Well, they certainly have the ability to manufacture those parts themselves, but you’re absolutely correct that they would have to deal with a massive disruption to their existing supply chain. If they didn’t take the appropriate measures well ahead of such a drastic step it certainly would ground the fleet for quite a while, until they got domestic production sorted out.

Ground based. This doesn’t exclude it having components onboard the aircraft.

And yes, fundamentally, tracking inventory and maintenance requirements is all it does. I apologize if I oversimplified the details a little too much, but I’m trying to keep things readable and not get bogged down in details, and it wasn’t relevant to my point. And if you’d thought about it a little longer you’d quickly realise that it’s not relevant to whatever point you seem to be trying to make either.

ALIS includes a component that is carried aboard the plane and provides telemetry. Fact freely granted.

And entirely irrelevant to the notion I was addressing. The fact that ALIS transmits information from the craft is not germane to the point that it cannot be used to affect the operability of the craft - and that’s according to the people who actually use and maintain these systems. I’m not making these claims; the experts are.

But none of that occurred to you because you are so desperate to try to find some kind of conspiracy theory here. To the point where even bothering to write this reply is pointless, because I can only assume that you’ve decided that I’m some kind of deep cover CIA agent here on direct orders from Steven Miller.

It is fucking exhausting talking to you people. I genuinely cannot comprehend the insane degree to which any tangential detail gets fantasized and catastrophized into an elaborate work of Tom Clancy fan fiction.

I don’t even like Carney all that much, and I still feel sorry for him having to interact with that moronic piece of shit. Imagine having to have a phone call with a world leader just so that you can explain to them that everything they said on their crappy twitter clone was wrong.

Also the idea that there is no possible way to sabotage these planes via technology is comical.

Now this is a classic example of making a completely different claim than the person you’re responding to, then countering that, and acting as if this means you’ve countered any of their claims. Peak bad faith argument. Well done.

Joachim Schranzhofer, the head of communications at German defense company Hensoldt informed the local media outlet Bild

Here’s the source that previous poster failed to include for this part: https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/german-policymakers-concerned-american-kill-switch-disable-f35

That article is largely a pile of meaningless sensationalism with very little in the way of meaningful claims. All of it more or less boils down to this;

with analysts specifically observing that the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS) system which is heavily centralised in the United States could easily be used to disable the fighters.

This is a claim that’s been repeated a bunch in the armchair general circuit, but without any of the actual context, and mangled beyond recognition from what the original sources say. ALIS cannot “ground” a plane in the sense of “Prevent it from taking off at the press of a button.” It’s a logistics management system. All it does is track parts orders. The US could shut people out of it, which would be a massive pain in the ass, but it wouldn’t actually prevent planes from flying.

Here’s a source that actually digs into a little better: https://www.defensenews.com/air/2016/04/27/could-connectivity-failure-ground-f-35-it-s-complicated/

First, some context (from the article) on what ALIS actually is:

ALIS, often called the backbone of the F-35 fleet, is an information technology hub that is used to plan missions, track aircraft status, order spare parts, and manage sustainment of the plane. By contrast, legacy aircraft use several standalone systems to perform these daily functions. ALIS is the first system of its kind to manage daily squadron operations, track sustainment trends and protect sovereign information — all in one hub, according to Dave Scott, vice president of training and logistics solution business development for Lockheed Martin Mission Systems and Training.

When the previous poster’s quote source talks about the mission planning system, this is what they’re referring to (I’m going to skip right past their assertion that the kill switch “is more than just a rumour” because the article presents this claim with absolutely zero evidence, context, or expansion; it’s just thrown out there and treated as gospel truth. Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence).

Anyway, from the article I cited;

Losing connectivity to ALIS would be a pain, but hardly fatal, the JPO contends. If jets are unable to use ALIS — a ground-based system that provides sustainment and support, but not combat capabilities for the jet — the F-35 is still a usable plane. In fact, the worst case scenario would be that operators would have to track maintenance and manage daily squadron operations manually, just as older jets do.

