Reply to post: @Voland's right hand

F-35 firmware patches to be rolled out 'like iPhone updates'

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

@Voland's right hand

So instead of being bricked in-flight, it will be bricked before flight. Isn't it wonderful having most (for some countries all) of your air force on the ground for a nice "fish in a barrel" shooting spree exercise.

I can't believe anyone seriously believes there will be updates delivered without any choice, and they'll have to be applied all planes at the same time. A clueless Vice Admiral had the process explained to him by techies in dumbed-down language they thought he could understand, and he interpreted it to mean there will be a pop up that says such and such an update is ready that can happen at any time like it does on an iPhone.

I'll happily bet anyone any amount of money that is NOT going to happen. The plane will have to be in some sort of 'service' mode to download/apply updates, and they'll be delivered via wire (i.e. on ground when being serviced by techs with the pilots nowhere around) not over the air.

If anyone decides to update their entire air force without doing a couple first as a test and making sure the pilots check it out as OK, they deserve to have their country's air force destroyed by someone shooting fish in a barrel.

The US control over the whole process of dealing with the F35s is a real concern, but one that any country that can't afford to develop its own military gear faces, and one that's separate from the software updates. What I'd be worried about if I was another country is that the US could include a super-secret 'kill' switch on the plane they can trigger via satellite, by i.e. inserting a command into the GPS data stream the plane will constantly be receiving. If they're being nice it prevents weapons fire and the plane will refuse to take off again after landing. If they're not being so nice, the plane would simply fall out of the sky and fingers crossed the ejection seat will still operate.

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