With or without kill switch, US can make your F-35 fighters useless

At a time when US President Donald Trump is pressuring India to purchase US-made F-35 warplanes, there are concerns whether these planes are a tool to hold buying countries hostages. Such fears have emerged from concerns of F-35s having a ‘kill switch’ that the United States could use to make these planes ineffective.

In one of the first examples of Trump’s foreign policy killing a major defence deal in the works, Portugal has shelved the plan to replace ageing F-16 fighters with modern F-35s. While Portugal did not explicitly refer to the kill switch, Defence Minister Nuno Melo said that “the recent position of the United States in the context of Nato must make us think the best options”.

While Trump had always been a critic of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) and European allies, he has in his second term upended the post-World War II US policy completely by aligning the country with Russia and leaving Europe in the lurch. As Trump has used military supplies and security assurances to arm-twist partners, such as Ukraine, there are concerns that the reliance on US platforms like F-35 could make way for more such arm-twisting.

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The country most rattled is Denmark. Trump has threatened to invade and annex Denmark’s Greenland island. There are fears that the United States could remotely make Denmark’s F-35s ineffective in case Trump decides to make a move on Greenland or decides to step up the pressure on the country to cede Denmark.

Do F-35s have a ‘kill switch’?

The idea behind the F-35 kill switch is this: if the country operating F-35s does not do Trump’s bidding, the United States could remotely trigger these kill switches to make these warplanes useless.

To be sure, no kill switch exists that can make F-35s unable to fly if pressed. The manufacturer Lockheed Martin as well as an operator, the Swiss government, have said that publicly. However, kill switch or no kill switch, there are several ways in which the United States can make these warplanes as good as dead remotely.

Firstly, these planes depend on US supplies for maintenance. Secondly, these planes depend on US-provided software, data, and intelligence for seamless operations. Thirdly, sales agreements have provisions that make the operation of these aircraft without US approval virtually impossible.

Kill switch or no kill switch, the US can kill your F-35s

Even though there is no evidence of a kill-switch that can be physically pressed to ground F-35s, there are several ways to make these planes as good as dead.

Currently, more than 1,100 F-35s are said to be in service with 16 countries other than the United States, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Japan, etc. All of these countries have a slew of restrictions on F-35s’ usage except for Israel.

In an article for The Aviationist, David Cenciotti and Stefano D’Urso highlighted that the terms of F-35s’ sale make it practically impossible for countries to use these planes without US approval.

Cenciotti and D’Urso highlight that the US sales policy dictates that F-35 buyers “are not allowed to conduct independent test operations outside of the Continental United States (CONUS) based on US policy. United States Government (USG) security rules and National Defense Policy (NDP) require that US citizens perform specific functions in order to protect critical US technology”.

This means that these countries not just need US permission for all of their missions but they cannot also make modifications or critical repairs without US personnel.

For European partners, that is an existential fear. If they face Russian aggression tomorrow, they would want to use their best fighters, F-35s, to defend themselves, but the Trump administration is certain to deny them the permission as the United States and Russia are now essentially allies.

Cenciotti and D’Urso highlighted that only Israel is permitted to operate F-35s completely independently.

The War Zone’s Joseph Trevithick and Tyler Rogoway sum up the situation: “The stark reality is that a dedicated kill switch is not needed to keep foreign F-35s from being able to perform what they were designed to do. Just cutting off support to the jets would accomplish the same result, albeit maybe not instantly, but soon enough.”

What truly make F-35s the most modern fighters are its avionics, software, data-sharing, and a feature known as Mission Data File (MDF).

Aviation industry writer Bill Sweetman has noted that the MDF is the “electronic battle manual for the F-35” that provides known target characteristics for the fusion engine that identifies targets with minimal emissions and enables critical functions like plotting minimum-detectability flightpaths, managing communications, and hosting electronic orders of battle — these capabilities are essential for countering modern threats like Russian air defences.

If a nation’s relations with the United States break down, the Trump administration could block updates to the nation’s planes’ MDF and other software and degrade the planes’ ability to the extent that they fly blind are essentially useless.