Emphasis mine. ALIS cannot “ground” planes, it can only make it harder to maintain them. And only to the extent that it’s already hard to maintain existing planes like our CF-18s. This is a solved problem. We know how to do this. It’s not a magic kill switch, it can’t shut anything off. It’s just an inventory management system.

Again, you’re claiming that every single country in NATO missed this. All of them.

That’s insane. If you’re still pushing this line of reasoning I have nothing else to say to you. I can only assume you also believe that COVID 19 was a Canadian Military psy-op, the moon landings were faked, and that lizardmen from the hollow earth secretly control all the world governments.

It’s a waste of money if your primary goal is defending against the US, yes. Which is another reason why all the handwringing about how the US could potentially compromise the F-35 is really kind of silly. Truth is, if they wanted to attack us, they wouldn’t need any kind of magical “Kill switch”, they could just rely on old fashioned air superiority.

I’m still a huge advocate for signing a deal for the Gripen anyway (as stated above, I like the mixed fleet idea the best), because it gives us a lot of economic advantages, allows us to become an exporter of fighter aircraft to the rest of NATO and numerous other countries, and starts building up domestic air production that can then be converted to putting out Saab’s new 6th Gen fighter when that’s finally ready for prime time.

But if we consider our biggest realistic air threat to be Russia - Note that I said “biggest”, not “only”, trust me I am in no way dismissing the threat of a potential US invasion (in such an eventuality I’m on the list of people who die or get arrested in the first 8 hours, I do not fucking need to hear it) - then yes we absolutely do need the ability to patrol our own skies, especially if we end up in what is still the more likely geopolitical scenario right now, which is that the US abandons any notion of defence obligations to their allies as they grow increasingly isolationist.

A contingent of, say, 40 F-35s doesn’t sound like a lot, but when those 40 planes have the ability to shoot down anything Russia can field without even being seen, that actually makes a massive difference in their ability to operate in our airspace. Right now Russia barely has 4th gen craft. The Felon is a lie wrapped up in a cool video package; it’s radar signature is fucking massive, and we’ve seen from Ukraine that Russia’s own radar capabilities are mediocre at best. And they have, optimistically, 6 of them. Anything else they have is so far outclassed by the F-35 that it would be like Challenger 2s going up against T-55s in Iraq. That’s a hell of a lot of deterrence for comparatively little cost really.

Have you noticed the very large, very aggressive expansionist autocracy on the other side of the arctic circle from us? Do you consider that maybe they might also be a potential threat?

Having a plane that massively outclasses everything in Russia’s fleet is not a bad idea, no matter what is happening to the south of us. A mixed fleet hedges our bets, giving us responses to both of the biggest threats we’re facing right now.

There are no F-35 parts only sourced in the US. Every country in the F-35 program has the ability to manufacture parts. The only thing the US controls is the firmware. The US can’t lock us out of buying or building replacement components, they can only lock us out of getting newer firmware updates (eg, we can still use the firmware we have, just can’t get anything past the point where they decide to cut us off).

Now that’s a completely valid concern; being cut off from firmware updates would seriously degrade the capability of that part of our fleet over a long enough time horizon, which is one of the reasons why we’re considering taking on a large order of Gripens as well. But it’s not a “Stop your planes from flying” scenario. Even without the latest firmware we’d still be able to put an F-35 in the air and have it engage and destroy targets.

You know, I did actually try to head off this line of reasoning by pointing out that a) we have the entire technical package, and b) there are no extraneous communications going into or out of a stealth fighter, of any kind.

Like, buddy, I really did try to give you all the pieces. I was like “Do I need to spoon feed ALL the conclusions? No, they’re a smart enough person, they’ll figure it out.”

No, that is not a remotely practical idea. First, no one is just accepting whatever random signals they get sent while flying a stealth fighter, or indeed any kind of fighter. Electronic warfare has been a thing for as long as integrated circuits have, we’re not idiots.

