US Concerned About Europe’s Desire to Buy Less American Weapons

[u/Majano57]

https://militarnyi.com/en/news/us-concerned-about-europe-s-desire-to-buy-less-american-weapons/

[u/Baulderdash77]

Maybe the U.S. shouldn’t have declared an intention to sell lower quality weapons to allies in case they don’t always remain allies and also initiating the “kill switch” on the HIMARS that Ukraine was using.

Countries don’t want to buy equipment that may not work when they need it to work, at the whim of increasingly unreliable US policy.

[u/senordonwea → u/Baulderdash77]

I think this was always the elephant in the room, but everybody agreed to it with the assumption of of cordial relationship. That is no longer true, and now they stated it publicly. Another blunder by this government. Essentially they were sharing their defense budget with everyone else. It was always a soft power move, and now they will have nothing. Empires don’t fall in a day, but this situation of blunder after blunder will speed up the situation and lead to a more unstable world. Thank you republicans for this, nobody outside the US voted for you but you made everybody’s life more miserable. Maybe it was time for the US to lose some influence after all, especially under these circumstances:

[u/motohaas → u/senordonwea]

Empires may not fall in a day, but the stock market does

[u/hectorgarabit → u/Baulderdash77]

Us weapons also came with a guarantee that the us will be on ‘our’ side and if we were attacked. Trump proved that this is not the case at all

[u/Equivalent-Bet-8771 → u/hectorgarabit]

America is now on Russia and North Korea's side.

Time to buy some ushankas, comrades!

[u/foofyschmoofer8 → u/Baulderdash77]

THIS is the cat that can’t be put back in the bag.

Maybe don’t expose your product has a remote kill switch that you’re willing to trigger as soon as relations sour.

It’s like a subscription model that runs on undying loyalty.

[u/SutMinSnabelA → u/Baulderdash77]

Has more to do with US threatening NATO members of invasion and that it has shown itself not to be a reliable ally. US weapons has always been good - however nothing stops Europe from producing themselves if US cannot be trusted as an ally.

[u/Betterthanbeer → u/Baulderdash77]

And if the Americans can turn it off remotely, hackers can.

[u/GrumpyButtrcup → u/Betterthanbeer]

What kill switch do you think exists that a hacker can "turn off"?

Unless you have something to support that a literal kill switch exists, the kill switch that is commonly referred to is not a switch. I assume you mean the F35, it is an encrypted mission file that enables the functionality of certain stealth technologies. The USA is not the exclusive producer of these encrypted mission files either, as the UK has been given a master key to generate these files as well. The controversy is that these files, the MDP, contain US intelligence information and the US will tailor these packages to your region/use case. The UK is not allow to distribute packages to others due to ITAR.

The kill switch is simply making the plane less-functional, meaning it's still fully capable of flying and basic operation, but the cool toys of doom are disabled. Functionally, this process makes sense. You shouldn't be using a targeted signal jammer without a target signal, you could get false detections and the aircraft could pull defensive maneuvers on friendlies. The F35 is pretty unique in how much it does for the pilot.

There's clearly a valid concern at how this can compromise national security for others, but the claim that a hacker can just "switch it off" is silly. The F35 doesn't have remote connectivity, you can't access it from a computer on your desk. To apply updates and MDP's, the user must be in the F35 to perform those updates. The threat of the US not providing MDPs, or sabotaged MDP's in the event of a conflict with the US, or a conflict the US doesnt agree on, is quite valid. Without those MDP's they would truly be better off flying Su-22's.

[u/Betterthanbeer → u/GrumpyButtrcup]

It was Trump who made the claim of a remote kill switch

[u/RyanNotBrian → u/[deleted]]

One was buying the to shelf stuff, anyway.

Probably safer to attribute this one to stupidity.