its baseless and nonsensical. use of such a kill switch would literally kill US industries,
I tend to strongly agree with that. As a matter of fact, there was a USAF F-15 pilot (his callsign was 'Chogy' as well as his username) who used to participate in an old forum we were active on from way back in 2008 and was even a member here on PDF back in the early 2010s for a few years. We were having this exact discussion, and because no other F-16 is under stricter rules and restrictions than the EAF's batch, the subject was centered on if there was an infamous "kill-switch" in them that the US had rigged so they could never be used against the apartheid state.
Well, he laughed and thought it was the silliest paranoia out there and then said exactly what you said that not only did he find it highly improbable, but nothing based on his many years as a USAF student in the academy, a F-15C pilot in Germany hunting down Warsaw Pact MiG-21s, a training instructor in the T-38 Talon and later an airline pilot with American Airlines would suggest there was the presence of these kill switches. Then he reiterated the same thing you said which is if they had to use this phantom button for whatever reason, think of what it would cause to not only the manufacturer (General Dynamics at the time) but the entire #1 military products export nation in the world. It would practically ruin its reputation and even make its life miserable as all its allies would be reluctant to not only purchase its jets but trust it to but any other equipment. It all made sense.
and in the case of such a kill switch, we would see it being used in Iran,
In the F-14s? Yes, good point I hadn't thought of that one. Even though FBW technology with quadruple redundancy systems and advanced computer software didn't really make their way into fighter jets until the F-16 (where all this crazy kill switch business mostly originated from) and wasn't available in the Tomcat, it still was a highly advanced aircraft.
Speaking of Iran, another good example would've been the RQ-170 Sentinel. If such a kill switch existed, I think the most plausible platform to have it installed in would've been all the US secret stealth drones that were flying and spying on all the post-911 terrorist camps and Iran's military & nuclear assets. Instead, it was Iran according to their press release that hacked into the drone control software and brought it down. No kill switch in that bad boy.
Infact, we didnt even see it be used by the us during the OBL raid, rather, they succumbed to ECM.
That's another good point, it might be relatively simple technology to have something similar to OnStar disabling mode in cars, but the risk of installing such systems in $50+ million aircraft is too risky, especially when the focus is much more on preventing the shutting down and disabling of systems to prevent critical failures as much as possible. The emphasis is much greater on high levels of critical hardware & software, failsafe procedures to prevent failures & premature accidents as well as premature engines shut-downs.