But more importantly, any capability you put in firmware has to ultimately talk to the hardware. There has to be an actual lever to pull, somewhere. It’s not magic. And firmware isn’t like the software on your phone; it’s not a general purpose computer. You can’t just run an app. There’s no kernel to allocate resources. Every single component on the F-35 has its own firmware, that runs that component, and the ability for those components to communicate with each other is strictly limited to what can actually be communicated at a hardware level. At some point any kind of “killswitch” would ultimately require hardware capabilities that would be obvious to anyone with the technical package, because those are exactly the kind of cascade failures that you would want to make impossible in the event that there was, say, an entirely normal, non-malicious bug in the firmware. You build these things to be failure proof, which makes it very hard to then sneak in ways to deliberately make them fail.

And I think the part that, above all else, you really, really need to wrap your head around is that we’re not idiots. Canada is an extremely technically capable nation. We didn’t buy this thing without experts reading the specs. And those same specs were read by experts from every other country in NATO, and none of them believe this kill switch myth is real.

So basically your theory stands on the assertion that you - John or Jane Internet User from Fucking Wherever - have, with zero access to any of the technical data, spotted a danger that all of the experts from every country in NATO missed, throughout the entire thirty plus years of the F-35 program, through around five different US administrations, all of them working in concert to conceal these capabilities, with zero complaint from Lockheed Martin, one of their biggest defence contractors, who don’t even mind that discovery of this capability would destroy their international sales forever.

That’s flat earth levels of self-delusion.

Rumours are we’re planning to split the difference; buy around 40 F-35s and 80 Gripens. This way we have a top of the line 5th Gen when we need it, and still get all the domestic and trade advantages that come with the Gripen, as well as building up our local defence capabilities. And down the line we can switch out to the 6th Gen fighter that Saab is working on, and build it right here in Canada.

It’s certainly the plan that makes the most sense. The RCAF really wants the F-35. The Carney government really wants the Gripen. We need to expand our military so upping our total fleet size is a good call anyway. And with how much lower the TCO on the Gripen is, we’re probably actually spending less in total over the next decade.

Just to clear up any confusion, this “Remotely bricks” idea is a total fabrication.

There is absolutely zero practical way to hide a killswitch in the F-35. All partners in the F-35 program have the ability to manufacture their own hardware. They have the complete technical schematics. The only thing the US controls is the firmware.

It’s a stealth fighter, not a Tesla. You don’t update firmware over the air. When that thing is flying, not one single mA of radio communicating goes in or out without very strict control.

There is literally zero mechanism by which this idea is possible, and a mountain of reasons why, as a conspiracy theory, it makes less sense than faking the moon landing. So much so that I can’t even get into it all here.

What is possible, and what NATO members are concerned about, is that the US could cut off access to new firmware updates. This would cause a nation’s F-35 fleet to slowly fall behind the updated versions in terms of technical capability.

Based on the rumours coming out of Ottawa, it’s increasingly looking like our plan is to split the difference; acquire somewhere around 30-40 F-35s (this new order would put us on the low end of that) and then around 80 Gripens. We’d have a top of the line fifth gen fighter that can hard counter anything Russia is capable of putting in the air, and we’d still build up a fleet that isn’t reliant on the US. Hedging in both directions.

OK, so the dude in the photo is a sociopathic rapist with God-tier mind control powers. The woman is a former victim of his.

Basically. On this particular subject I think Carney’s government has walked a pretty solid line. We’re still negotiating with the US in order to get the best outcomes we can for Canadian companies in the short term - you can’t just pivot to new customers overnight - while ultimately working towards a future where we’re no long as dependent on them.

The sad reality is that we’ll never be able to avoid the fact that America is a better customer for many of our products than anyone else, because we can ship to them over land and no one else can (Mexico has little to no overlap with us in terms of major exports other than car manufacturing). But that cuts both ways; Americans love buying from us because we can ship over land. It’s cheaper and faster. So no matter what Bessent says, there’s always going to be room for us to get some deals made, even if we’re never going to see a return to completely tariffless trade.

It is, but it’s also an image that has very frequently been used to depict billionaires / the aristocracy / royalty, etc. See Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the Eaters from Ian Banks’ Consider Phlebas, Denethor in Return of the King (movie version), Baron Harkonnen in Dune, Dorian Grey, Parasite, Snow Piercer… I mean that’s random stuff flying off the top of my head, you could easily come up with many, many more. Basically name a piece of even vaguely egalitarian art and you’ll probably find an image of conspicuous consumption tied to the wealthy and powerful somewhere in there.

