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Comment by umichguy | Hacker News Reader

Take the case of F-35, the only country which has source codes apart from the U.S. is the UK. A very special exemption. They are also the only Tier 2 partner.

Everybody else has basically a black box of code given to them in terms of code for the aircraft.

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The exported F-35 should be treated as leased aircraft. Owned by the bank but you're paying for it.

Welcome to Weapon Platforms as a Service. We can provide you with the newest toys at a bargain price, but you can't modify anything, and we reserve the right to remotely brick the hardware whenever we like. Because what else you're going to do? Spend many years and billions of dollars on building your own? While your neighbor just leased 20 fighters from us?

/s.

> Because what else you're going to do?

I’m pretty sure if a country were to do this now, they would also have plans to sabotage the effort

The UK is the only Tier 1 customer. There are multiple Tier 2 customers.

My bad - got it mixed up.

Kind of a sweet spot to be in. We sell you these fancy jets and if you decide to invade us, we flip a switch and they fall out of the sky. lol

More like if you decide to do a mission that we don't like we won't let you start the aircraft. The F-35s call home all the time to the US.

How true is that for other countries' aircrafts? I'm somewhat skeptical of your claim to be honest, seems like a easy decision to not buy at all- there is no knowing ehat teams would form in the kind of war that would need these aircrafts at full scale.

They don't "call home", they just "call out"- American jets are designed to work alongside allied air defense systems in order to prevent accidents.

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