At this point, every single European country should stop buying US made weapons and cancel all orders. It is a dam shame the Ukrainians could not receive the SAAB J-39 Gripen and more Dassault Mirage fighters instead of the now useless F-16. When will the Mirage enter service? Send the F-16 pilots to France for training.
I hope everybody comes to their senses and stop buying US military equipment. We have good stuff and people smart enough to fill the gaps with self developed products
Switzerland is in the process of buying their F-35 and is now seriously reconsidering it.
Are we? We lost the initiative to stop the purchase, doesn’t that mean we’re pretty fucked.
There is an aftermarket for F-16 planes.
Also, I should note that Iran (of all countries) is still flying its F-14 Tomcats, unless I’m mistaken.
The most immediate effect is ceasing updates for then AN/ALQ-131 countermeasures pod. If Russians come with a new radar or make their existing weapons behave differently, this could have considerable effect on the survivability of an F-16 in a hot situation.
A lot of F16 parts were manufactured in Europe as well, it was part of the deal to buy the aircrafts.
I’ve worked for multiple aerospace companies in Belgium and Switzerland that were manufacturing f16 parts.
ceasing updates for then AN/ALQ-131 countermeasures pod.
"
<<MISSILE LOCK>>It looks like your countermeasures license has expired! Please contact your dealer to continue receiving updates and stay secure against modern threats!"Man this future is stupid.
I get the analogy, but it’s more like you have an old version of the software that can’t defend you against the newer fancier stuff. Continuous cat and mouse game.
Is it just me or does europe really need to partner on building defensive tech. Why are we all buying american jets when their capabilities are quickly weakened when the wrong president is elected and cuts support.
France says hi
Sweden as well.
They absolutely do. Imagine if the US invaded Greenland. The Danish (and European partners) F35s would be switched off for sure.
Note: Iran still uses F-14 Tomcats.
Possibilities for implanting a logic bomb are endless, but there are still no case reports about an US-originating plane becoming remotely disabled.
(Russians would absolutely like to listen to a message which accomplishes that, meanwhile allies would definitely want ot change encryption keys on any plane which is supposed to receive that. I also don’t think that military planes will accept unencrypted messages. And their communications subsystems are separate subsystems, which can be disabled or replaced.)
Meanwhile, in a hypothetical doomsday scenario, Danish F-35s would land (or be unloaded from a container) in China, and be greeted with cheers, red banners and golden confetti. Damage to the US would far exceed anything that Denmark could do by firing something.
Note: these are scenarios which are not supposed to happen, but dramatic loss of trust among allies can actually result in that - if country A backstabs country D, there is nothing that really prevents D from betraying A to C.