A Memorandum of Understanding assures all F-35 participants access to the US-managed support system, and the UK has operated and supported its aircraft within the programme since 2012, defence minister Luke Pollard told MPs.
Richard Holden, the Conservative MP for Basildon and Billericay, asked what assessment had been made of the potential challenges of relying on US-managed support systems. Pollard replied: “The F-35 programme is governed by a Memorandum of Understanding that assures access to the US managed support system for all F-35 participants. The UK has been operating and supporting its F-35 aircraft successfully within the F-35 programme since 2012.”
Lord Coaker told peers in February that the UK retains “Operational Sovereignty/Freedom of Action” over its F-35 operations, and that “permission is not required from any third party for its deployment or use by UK personnel.”
The answers followed questions in the Lords about a so-called kill switch, a claim the Ministry of Defence rejected.
Dr Justin Bronk of the Royal United Services Institute told a Lords committee last year that he had found no evidence of a hard kill switch. Dr Sophy Antrobus of King’s College London told the same session that the aircraft’s digital complexity was the bigger concern, citing about nine million lines of code, and that no single nation can operate the aircraft independently given its structure and supply network.
As long as we have an MoU it’s all good 😀
An MoU with the US government is worthless. While the F35 remains in production the UK has massive leverage of the USA and leverage is what counts with the USA. Sudden removal of British content from the production chain would cripple new production for years.
Once the aircraft is out of production it’s a different story.
But this nonsense about a kill switch is just that, nonsense, no one would ever build a kill switch because it would be an obvious cyber attack strategy for your enemies to exploit.
The UK and Europe should now stand their ground with both the US and Lockheed Martin and refuse to buy any more aircraft until some one in Europe, probably the UK and BAE have sufficient access to the source code and more importantly the ability to overlay above it like Israel does to allow sovereign European operation of existing aircraft.
This is absolute rubbish, why do you continue to show yourself up by posting drug-crazed pure crap like this? I’ve read more meaningful comments in the Daily Star