I’ve seen a few articles now that US fighter jets have kill switches in them, so the US could just render them useless for anyone they’ve sold them to.
Is this true? It sounds insane to me, I’ve always assumed that countries that buy these jets have full control over them. It’s a gaping hole in your defence if you don’t.
I am very sure that it is true.
Not only such primitve things as a kill switch - because nobody can make any profit directly from deactivating a device - but also lots of dependencies from the manufacturers and from the Usa, for the supply of ammunition, materials, spare parts etc. The same idea that we know as “vendor lock-in” in lots of consumer products.
I’m not so sure. From a software perspective adding a kill switch is needlessly adding a potential vulnerability. Given that (as many others have said) the planes will need spare parts and software updates anyways I see it as quite unlikely that there would be an kill switch.
Of course they would test against all imaginable vulnerabilities. It is a weapon after all.
And of course they would make all the needed software tests in a safe environment where the switch doesn’t really destroy things.
As I said, no direct profit from the kill switch. But the possibility of indirect profit: for every destroyed weapon, you cannot sell spare parts anymore, but then there is the potential to sell a new weapon later.