Trump Spoiled the F-35, America's Most Popular Fighter Jet | Hacker News Reader

Trump Spoiled the F-35, America's Most Popular Fighter Jet

nymag.com

19 pointsspeckx12 comments

If you were in a mission where an F35 can be replaced with a Rafale or Gripen, then you never actually needed an F35 - an MRCA would be more than enough.

If you expect to have the capacity to immobilize an S-300 array in Isfahan, Volgograd, or Pyongyang, then an F35 makes sense - and hence why the UAE, KSA, Qatar, Turkiye, Israel, Japan, and South Korea are trying to procure the F35.

The USP of an F35 is that it's a relatively cheap, "stealth" 5th gen fighter jet making use of integrated sensor input.

It also can be shut-off by a presidential order, and relies on cloud-based services, including security updates for its on-device Kubernetes cluster.

If something sounds like a fuck-up in the making, that's it, from the perspective of a country like Greenland.

> it's a relatively cheap, "stealth" 5th gen fighter jet making use of integrated sensor input

Yes, and as I pointed out in my example, it's not something that existing MRCAs are able to provide (it's a bodyframe plus composites issue), but for most buyers (especially in Europe) it never made much sense for the threat landscape they are facing.

Portugal was already on the fence, as they were looking at replacing their legacy F16 Fighting Falcon fleet [0], and an F-35 would have been unneccesary spend for that kind of a use case anyhow - hence why South Korea (Borhame) and Turkiye (Kaan) decided to build their own comparable versions of the F-16, and others such as the UAE and KSA decided to go with the Rafale or Eurofighter.

> relies on cloud-based services, including security updates for its on-device Kubernetes cluster

You don't need to use ALIS if you are using an F35.

For example, Israel chose to roll out their own interconnect (B-Net and IAI+Thales+BEL's Datalink) that they share with France and India, and are using a replacement in the F35 Adir. You never saw Israel complain despite Netanyahu's government publicly despising the Biden admin, because Israel began their own attempts at indigenization after the US-Iran talks began back in Obama 1.

The European countries that do use ALIS are those countries that do not have their own domestic interconnect (Netherlands) or don't want to buy from their French competitors (Germany)

[0] - https://euro-sd.com/2024/03/articles/37091/portugals-compreh...

Biased trash article w/ no substance.

Could you point out which parts of the article were incorrect?

> Nothing had changed about the plane’s performance. It’s just that, in the eyes of some international customers, the F-35 can’t fully be trusted anymore because of who is the commander-in-chief. Donald Trump has an affinity for authoritarianism, has exhibited poor treatment of NATO (whose Article 5 obligates collective defense), and, in particular, has threatened to annex Greenland and Canada.

Ignoring the biased language (affinity for authoritarianism.. lol), those reasons are not supported by their sources.

The qualms have been from the trade wars in particular, so leaders are using purchases of the F35 as a negotiating tactic.

Then the article attempts to intertwine software updates as reasoning, which is true, but has nothing to with Trump, as nothing has changed regarding that since previous admins.

I am glad to see people concerned about US military sales overseas though. Very important we keep that up /s

What about the famous “We like to tone them down about 10 percent, which probably makes sense because someday maybe they’re not our allies, right?” and the fact that USA recently withheld software updates for Ukrainian F16s? Is that not enough of a reason to think twice before buying advanced american weapons? Everything trump has been doing since he took the office aligns with russia’s long term goals. He is a traitor to freedom, democracy and his country.

Nor has the US aligned with Russia. Choosing to stop wasting billions of dollars propping up a Ukrainian dictator is hardly aligning with Russia. The US should be auditing the money dumped in Ukraine.

In the eyes of Europe you are most certainly aligned more with russia than with us now. Just a traitor country.

Europe doesn't dictate US policy. As for being aligned with Russia? It's Europe that is abandoning the foundations of Western Civilization, not the US. Further, the US has always been Europe's big brother that insured that no bad guys picked on them. It's time for Europe to grow up and defend itself or at least pay for what the US provides.

Can you tell me what the foundations of western culture civilization are in your opinion? And what is that US provides that Europe needs to start paying for? Europe paid for all military hardware purchased from US and the promise of protection has always been paid for with numerous military bases on European soil that are used by US to project force over the rest of the world. Especially the middle east.

I don't know, it seems pretty clear to me that it's the US that has departed Western civilisation and become just another repressive country with a big military like Russia or China.

To some extent it's fine if you want become a shithole country like those mentioned, but to insist at the same time that you maintain membership of the West and retain its mantle as its leader (or even more laughable, as "leader of the free world", that's far too much. You're not a Western country. Culturally far, far closer to an eastern despotic one, these days.

> US has always been Europe's big brother

History began in 1945 to you?

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