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TRANSCRIPT
the shift in US security policy not only
has allies in Europe scrambling to
increase their defense spending it also
raises uncomfortable questions about
their dependency on American weapons
already in their Arsenal one example is
the F35 fighter jet made by American
airspace giant locki Martin several
prominent voices linked to the defense
establishment in Europe have suggested
the US has built so-called kill switches
into the aircraft which would allow
Washington to remotely deactivate or
limmit the combat functions of the
f35s sold to foreign allies now 13
European countries have placed orders
for the F35 and they're already
operating in several of them including
in the UK and Italy when the current
orders are delivered more than
570 f35s will be stationed in Europe
making them a key component of the
continent's air defense
Justin Bronk, Airpower Expert, Royal Unites Services Institute
Justin Bron is a senior research fellow
for air power and Military technology at
the Royal United Services Institute in
London Justin welcome to the day now a
kill switch to remotely disable a
fighter jet that sounds like a nightmare
for operational sovereignty does it
exist uh for the F-35 there's no uh
explicit kill switch so it's not that
something that can just be turned off uh
and and you know stopped from flying uh
on any given day that apart from apart
from anything else would be an enormous
vulnerability in the software of of an
aircraft that then if any adversary uh
were to discover it would would
compromise it uh in combat even without
any sort of malfeasant from from the US
uh but certainly it is dependent to a
significant degree uh for its ongoing
Effectiveness for any length of time in
combat on regular software updates uh to
it what are known as Mission data files
essentially the way that the Jets uh
sensors uh and processors know what kind
of threat system they're seeing in the
electromagnetic spectrum uh and also
it's dependent on uh continued access to
the global supply chain and to the um
sort of software defined maintenance uh
programs and architectures Alice and
Odin which the jet uses to um
essentially have Parts ordered and
delivered kind of just in time to each
base so there is a significant degree of
dependency on continued us uh
connectivity at the very least but not a
kill switch as such okay Israel is the
only country to run its f-35s on a
domestic software so foregoing that kind
of control that the US could exert over
other Jets what would it take for other
buyers to do the
same so fundamentally uh it it the
Israeli approach essentially locks them
out of quite a lot of potential benefit
um from the enormous uh capability that
the US system has to detect um changes
in hostile radar systems for example the
latest Russian um groundbased air
defense or or fighter Radars uh change
the way that they operate the patterns
they operate with because they're soflo
defined now every week or two uh in
Ukraine and would do so in any future
conflict so those Mission data files
that the US upgrades and updates uh
based on collection of those uh new
signals and then analysis processing and
then formatting into emission data
update those are a hugely important in
keeping the jet effective Israel has to
do all of that itself uh that doesn't
necessarily matter so much for Israel
because they are primarily concerned
with threats in their immediate vicinity
and have a huge amount of capability to
collect um essentially upto-date
electronic Intelligence on those threats
so say Iranian or Syrian missile um
missile systems and radars and then
Forge their own updates for example for
Germany to do that for its own f35s
firstly they'd have to negotiate um
access to be able to do so as the uh the
UK for example and Australia have for
F35 through something called the AAL uh
as do the Netherlands and Norway um and
uh Italy to a slightly lesser degree um
but it would rely on having the
collection assets as well so Germany
would have to either itself or have
other European allies do all all of the
collection of intelligence to support
making those Mission data updates and
make the mission data updates which you
would need to get the permission to do
of course the same goes for T Euro
Fighter typhoons or indeed any other
Fighter um part of the reason so many
countries have accepted the degree of
dependence on the US is because it gives
them access to essentially the product
of that completely unrivaled American
intelligence and uh Mission data
programming kind of ecosystem yeah can
you give us a sense overall of how
important the F35 is for Europe's
military
strategy uh it's very important as the
kind of Leading Edge in any seriously
contested airspace uh basically the the
F35 is quite expensive to operate um but
provides an ability to go closer to
threats with a much better sensor Suite
uh than 4.5 generation equivalent so
Euro Fighter or Rafal or grippen um and
the two complement each other very well
so having a few f-35s in a multinational
package or a NATO package greatly
