Trump’s behavior is shaking the confidence of his allies; he is said to want to keep his weapons in check.
“The ‘kill switch’ in the F-35 is more than just a rumor. But it’s much easier to do it using the mission planning system, then the plane stays on the ground,” Joachim Schranzhofer told Bild . The paper quotes the head of communications at the German defense company Hensoldt as saying he fears that US President Donald Trump could simply switch off the future German F-35 fighter jets if he wanted to.
The fear goes back to a statement made by Christophe Gomart to the French magazine Le Point . The MEP of the European People’s Party and former head of the French military intelligence service stressed that he considered European independence to be limited ; after all, the USA retains control of central systems of its weapons: countries that have equipment of American origin may not be allowed to use it without the consent of the US Department of Defense, writes the Greek Amyna News , representing many media outlets around the world.
There is also heated debate in military forums: “It is not surprising that a French politician speaks badly about the US competition and at the same time promotes the Rafale,” says user “Diogenes” in the security policy forum . However, there is no reliable evidence for Gomart’s claim. It is possible that the mission planning system could also be a European product, so that the purchasing states can maintain the greatest possible autonomy vis-à-vis the buyer.
“The United States does not need the limited economic benefits that come with arms sales – and certainly not the strategic headaches they bring.”
As the Bundeswehr Journal explained, a mission planning system supports the planning of safe flight paths and missions, the display of routes and missions on digital maps and the maintenance of real-time communication with military command. Civilian air movements, weather data and possible threats along the flight path are taken into account, according to the magazine. Events during the mission are recorded and then evaluated.
Ten years ago, German Eurofighters received such a system from a subsidiary of the European aerospace company EADS. “The mission planning system guarantees the real-time and secure comparison of all mission-relevant data before and after a mission,” explained Dr. Rolf Wirtz, head of the Cassidian “Mission Avionics” sector, to the Bundeswehr Journal . According to him, this would “significantly increase the safety of the pilots and the efficiency of operations.” Wirtz saw the advantage of nationally commissioning such a system in that it would allow the individual characteristics of the national armed forces to be included in the planning process, as he told the magazine.
However, in the face of claims such as the “kill switch”, one may actually ask what is left of the distinction that Chancellor Helmut Kohl ( CDU ) made on June 23, 1983 in his report on the state of the nation to the German Bundestag: when he differentiated between “friends in the West” and “our neighbors in the East.” Perhaps the friends in the West are now a little annoyed that Germany has always relied on them. With a “kill switch,” however, Donald Trump would probably have the whole of Europe under his thumb – if the “kill switch” even existed.
Aaron Spray describes the fighter jet, which costs up to 80 million euros, as the “fighter jet that everyone wants” and quotes Justin Bronks: “Despite the higher operating costs, every single air force that was able to compare the F-35 directly with its European and American competitors ultimately opted for the F-35 . Its ability to operate in contested airspace is simply in a class of its own,” said the analyst from the British think tank Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in the magazine Simple Flying .
Last August, Spray reported that the USA was only selling its F-35 fighter jet to hand-picked nations – for example, they had withheld it from Ukraine and fobbed it off with the F-16; and this was under a democratic government, after all. Requests from countries where the USA feared that the jets would be decrypted by Russian or Chinese spies were rejected, according to Simple Flying . The magazine puts Taiwan at the top of the list of the disappointed, closely followed by Turkey , which is a pillar of NATO ‘s defense on the Bosporus, but has alienated the USA by buying Russian S-400 air defense systems.
According to Simple Flying, the United Arab Emirates , Saudi Arabia and Qatar are also waiting for the delivery of the F-35s they ordered. The deal is apparently falling through due to concerns from Israel. The magazine also notes: “Although Israel is a very close ally, for example, the USA prohibits Israeli pilots with foreign passports from flying the aircraft.” In general, the USA is reacting cautiously to requests from countries that use Huawei’s Chinese 5G network. 19 countries have now bought the jet or are planning to buy it. Hungary is said to be among the undecided – however, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s sympathy for Vladimir Putin seems to be greatly dampening the USA’s willingness.
According to the analysts at the US think tank Cato Institute, the economic benefit of arms sales is questionable and their strategic benefit is far more uncertain and limited than most people believe, as they wrote; although they generally consider arms sales to be a useful foreign policy tool – but “in most cases” not the best way to achieve US foreign policy goals, as they make clear.
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