i thought this was part of standard procedure? i know that f35s and i think f22s tend to have the radar kit and other stuff removed before foreign sales go through? like how is that anything but what he’s saying?
F-22s are not for sale, but yeah it’s pretty standard for countries to sell their export version with lower stats. There’s also rumours that the USA has a kill switch that can disable their fighter jets if the operating country is not using it with approval by the USA. There are rumours that Egypt is looking at China’s J-10s to replace their F-16s because even if there is no kill switch, the USA will simply not supply the necessary parts to keep the F-16s flying if Egypt uses it against Israel.
There’s also rumours that the USA has a kill switch that can disable their fighter jets if the operating country is not using it with approval by the USA.
Rumors? They already did it to Ukraine.
Unless I missed something, that wasn’t a kill-switch it was the fact that the ability to use the f-16 within the context of how the ukraine needs to in order to preserve them relies on intelligence sharing. They started them using them again when intel sharing resumed.
If the ukraine was trying to fuck up a country without air defense the intelligence sharing wouldn’t matter. So, I know what I said kinda vibes like a kill-switch, but it’s more of a “you’ll lose at least some of your planes and pilots unless your target is weak af”-switch.
Another way to think about it is that the US has many potential kill switches that aren’t a movie style satellite beaming “SHUT DOWN COMPUTER” at the fighter. There are lots of ways they US could coerce allies into behaving on threat of their planes being rendered useless.
Which further proves that for all the shit that the US has claimed about Chinese tech, the US has always been the real threat. Just got to keep gaslighting the other Western powers into letting us into their systems to “protect against the CEECEEPEE.” It has been sad (pathetic more specifically) to see how US “allies” have just hand over everything and proudly rally against China.
