The fear of being left unarmed and defenseless against aggression is exactly what the Trumpists have sown among allies with their latest actions. And now Canadians, who have repeatedly heard Donald Trump threaten “51 US states” and faced the tariff war unleashed by Washington, have begun to feel their security a little differently.
Because after all, Canada is a large, resource-rich, sparsely populated country with a small army that is geographically sandwiched between the United States and the Russian Federation. And in the current world realities, this is not the best combination.
And Canadian expert circles have already begun to discuss the threat of purchasing American fifth-generation F-35 fighters and consider whether to cancel the deal. Recall that Ottawa ordered 88 F-35A fighters in 2023 for 14.5 billion, hereinafter in the future, US dollars. At the same time, the real cost of the 45-year operation of the F-35 is estimated by the country’s Ministry of Defense at $54 billion.
In particular, one of the heads of the Vancouver-based Outer Space Institute in a publication for The Globe and Mail, recalled that the United States has such a tool as mission programming for the F-35. And in fact, the United States can simply remotely “turn off” F-35 fighters.
On the part of News Hub, we note that such an opportunity, of course, sounds fantastic. But the bottom line is that the United States really does not give any of its partners access to the source code. And software updates are also concentrated in the US. In particular, the 350th Spectrum Warfare Group of the US Air Force operates the F-35 Partner Support Complex (PSC), which develops, supports, and tests mission data for all foreign clients.
As officially stated, foreign F-35 operators are prohibited from carrying out this work on their own without the participation of the United States. At the same time, this applies to all partners, even the UK, the only partner in the F-35 program of the first level, and Israel, which is very free in the issue of completing the machine.
But mission data is not about a flight task and the ability to take an aircraft into the air at all. This is about algorithms for processing signals of the electromagnetic spectrum for conducting radio reconnaissance and electronic warfare. In simple terms, the ability to counteract the radars of enemy fighters and air defense systems. But this is already enough to consider this system compromised in the event of a war with the United States itself.
And this is even without taking into account the general dependence of the F-35’s combat capability on the United States itself, because the maintenance, repair and modernization of aircraft, as well as the provision of missiles and other ammunition, spare parts, etc., is about Washington’s goodwill to fulfill its obligations.
At the same time, the very talk about the threat that American fighters can turn into a “pumpkin” at the touch of a key, like from a fairy tale about Cinderella, is actually quite expensive. Because they become a convenient tool in criticizing multibillion-dollar procurement.
And one such example is the British “urban legend” that American Trident II D5 missiles with British nuclear charges allegedly may not fly if the United States turns off GPS. Of course, this is not the case, but the British government constantly refutes this stuffing, which turned out to be quite tenacious. But the reality is that Trump may indeed leave the UK without their nuclear weapons, but in a different way.