enhances The lethality and the
survivability of those more numerous
Euro Fighters and railes and and grippin
as long as they're able to operate
together in terms of training and and uh
security and all of those other things
uh so what you find is that a few f35s
around gives you far far more options um
with the majority of non stealth
Fighters which Europe operates uh you
wouldn't want to necessarily replace all
fighters with F35 because for quite a
few tasks like defensive counter air or
kind of scrambling to intercept
non-responsive airliners or things like
that um or carrying lots and lots of
weapons for air support in permissive
areas uh over a battlefield uh like in
Iraq or Syria you don't necessarily want
to pay the premium and have the
dependencies that come with having uh a
primarily americanmade stealth aircraft
um you only need that really for the
very front end the problem is for Europe
looking at decoupling potentially some
aspects of its defense there's very
little uh that can replace what the F-35
brings uh in terms of any jets that are
currently available elsewhere yeah in
matters of Defense Europe is so heavily
ried on the US in so many aspects should
the F35 really be the biggest concern
right
now I I must admit I don't think that
the F35 should be the primary area of
concern conern for a couple of reasons
um firstly for Germany uh I there have
been voices in the German political
establishment and defense establishment
questioning whether the German F35 order
should be um canceled or or or uh
reviewed because of its potential
dependency on the US and therefore fears
about whether that would be reliable in
the German case those 35 f35s that have
been ordered so far are specifically for
the Dual capable uh NATO nuclear sharing
Mission uh and those are so in a nuclear
attack scenario if Russia were to attack
uh using tactical nuclear weapons uh
theoretically those squadrons would be
um able to deliver NATO shared nuclear
weapons in response those nuclear
weapons are American uh the b61 more 12
us U gravity bombs and so in the case of
Germany's F35 order the weapon that
they're being bought primarily to
potentially be able to deliver is 100%
the dependent on American presidential
authorization and release so the whole
mission is you know if the Americans
aren't allowing it to go ahead it's it's
sort of pointless anyway um more to the
point though I think a lot of the the
real dependencies Europe has are in
areas where the us would have to be
actively supporting a conflict uh an
effort by European countries in conflict
in order for us to have so uh American
uh orbital intelligence and surveillance
uh American orbital Communications
Beyond line of site Communications
networks American electronic warfare um
aircraft like the the US Navy's ea8
Growler there's a whole host of
capabilities which only the US really
provides at the moment at scale uh
whereas for the and you know Europe
really I think needs to to prioritize
filling in those gaps for the F35 not to
be reliable for for European countries
in a defense scenario the us would have
to be actively not just not supporting
but trying to block what Europe was
doing and in that sort of scenario so
many things currently wouldn't work that
I think focusing on the F-35 as
something to spend money replacing uh in
terms of orders is probably not the
priority we should fill in the gaps
where we rely on active American
participation first um which will take a
long time and a huge amount of resource
yeah what does it tell us about the
state of the transatlantic Alliance
though that the security Community is
openly debating this issue
it's fairly staggering um you know
bluntly if you had put a lot of these
sort of concerns in terms of the US
actively siding with Russia uh on
certain issues and actively threatening
other NATO members um over Greenland and
and and in terms of territorial
Integrity in Canada you know people
would have laughed you out of the room
uh and sort of assumed you were mad two
3 months ago uh you people might have
assumed that Donald Trump would take a
much more transactional approach once he
took office that he um would focus ever
more on the Indo Pacific which has been
a steady Trend under many US presidents
and as has by the way the desire quite
rightly for Europe to spend a lot more
on its own defense but the trend that
we've seen over the past couple of weeks
especially towards Ukraine in terms of
cutting off intelligence support uh in
terms of really putting huge pressure on
them and not Russia and most of all the
direct statements um essentially
threatening annexation of Denmark's
territory in Greenland and potentially
trying to change the Canadian border or
ex Canada by force these are completely
astonishing things to be facing and you
know unfortunately I think it's it's no
surprise that um people are asking
questions which a few months ago in in
the defense space would have been
Unthinkable thank you so much that was
Justin Bron from the Royal United
Services Institute great having you on
the show
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