Comment on UK to host Donald Trump for full state visit this year, says Buckingham Palace
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 1 week agoDo you have confirmation that they require US permission, or is it speculation?
And that’s just one thing. Broadly speaking we absolutely are reducing our reliance on them.
HumanPenguin@feddit.uk 6 days ago
Just a news article. Can’t even remember where I saw it. So yeah. You are likely correct.
That said. If the US refused to support the UK. I find it hard to believe we would not quickly have difficulties maintaing f35s. And given how much they really on software to fly. I’d be more surprised if the US did not have a backdoor.
I’d add that to anything the US sells that they would have reason to fear if turned against them.
I really think is the EU and or the UK want to be independent of the US. Arming with modern US weapons is about as safe as. Well issuing Chinese smart phones to all our politicians.
The US has never been entirely trust worthy when it comes to them Vs the world. Less so now.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 4 days ago
There is no backdoor. We do not have the export variant of the F35 with US-controlled software. The software on our F35s (and Trident missiles) is British. This came as the result of concerns New Labour had about the very thing you mention - US backdoors.
And I agree that the US cannot be trusted. Thankfully our sixth gen fighters have no US ties, and most of our other recent military developments aren’t either. For the time being, though, we can’t really abruptly scrap trident or F35s, despite maintenance not being 100% done here (particularly for Trident). Our missiles only need maintenance every 10 years - I’d hope we have facilities to do that domestically by then.