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.
It’s entirely possible that the F-35 or F-22 has something like that. Even if it doesn’t, it’s definitely expecting regular software updates which it wouldn’t be getting.
The older jets, like the F-16s they’ve given to Ukraine, I highly doubt have any kind of kill switch.