Kill Switch Killed in Kamra

[Aamir Hussain]

I don't think there are any "Kill Switches." LM would be out of the market if that happened. And I have not heard of any other manufacturer mentioning this as negative point when peddling their product. Now relaying position of the aircraft....that is done for all aircraft civil or military on a routine basis. That is enough of a kill switch.

 

[PDF]

I don't think there are any "Kill Switches." LM would be out of the market if that happened. And I have not heard of any other manufacturer mentioning this as negative point when peddling their product. Now relaying position of the aircraft....that is done for all aircraft civil or military on a routine basis. That is enough of a kill switch.

The main objective of kill- switch debate is that US equipment is sanction prone and we need codes from them everyday to fly f-16 with all of its avionics to work fully operational. Other aircrafts which are foreign such as Mirages in our inventory does not have such constraints. We can even fight with french AF hypothetically with fully utilizing Mirages. Meanwhile, Let's say we have to fight USAF (let's ignore it is not gonna happen or that USAF will anihiliate PAF due to sheer qualitative and quantitative superiority), we will have to rely on other jets than F-16 in our inventory; F-16 will even then be able to fly but won't be able fire some missiles or operate properly.
The main point is, while using American equipment, we are at the mercy of US. If one day Uncle Sam says India is our strategic ally and they have to support them, we might have to fight in a skirmish with India with one hand tied.

 

[Armchair]

The main objective of kill- switch debate is that US equipment is sanction prone and we need codes from them everyday to fly f-16 with all of its avionics to work fully operational. Other aircrafts which are foreign such as Mirages in our inventory does not have such constraints. We can even fight with french AF hypothetically with fully utilizing Mirages. Meanwhile, Let's say we have to fight USAF (let's ignore it is not gonna happen or that USAF will anihiliate PAF due to sheer qualitative and quantitative superiority), we will have to rely on other jets than F-16 in our inventory; F-16 will even then be able to fly but won't be able fire some missiles or operate properly.
The main point is, while using American equipment, we are at the mercy of US. If one day Uncle Sam says India is our strategic ally and they have to support them, we might have to fight in a skirmish with India with one hand tied.

Thank you for this sensible post. Hope readers are paying attention.

 

[Saifullah]

Putting a kill switch on a major weapon system is akin to signing your own death warrant or bankruptcy as a defense manufacturer. Nobody will EVER buy from that company again.

As such this fiction needs to be kept in the fiction section. What suppliers can possibly do is to provide specifications/frequencies and encryption algorithms of systems provided to the end users to a third party under political pressure. In that case too, it does not render the systems useless.

An example of this is what the French did for the British with regards to the Exocet system during the Falklands war.

Either you have no idea about IT/CE/EE field or you are just deliberately not telling the truth.
Go to any person who is in IT/CE/EE field who worth his salt and ask him about it, you will get your answer if you don't already know it. Baki app logon ko lala land mn rakh saktay hn

 

[Amaa'n]

The main objective of kill- switch debate is that US equipment is sanction prone and we need codes from them everyday to fly f-16 with all of its avionics to work fully operational. Other aircrafts which are foreign such as Mirages in our inventory does not have such constraints. We can even fight with french AF hypothetically with fully utilizing Mirages. Meanwhile, Let's say we have to fight USAF (let's ignore it is not gonna happen or that USAF will anihiliate PAF due to sheer qualitative and quantitative superiority), we will have to rely on other jets than F-16 in our inventory; F-16 will even then be able to fly but won't be able fire some missiles or operate properly.
The main point is, while using American equipment, we are at the mercy of US. If one day Uncle Sam says India is our strategic ally and they have to support them, we might have to fight in a skirmish with India with one hand tied.

I think it is important to define kill switch for PDF members to end this debate....
we have already mentioned this & same was shared by myself too that Launch codes / Pre Flight Authorization Codes are required for F-16s BLK52, but is not what I would call a kill switch

 

[MastanKhan]

You ideally remind me of a street sweeper, holding his brush, he tells a passing chief executive, ''If it wasn't for me cleaning the streets, your suit wouldn't be looking so impeccable''.
Now let me explain it in your own manners.....there is sh*t and there is sh*te.....the PAF officer certainly knows his sh*t hence he is in charge of a $70 Million plane where as those who don't know sh*te....have their head under the bonnet.

