There is an aftermarket for F-16 planes and their spare parts.
Also, I should note that Iran (of all countries) is still flying its F-14 Tomcats, unless I’m mistaken.
The most immediate effect is ceasing updates for then AN/ALQ-131 countermeasures pod. If Russians come with a new radar or make their existing weapons behave differently, this could have considerable effect on the survivability of an F-16 in a hot situation.
There is also debate in Sweden, and polls in South Korea have turned in favour of having them.
I have not yet heard of a single case report of US-sourced military jet becoming remotely disabled.
Also note: Iran has been flying F-14 jets which the Islamic Revolution took over from the Shah’s regime.
When a country buys military aircraft, they demand extensive knowledge of the system they are buying, and demand ability to independently perform maintenance.
If they are prudent, they will review all its wireless reception and transmission capabilities, possibly on their own. There may still be a possibility for a logic bomb somewhere, but a logic bomb in flight softtware would ordinarily mean two things:
These are pretty big disincentives.
P.S. Cryptography: one can likely configure an aircraft so that it won’t accept a message through its data link system, unless the message authenticates and decrypts. Subsequently, one can change keys to no longer match a compromised ally’s keys. As a result, direct data links would no longer be possible with planes of that compromised ally. So introducing a specially crafted message into a military plane would likely be hard.
This could be an important move, since Ukraine does not have satellites of its own currently.
Ukraine has been relying on US and commercial satellites to monitor Russian activity in areas where drones cannot reach, or where they cannot communicate.
Commanded by the Trump administration, the US military recently stopped sharing intelligence data with Ukraine. Commercial data tends to have a higher latency and lower resolution, so I think Ukrainians will highly appreciate French assistance.
To my understanding, EU countries aren’t in a shortage of aircraft - their air power is enough to match Russia. However, they are in a shortage of bombs to drop and missiles to fire.
They’re also in a shortage of artillery and rocket artillery and air defense.
As for the industry that can be scaled up fastest (drones), everyone is in a shortage of them. Fortunately there is one country in Europe that’s been doing absolutely everything to scale up their production. So much that it currently out-produces the US, and maybe out-produces both the US and the EU. I’m fairly certain that this country is willing to help on the matter (it’s called Ukraine).
I assure you, the factory will be too small to supply all demand, and 2 generations behind the cutting edge. And its construction will get delayed by unforeseen mishaps.
Came here to post this, but saw that this thread existed already. :)
So, as a result of the US abandoning its previous role, the EU is moving to replace the capabilities offered by the US previously.
The sum is not impossibly big, the total volume of the EU response to COVID was about 2 trillion, so this is about 40% of the volume of the COVID response budget.
Notes:
So, as a result of the US abandoning its previous role, the EU is moving to replace the capabilities offered by the US previously.
If the US does lift sanctions on select oligarchs from Russia, I think the EU should consider sanctions on select oligarchs from the US.
I can suggest one such oligarch, Elon Musk - he’s associated with wielding illegitimate power, manipulating social media and interfering in elections (both national and primary) using wealth.
How about freezing his assets? I don’t think he has taken the prudent step of collecting all his money and stowing it under Donald’s presidential seat.
Proposing a legal remedy that’s not properly implemented where I live, but could be properly implemented…
It should be required by law that police disclose to all people who have been under their surveillance, all the information that was collected about them - after their surveillance permit expires (and the permit should be possible to get only through a court of law, no managerial decisions).
…and also, they should be required to compensate for any damage done through this.
Guess: the geopolitical situation.
Reasoning (much speculation on my part):
Hopefully later, then.
Or never, if Taiwan announces on some day “we don’t have nuclear weapons, but if needed, we will use them”.
Short summary: Abdullah Öcalan, the formal leader of PKK (but he’s in a Turkish prison already for decades) called for PKK to disarm and dissolve. So far it looks like they might proceed with it.
The sourcing is what actually makes people worry, and makes the Ukrainian government ask from every big supplier: “do you have a backup plan that works without Chinese parts?”.
Tracing the supply chains would reveal that Europe has only half of the industries needed to make a decent drone - with the rest coming from China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, etc.
In peaceful times, it would not be such a problem - “oh, we cannot make autonomous agricultural vehicles”.
In not so peaceful times, it’s a considerable risk, and a lot of people are working to lower the risk. It means setting up industries which were outsourced to the other side of the planet.
I can say a few words about that, since I make DIY drones (minus the explosives).
Short summary: you need billions of investment into industry to be able to make cheap drones (but a nice feature: the same factories can supply peaceful activity during peaceful times).
Motors: you cannot DIY them, you need a factory making magnets, ball bearings, rotors and stators, and a final factory for assembly.
