-35 or F-22 offer, but it is an advantage over other 4th gen craft.
No other aircraft can do it as of now. A potential VSTOL derivative of the Tempest?
The royal navy doesn’t even have the aircrafts for its 2 carriers. The entire UK military is notoriously underfunded even in critical aspects like SSBN. Not likely to fund a new aircraft.
Italy and Japan both already have their F-35Bs for their carriers. It’s hard to see them ditch multi billion investments.
Korea might get a STVOL Carrier eventually but they are involved with lockeed on other projects, and operate F-35A already. so they are likely to get F-35B as well.
I mean outside of Spain I don’t see who needs an F-35B alternative. Spain lacks a proper aviation industry but maybe they could keep on getting upgrade packages for their Harrier II for a few more decades. Who knows? Maybe in 20 years strategic alliances will have shifted and Chinese airframes will be on the table.
People who criticize lack of military spending don’t get math.
You want a well funded military? Easy, drive the country into $38T debt and take all the tax money for it while letting people starve or die from lack of health care. So you end up defending a sick shit hole country.
Sure I agree with that. It’s a big part of why the USSR failed bloated military spending while the people struggle to eat. Most authoritarian government for that matter.
Here, tho, I am speaking through the lens of the country’s own ambition. The UK want to play big boy super power with two carriers. Okay. Then if that’s the case not allocating enough budget to buy 2 carriers worth of aircraft means that :
But I was not even arguing at any point in here to raise military budgets. I’m brainstorming who could need a F-35B alternative.