Hi,

That is only in your mind---.

The air force person knows how to operate the aircraft---and there is no doubt that his operational knowledge is superior---.

And that is where it ends---.

I understand that yoiu worship them to a level bellow God---and that is your choice---.

But the "kill switch " is a kill switch---it is not going away just because you use strong words---or chew them up and spit them out---.

Technicalities of a machine does not change with your say so or the air force officer's say so.

Even the french had to disclose to the british about the "kill switch" in their air to ship missiles to save them from humiliation---.

 

[Aamir Hussain]

Well if bought f-16 to fight Uncle Sam then there something seriously wrong with us.

If we want to take on a shooting war with Uncle Sam then there is something seriously wrong with us.

If we bought this piece of Kit to fight a war with Nuclear Armed India then again there is something....

The bottom line is we will fight a skirmish at best. And in a skirmish US would not want to step in. LM (Read military industrial complex which runs the foreign policy of US of A) was happy. It boosted its sale. In the latest skirmish between India and Pakistan, both sides can debate who won it but everyone know it is LM who gained the most!

If there is a war, then it will very quickly spin out of control and will be a nuclear exchange and then no sanctions, kill switches will matter because both countries would have gone to hell.

 

[SABRE]

The main objective of kill- switch debate is that US equipment is sanction prone and we need codes from them everyday to fly f-16 with all of its avionics to work fully operational. Other aircrafts which are foreign such as Mirages in our inventory does not have such constraints. We can even fight with french AF hypothetically with fully utilizing Mirages. Meanwhile, Let's say we have to fight USAF (let's ignore it is not gonna happen or that USAF will anihiliate PAF due to sheer qualitative and quantitative superiority), we will have to rely on other jets than F-16 in our inventory; F-16 will even then be able to fly but won't be able fire some missiles or operate properly.
The main point is, while using American equipment, we are at the mercy of US. If one day Uncle Sam says India is our strategic ally and they have to support them, we might have to fight in a skirmish with India with one hand tied.

I do not think any sort of codes are "required to fly F-16 with all of its avionics to work fully operational." It would be suicide to buy anything with that stipulation. There may, however, be technical measures in place to ensure that the US-origin fighter aircraft belonging to non-NATO states are unable to fire on military assets belong to the US, NATO & other major US allies if it comes down to it. There is also speculation that NATO fighter aircraft are unable to fire on other NATO military assets without certain inputs. But nothing prevents them from using their avionics to their fullest capacity and weapon systems against non-NATO targets.

 

[PanzerKiel]

As far as launch codes for operating F-16 Block 52 are concerned, this question i asked as well while sitting in its cockpit and "fiddling" with everything, answer i got was that there are no such requirements of any launch codes to make it fly...

on a sideline.....i managed to do well on the F-16 simulator ...OC seemed impressed, my old practice of simulator flying against real 9/11 Sqn pilots came in handy.

 

[Windjammer]

Hi,

That is only in your mind---.

The air force person knows how to operate the aircraft---and there is no doubt that his operational knowledge is superior---.

And that is where it ends---.

I understand that yoiu worship them to a level bellow God---and that is your choice---.

But the "kill switch " is a kill switch---it is not going away just because you use strong words---or chew them up and spit them out---.

Technicalities of a machine does not change with your say so or the air force officer's say so.

Even the french had to disclose to the british about the "kill switch" in their air to ship missiles to save them from humiliation---.

Lets say if some window cleaner starts lecturing you on how to change the timing belt, I'm sure you will offer him a Cuban alas whats in my mind is not far from the truth.
So you mean to say, Pilots or engineers spend years learning just how to fly or replace a leaking hydraulic valve.
Damn, they might as well open a garage with a sign, any aircraft serviced while you wait.
Maybe if i lived in Pakistan, i would feel the urge to worship them while living abroad, perhaps like you, i should consider myself more knowledgeable than rest of them.
If you know so much then this should't come as a surprise to you that the current airchief is a viper driver, he was also OC of a Viper unit....guess what, when the Americans released some embargoed F-16s....he was sent over to check their tyre pressure before others flew them to Pakistan.