Motor controllers: you cannot DIY them beyond a crude prototype for which you naturally need to buy parts. You need a factory making microcontrollers, MOSFETs, PCB boards and a factory to assemble the stuff (robotic pick and place machines, automated soldering ovens, automated testing, etc).
Flight controllers: same as with motor controllers, you need a factory to make them. Open source only comes in at the last step where you configure BetaFlight or ArduPilot as you please.
Flight computers: same as with flight controllers, you need a factory. Fortunately Raspberry Pi, the world’s most-produced microcomputer is made in the UK… from parts largely imported from China. DIY comes in at the last moment, where you choose the operating system and customize (or build) navigation software.
Batteries: making cells needs a factory. DIY comes at the last stage, if the factory doesn’t make ideal batteries, so you buy loose cells and customize.
Fiber optical transceiver: I have not yet seen a garage-built one, though I have seen free space optical transceivers (currently not used in war fighting) that are pretty DIY. But you need components. You can’t cook a silicon photomultiplier in a kitchen, you need a semiconductor factory.
Optical fiber: unfeasible to DIY. Samples can be made in a lab, but to make 20 kilometers of good fiber, you need a well-adjusted factory. You buy up telecom fiber, by shipload if you can, by truckload if you cannot.
Camera: nope, cannot be DIY-ed.
Explosives: can be DIYed at the cost of accidents costing engineers’ lives. So in practise, cannot be DIY-ed.
Airframe: now, the airframe of a drone can be DIY-ed (and this can convey tangible benefits).
(I better not try to write the same about artillery barrels, since artillery is the second most destructive weapon in this war after drones. A DIY artillery barrel is possible, but for pumpkin shooting competitions or at best, short range smoothbore mortars. Heavy industry, high quality steel and a long process with many steps are needed to make a long rifled barrel for high pressure shots.)
I’ve read about this too. There was a French AWACS plane with its fighter escort taking a look at Crimea from distance. And later, there was a visit by an US Navy plane that can drop sonar buoys and assorted stuff. I missed the Italian electronic warfare plane, reading about it now.
Russian sources have been speculating that an Ukrainian strike usually comes within days of such a visit.
I think the military are doing their stuff regardless of politicians, as long as politicians (read: Trump) won’t forbid them.
I watched this train wreck. Didn’t try to transcribe, so I might have small errors. Essence first, emotions later.
Trump:
Zelensky:
Vance:
Opinion:
A carefully orchestrated verbal agression by Trump and Vance. Zelensky was not given opportunity to present his point of view, which is very rare in diplomacy (this probably isn’t diplomacy). He’s in the damn White House, he’s not going to shout.
Result:
Zelensky walked away without signing the mineral resources treaty. Fully understandable for bystanders. Foreseeable by Trump - perhaps the goal of this tirade.
In my experience, the API has iteratively made it ever harder for applications to automatically perform previously easy jobs, and jobs which are trivial under ordinary Linux (e.g. become an access point, set the SSID, set the IP address, set the PSK, start a VPN connection, go into monitor / inject mode, access an USB device, write files to a directory of your choice, install an APK). Now there’s a literal thicket of API calls and declarations to make, before you can do some of these things (and some are forever gone).
The obvious reason is that Google tries to protect a billion inexperienced people from scammers and malware.
But it kills the ability to do non-standard things, and the concept of your device being your own.
And a big problem is that so many apps rely on advertising for its income stream. Spying a little has been legitimized and turned into a business under Android. To maintain control, the operating system then has to be restrictive of apps. Which pisses off developers who have a trusting relationship with their customer and want their apps to have freedom to operate.
The countdown to Android’s slow and painful death is already ticking for a while.
It has become over-engineered and no longer appealing from a developer’s viewpoint.
I still write code for Android because my customers need it - will be needing for a while - but I’ve stopped writng code for Apple’s i-things and I research alternatives for Android. Rolling my own environment with FOSS components on top of Raspbian looks feasible already. On robots and automation, I already use it.
Note: Iran still uses F-14 Tomcats.
Possibilities for implanting a logic bomb are endless, but there are still no case reports about an US-originating plane becoming remotely disabled.
(Russians would absolutely like to listen to a message which accomplishes that, meanwhile allies would definitely want ot change encryption keys on any plane which is supposed to receive that. I also don’t think that military planes will accept unencrypted messages. And their communications subsystems are separate subsystems, which can be disabled or replaced.)
Meanwhile, in a hypothetical doomsday scenario, Danish F-35s would land (or be unloaded from a container) in China, and be greeted with cheers, red banners and golden confetti. Damage to the US would far exceed anything that Denmark could do by firing something.
Note: these are scenarios which are not supposed to happen, but dramatic loss of trust among allies can actually result in that - if country A backstabs country D, there is nothing that really prevents D from betraying A to C.