I think, contextually, it was clear what they were talking about, and I don’t think that conspicuous consumption can in any way be deemed a purely fascist imagery.

You can also argue that “parasites” has been used to refer to the poor and disabled, but I don’t think that should stop people from using it as a label for billionaires.

Ah, I see how you’re confused here. This image is actually from Marvel’s Very Mean Lady, in which David Tennant plays The Very Nice Man Who Never Did Anything Bad.

OP, have you, um… Actually watched the show?

I actually don’t hate this. In fact, I think it’s probably a much better plan than what we had before.

So, first off, they’re bringing back the EV rebates. That is fucking excellent news. Even better news is that they’re announcing investments in more charging infrastructure across Canada. If you want to see Canadian cars go electric, that’s what will get you there. Not some meaningless mandate saying that no one is allowed to buy gas cars, while refusing to actually make it possible for people to drive electric cars across one of the largest and most sparsely populated countries on Earth.

Those two items alone are big, BIG green transition wins. So before everyone starts in with the moaning about Carney supposedly backsliding again on green goals (and yes, to be clear, he has done some really big backsliding in that area; absolutely not letting his government off the hook here) let’s actually look at the details and recognise what we’re getting here.

As for the move away from the EV mandate to “fuel efficiency”, we simply don’t have enough details to form a complete opinion yet. But I do think, no matter what, it has to be recognized that a true 100% transition away from internal combustion was never, ever going to be possible in Canada. The idea that a country with our specific geography and demographic distribution was going to go 100% electric was a ridiculous pipe dream cooked up by idiot policy vendors who just wanted to pretend they were making meaningful steps towards green transition (while leaving the actual polluters entirely alone). What the fuck is a guy living up in Nunavut supposed to do with an electric vehicle? With an ICE you can throw some Jerry cans in the back to refuel on the long stretches between gas stations. With an EV you’re going to, what, carry some solar panels for the four hours of partial sunlight you get in winter?

I think we need to recognize that the EV mandate was the kind of policy cooked up by politicians in Ottawa to appease voters living in Toronto, with not a single thought given to, for example, native communities living up north.

EV’s are, by their nature, already far more practical than combustion vehicles for 90% of the population of Canada, as long as we can provide the infrastructure to make them practical. Which comes back to my point above about the promised investments in charging. That’s the thing that will do more to get consumers transitioned over to EVs than anything else. For the commercial side of things, we know from the available research already that carbon pricing and similar pollution tax methods are by far one of the most effective ways of reducing carbon output, so in theory a fuel efficiency focused model should produce the results we want without needing to be as inflexible as a flat mandate. The industrial carbon price is already providing strong incentives for commercial shippers and other companies that rely on large scale transit to move towards electric options wherever feasible.

In short, there’s absolutely no reason why this approach can’t get us the outcome we’re looking for in terms of a green transition, and it may well get that outcome in a way that better respects the needs of smaller communities (many of them indigenous) across the parts of Canada that cannot be easily served by EV charging infrastructure. The devil is always in the details, and we’ll need to push for that “fuel efficiency” model to have real teeth, but overall there’s no reason to start wailing and gnashing your teeth yet. There’s a real opportunity for this to be a big win for our green goals.

NB: One thing that does need to be noted here is that we need to take care to learn from the mistakes of the US in this regard. Tying efficiency standards to square footage was a blindingly stupid move that lead directly to the massively oversized luxotrucks that now dominate our roads with their four foot high child-killing front-ends. Then again, we also have to recognise that at the end of the day whatever standards we set are always going to be overrun by whatever happens in California, and that’s the sad reality we have to work with.

Yeah, there’s this obsessive nostalgia around Layton that tends to blind people to the fact that he wasn’t the progressive socialist hero that everyone has recast him as in their minds.

Sure, and the Liberals have always had their entrenched numbers too.

If you believe that the entire Canadian electorate is fundamentally unchangeable, then you’re basically arguing that there’s no point in third parties even existing. We are doomed to endlessly rock back and forth between Cons and Libs forever, and nothing can be done about it.