I’ve seen a few articles now that US fighter jets have kill switches in them, so the US could just render them useless for anyone they’ve sold them to.
Is this true? It sounds insane to me, I’ve always assumed that countries that buy these jets have full control over them. It’s a gaping hole in your defence if you don’t.
They don’t need them.
Stop selling spare parts and they will soon be useless.
They are incredibly maintenance intense even in peace time. In wartime even more so because even minor combat damage adds up.
Iran bought 79 F-14 in 1974. Revolution and arms embargo 1979. In 1984 they had 15 airworthy planes kept in shape by taking parts from other F-14s.
They have since got some spare parts from hostage deals and the black market. Probably reverse engineering too so they have about 40 of them flyable. But the 5 first year has 80% of the fleet grounded should say something about it.
I’m pretty sure it isn’t true and assume Trump misunderstood a general explaining gleefully that since the US manufacturers repair parts any country at war with America would quickly find its fleet inoperable due to the immense constant maintenance required for these planes.
But, the President claiming there is a kill switch should cause all purchasing countries to cancel their orders - if such a switch exists then there’s a backdoor somewhere in the software and the US sucks balls at espionage so China knows how to trigger it.
Tanks and fighter jets are becoming less relevant. The war in Ukraine underlines how drones are changing everything. They’re cheaper to manufacture (or buy/retrofit) and just about everybody can make or reverse-engineer them.
The barrier to entry is so low in fact that I worry about the day when terrorist groups begin to deploy them in major cities.
The barrier to entry is so low in fact that I worry about the day when terrorist groups begin to deploy them in major cities.
We already have auto-tracking drones. They can lock onto a person and follow them around. The intended use is to allow live streamers and YouTubers to be able to stream/record video by simply sending the drone out. But if it can automatically track and follow a person, it can likely be reprogrammed to automatically home in on a person. And at that point, it’s just a matter of strapping some C4 to it. It would be the ultimate fire-and-forget weapon. Program it to ignore anyone with your military uniform (or find some other anti-tracking feature, like an IR reflector that the drone can see,) and you could surgically strike an entire neighborhood with a swarm of them.
Their tracking capability sucks though, what you see in the promotional vids is now what they’re capable of.
The struggle to keep up with someone lightly jogging
Same way you can buy a car and it can be remotely disabled by the company that made the car if they want to.
Always online always connected products are never truly 100% yours to own and do with what you please.
This is why the early 2000s Honda Civic will continue to be the pinnical of cheap transportation until the end of time
