Article originally in the Financial Times.
A long -time ally of America detains a deadly uprising, helping him with military aircraft squadrons supplied by Americans. When US foreign policy suddenly changes, aircraft will remain, but suppliers, spare parts and very necessary software updates will disappear. More than half of the aircraft is shut down within a few weeks. Four months later, the capital will fall into the hands of the insurgents.
American Kill Switch
This was the reality of Afghanistan in 2021. After the withdrawal of the United States eliminated most of Afghan helicopters Black Hawk, the cascading effect was fast. “When the suppliers withdrew, it was as if we had pulled out all the drumsticks from the Jenga Tower and expected it to stand,” said the American commander of the American government to the year.
Today, a similar ghost haunts American allies in Europe. After the United States has interrupted military support to Ukraine in a sudden turn towards Russia, many European governments feel remorse for decades of purchases of American weapons, which makes it depend on Washington.
“If they see how Trump is acting with [ukrajinským prezidentom Volodymyrom] Greeding, they should be worried. He throws his logs under his feet, ”said Mikael Grev, a former Gripen fighter pilot, and today, the head of the Swedish company Avioniq, who deals with artificial intelligence in the field of defense. “Nordic and Baltic states must think: will they do the same?”
The concerns are so great that the debate turned on whether the United States have secret states. Kill Switches that would immobilize aircraft and weapon systems. Although it has never been possible, the Executive Director of Aerodynamic Advisory Advisory Richard Aboulafia said: “If you expect the existence of something that can be done using a piece of software code, it exists.”
The dependence on the United States is growing
In practice, this may not matter, because advanced combat aircraft and other sophisticated weapons, such as missile systems, advanced unmanned aircraft and early warning aircraft, are already dependent on US spare parts and software updates.
“It’s not as easy as Kill Switch,” said Justin Bronk, head of Think-Tan Royal United Services Institute.
Meanwhile, Europe’s dependence on the United States is growing. According to the Stockholm International Institute for Peace Research, America, between 2019 and 2023, will represent 55 percent of the import of defense equipment to Europe. In the previous five years it was 35 percent.
Sir Ben Wallace, former Minister of Defense of the United Kingdom, said that if he were still in office, his first reaction would be to assign “Assessing our addiction and vulnerability among international partners. Including the United States’. This would make it possible to consider “whether any strategic changes are needed”.
Combat aircraft
Trump has repeatedly expressed his intention to buy or occupy Greenland, which is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. Referring to the strategic importance of the Arctic, Danish ministers signaled that they would try to strengthen the island, potentially extending the airport track to fit the F-35 fighters purchased in the United States.
However, these fighters can be almost unusable for this particular mission. “What is the point of sending F-35 to Denmark to protect Greenland?” Sash Tusa, aerial and defensive analyst, asked, and pointed out the uncertainty of whether the F-35 fighters would fly if the United States would not want it.
The aircraft relies on continuous update and support for maintenance by the United States through its autonomous logistics information system to be replaced by a program known as Odin, an operational data integrated network. Systems manage everything from planning missions and threats to the diagnosis of maintenance.
“The problem of truly sophisticated defense equipment is that [potrebuje] Such a great support from the supplier that if the supplier decides to stop supporting it, the equipment will stop working, if not immediately, very, very quickly, ”Tusa said.
“The question they will think about is:“ How to add protection against the United States to your defense structure? ”More than half of the modern European combat aircraft, especially F-35 and F-16, are purchased in America.
Even before Trump’s era, in the early stages of the F-35 program, the United Kingdom as the main customer, which produces many components for this aircraft, asked for guarantees of “operational sovereignty”. They received certain guarantees in 2006, but no US ally has such a level of access to the system source code as Washington.
Lockheed said Martin said that he supplies “all the system infrastructure and data necessary for all F-35 customers to maintain an aircraft”. Foreign military sales are “transactions among governments, so anything else should be addressed by the United States or Customers’ governments,” Lockheed added.
The Swiss Ministry of Defense recently stressed that its F-35 could be used “autonomous” after facing questions about the American impact on the aircraft. However, it added that no modern Western fighter is completely independent of American systems of secure data communication and satellite GPS navigation. Even those produced by European producers.
The British means of nuclear deterioration
British deterrent resources have come under scrutiny because they rely on submarines armed with ballistic missiles Trident. These missiles are rented from the United States and regularly return to maintenance to the US base in King’s Bay in Georgia. Rocket testing is also performed under American supervision on Cape Canaveral in Florida.
This dependence limits the independence of the system, but according to analysts, it is not clear whether it would affect the United Kingdom operations after a few months or years. Malcolm Chalmers, Deputy CEO of Royal United Services Institute, said the possibility that the United States would have decided to stop the British Trident missile service would be “very unlikely”.
“Such permanent interruption would mean the end of a special relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States,” said Chalmers. Trident is also part of the Mutual Defense Agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom, which was extended indefinitely when it was re -ratified in November last year.
Agency Partners analyst Nick Cunningham, however, said that Trident is still a “critical point of the United Kingdom vulnerability”. Given the role played by America in their maintenance, Britain should at least explore the possibility of using French ballistic missiles M51 fired from submarines. France and Britain are the only nuclear powers in Europe.
Data and intelligence information
One of the resources from the defense industry argued that important parts of the news, tracking and exploration air fleet in Europe are “in the transferred sense burdened for the benefit of the United States and depend on their cooperation”.
Many European states are using US unmanned Reaper, manufactured by General Atomics, relying on satellite communication connection and software support provided by the United States. Italy and France needed to go through a lengthy US permitting process to equip drones.
The concerns of European states do not concern so much specific weapon systems, but the potential possibility that the United States will withdraw communication support and sharing information within any platform, from fighters to Chinook and Apache helicopters, as well as air defense systems such as Patriot.
“The concerns about the reliability of the United States as your key defense partner are obvious,” said Douglas Barrie, a manager for the military air and space industry at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. A recent sharp turn in American foreign policy “calls into question a number of things that the world has considered absolutely obvious”.
Permanent Defense Partnership?
Although Donald Trump may have fluctuated the Transatlantic Alliance, Joachim Finkielman, director of Di Danish Defence and Security Industries, he said that everyday contacts on the industry side continue normally. “There is a lot of concern about what happens, but we have not yet felt any changes to the United States.”
Finkielman noted that Denmark itself produced more than a hundred parts for F-35 aircraft and was one of many national suppliers. “I don’t know what ability to produce them is the United States if they do not receive Danish elements,” he said.
The main victim of uncertainty is probably the same American armament industry, not its European customers. American defense companies have long been using the implicit security guarantee of Washington’s favor as a marketing tool for their larger items, such as fighter aircraft. However, Tusa said that the willingness of the United States to interrupt the support is “completely fatal” for their sales.
“Trust can only be disrupted once,” he said.
The shares of leading US defense companies are significantly lagging behind the shares of their European competitors, which have seen a sharp growth from Trump’s return to the White House. Although no US orders have been canceled, few doubt that Europe will begin to apply a more independent approach.
“In essence, this signals the beginning of the end of the Western Alliance, or at least a part that includes the United States,” said Aboulafia. “May God help the American armament industry. It is a disaster in terms of exports. ”
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