 

[Engima Chaudhry]

I don't think there are any "Kill Switches." LM would be out of the market if that happened. And I have not heard of any other manufacturer mentioning this as negative point when peddling their product. Now relaying position of the aircraft....that is done for all aircraft civil or military on a routine basis. That is enough of a kill switch.

I read somewhere , that the Americans were able to snoop in on the Israeli jets when they were carrying out some missions.
This thing came out and the Israelis countered it.
Spying a and snooping is 100% true.
But I doubt that there would be a magical kill switch, making the aircraft inoperable.
That's my 2 pennies. But , if I would be in such place , common sense would dictate , that I would try to counter that. How? Currently , I cant even guess---- not privy to enough knowledge.

 

[SQ8]

The kill switch and cannot operate them is all hyperbole and imagination. The limitation is having third parties look at the equipment such as the DFRM pods and SNiPER - which essentially triggers a flag if anyone other than the authorized OEM. The closest analogy is the tamper proof sticker Apple has in case anyone other than them attempts a repair(although this is more complicated obviously). Some luxury car makers are also adopting this approach.

I read somewhere , that the Americans were able to snoop in on the Israeli jets when they were carrying out some missions.
This thing came out and the Israelis countered it.
Spying a and snooping is 100% true.
But I doubt that there would be a magical kill switch, making the aircraft inoperable.
That's my 2 pennies. But , if I would be in such place , common sense would dictate , that I would try to counter that. How? Currently , I cant even guess---- not privy to enough knowledge.

Everything from your phone to you car is vulnerable to being compromised to extract data so that isn’t exactly a unique thing.
Unless you make the jet and ensure all backdoors are closed, the vulnerability will exist.

Here is a question - would Pakistan not like to know if Indians have flown the JF-17 with Myanmar or if one of them had its Radar opened by an unauthorized user? What if the JF-17 was able to quietly broadcast that via a flag bit during its Beidou messages?

 

[Engima Chaudhry]

Another thing, even if such kill switches exist, which might interfere with operation of any specific avionics, it would be a less of a handicap in comparison to su 30 mki 's blunders where , all avionics are at loggerheads with each other.
In short, su 30 Mki's suffer from a kill switchboard.

The kill switch and cannot operate them is all hyperbole and imagination. The limitation is having third parties look at the equipment such as the DFRM pods and SNiPER - which essentially triggers a flag if anyone other than the authorized OEM. The closest analogy is the tamper proof sticker Apple has in case anyone other than them attempts a repair(although this is more complicated obviously). Some luxury car makers are also adopting this approach.



Everything from your phone to you car is vulnerable to being compromised to extract data so that isn’t exactly a unique thing.
Unless you make the jet and ensure all backdoors are closed, the vulnerability will exist.

Here is a question - would Pakistan not like to know if Indians have flown the JF-17 with Myanmar or if one of them had its Radar opened by an unauthorized user? What if the JF-17 was able to quietly broadcast that via a flag bit during its Beidou messages?

I agree .
I like thinking as the proverbial "10th man" , in the classic israeli planning .

 

[Hakikat ve Hikmet]

I heard differently. TuAF pilots and maintainers want the F-35 to come. Plus TUAS also manufactures some of the internal systems for the F-35 program. The Russian folks are not as clean too, it will come with more hidden demands, the American side is just more documented.

TAI, however, is very confident of producing TFX in blocks conforming to the current time line...

 

[Raider 21]

As far as launch codes for operating F-16 Block 52 are concerned, this question i asked as well while sitting in its cockpit and "fiddling" with everything, answer i got was that there are no such requirements of any launch codes to make it fly...

on a sideline.....i managed to do well on the F-16 simulator ...OC seemed impressed, my old practice of simulator flying against real 9/11 Sqn pilots came in handy.

Only "launch codes" I've heard of are for weapons, a particular example would be AMRAAMs, which not just only Pakistan but every service that operates the Viper around the world. I worked on the Viper for some time and there were certain areas that were inaccessible to customers simply because of potential damages that would occur had they were to find out, on top of that the fear of reverse engineering. Ending it there, the "kill switch" theory is now becoming boring.

Cheers !!!