A widespread concern is what would happen to Dutch weapon systems if the Americans were to withdraw completely as an ally. For example, Dutch F-35 aircraft are dependent on American software updates. Yet, Tuinman isn’t particularly worried about this.
“The F-35 is truly a shared product. The British make the Rolls-Royce engines, and the Americans simply need them too.” And even if this mutual dependency doesn’t result in software updates, the F-35, in its current state, is still a better aircraft than other types of fighters.
If you still want to upgrade despite everything, I’m going to say something I should never say, but I will anyway: you can jailbreak an F-35 just like an iPhone. (Crack it with your own software, ed.)
I’ve been working in the Dutch tech sector for decades. My general opinion about the culture of Dutch governmental institutions, including Defense, is one of neoliberalism and technological opportunism.
Public officials are completely ignorant about technology, yet misuse technology to advance their careers by starting megalomanic IT-projects, meant as nonsensical solutions to help realize highly unlikely business cases, that will only be realized (maybe) years after they’d handed over the reigns.
All of this has caused governments to become highly digitized, with large pools of IT-‘professionals’, yet barely able to maintain and develop the digital infrastructure they built up, because of a catastrophic shortage of tech-savy leaders and actual experts.
The reason I mention this, is because Dutch public officials are generally both highly techno-optimistic as well as highly techno-ignorant. Its not uncommon to see them making claims that sound misguided or downright false to anyone who’s anyone.
My take is that Tuinman likely shared his comment in an attempt to comfort the public, but that it betrays his fundamental lack of understanding about the digital infrastructure that makes up the F35. And if Tuinman is being fed this sort of information by his subordinates, then I’m worried that the experts at Defense might not actually understand the infrastructure themselves either.
The risk in all of this, is that Defense and the political establishment might be lulling themselves into a false sense of security, by underestimating the risks. Sure, you can jailbreak software, but many of the F35’s capabilities still require live access to the American intelligence infrastructure. Without that access, knowing there is no European alternative, the F35 would be a fundamentally broken plane.
If you can buy USBs that brick when plugged into the wrong system then you can make your aircraft inoperable.
“I installed some mobile app games on my plane.”
Well yeah, nerds in their basement with a passion for repairability figured out how to jailbreak iPhones, of course nation-states with a passion for
killing othersprotecting their global interests are gonna figure out how to jailbreak their war machinesdeleted by creator
The future is vibe coders getting jobs creating plausible, yet fundamentally broken firmware updates to OTA brick F-35 fighter jets.
Come attack us, I dare you. Jack here used his prompting skills to package some Stack Overflow RUST code into Golang binaries that another prompt converted into XHTML so another prompt could compile it into a Bash script to fix the bug in flight controls. Come within 50-nautical miles and we’ll OTA update your plane so hard you wish we fired missiles at you!
This is a ridiculus statement coming from a government official. Can’t imagine any other motivation than a clickbait equivalent intended to sling the topic in the public limelight.
Given enough effort and time all software can be reverse engineered. So “jailbreaking” is plausible. But that is just one piece of this puzzel. Here is a more informed version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X9ww6FtUhE
I don’t think a US Army/Air Force vet is going to have any less biased of a take than the a Dutch government official lmao
Besides the critique towards the person have you any insights as to which of his statements could be biased?
I’m just going to leave this here for reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
Apply that astute logical assessment to your own arguments and claims first 😚
Install Graphene on it lol
Graphene Devs: We can’t support it because it doesn’t have a Titan M Chip blah blah blah
Please keep buying our jets bro
We spent $1 trillion to make them bro, we need these to work bro
We’ll iron out all he bugs, trust us bro
It’s the best jet ever made bro, it’s killed so many Palestinians and Iranians bro
I’m still waiting for them to use the F-35 against an actual competent adversary with an actual airforce, but I think the only possibility would be China.
Maybe Pakistan if India buys the F-35, but even they know its a Lockheed money scam.
I mean they can be riddled with bugs and the best aircraft available. Chinas always going to lean in on raw numbers. Their aircraft are not superior, nor are their pilots who are always causing international incidents. The problem is the insane amount of resources that went into it and the fact that it really doesn’t have an adversary. There’s no telling if it will remain relevant for long enough to pay back the investment. For me it’s more of a “we needed a super jet like we needed a war in Iraq” vibe. No question its better than the Chinese equivalent (which there is none) Question is why the fuck did we build it?
The goal of the F-35 is to keep the lead in aircraft technology development. China can clone all the designs they want and build as many planes as they want but will need more then waves of planes to project power on the level of the United States.
I mean, there’s Russia.
And don’t get me wrong, I don’t really want to call them competent, but their planes are modern. And for Christ sake, we should be squaring off with them in Ukraine.
I don’t want to be the guy to tell my boss I’ve bricked the F-35
Yeah… Fighter jets don’t really get bricked.
A brick is when you’ve messed something up to the point where the hardware doesn’t boot and the only possible solution would be to pull out a rom chip and replace it with one with factory settings, but that’s too hard and not worth doing.
But that’s the thing, with the F-35, it’ll never be not worth doing. It could be a $5000 setback… But whatever.
Add some zeroes to that
Modern airplanes, especially military, are Uber complex, and mostly made of bespoke components, and take decades and billions to develop. The idea that $5000 will pay for replacing a core component or system is just plain preposterous.
Just look at the fun Russia is having sourcing spares to keep commercial western jets flying, despite having one of the world’s most capable aviation industries.
You’re assuming they’ll still sell you parts after you tried to bypass the locks
Even broke the warranty seal over the USB port.
Yeah, that’s not a job I’d be comfortable doing.
imagine flying a jailbroken fighter plane that gets an over-the-air update that bricks the controls
just get the gripen
Something tells me fighter planes don’t get updates from anything other than a computer plugged directly into them.
In production since 2006 and of course they were designing the things earlier than that, so…
Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s like some cars of the late 90’s and early 00’s and you need a computer with an RS-232 port to connect to a multiplexer of some sort that connects to the plane
E.g to get full dealer level access to old Mercedes cars, you’d need one of these:
And a laptop with RS-232 running Windows XP (can be on a VM)
That would seem like an awful idea that would be a dangerous security risk to the fighter.
So they probably did it anyway.
Well, let me be the one to surprise you and tell you that this is exactly how software and encryption keys are loaded onto the aircraft.
At no time would any combat aircraft have an operating system which even has the capability to receive software updates wirelessly, that would be an incredible vulnerability during wartime.
It requires a specific device that looks like it was made in the 1980s and deletes itself if it is bumped too hard and this device has to be directly connected to NSA controlled infrastructure in order to be loaded with any updates. The resulting material is loaded onto the device and physically carried by an Airman in the wing’s comm squadron and they are escorted by at least one other service member from the secure terminal where it was loaded directly to the aircraft.
It’s uploaded via internal connections (which may or may not look to be from the 80s) which are accessed by a maintenance hatch on the belly of the plane. Once the hatch is closed, if it is opened again at any point the aircraft will dump all of the key material and the resulting party will have a lot of paperwork and counseling to deal with and some other set of airmen will have to repeat the entire process all over again.
This has to be done for pretty much every flight, the aircraft cannot even start without this package of key materials and software. This process is fairly standard and used on a lot of equipment, as most equipment needs keying materials to function due to all of the datalink and/or telemetry systems.
It is likely that the Secretary of Defense was referring to their understanding of how this system operates and how they have scientists and engineers and the resources to reverse engineer any components. They have intact and working copies that they can tear apart and none of these systems are magic, they’re just secret and obtaining an intact war plane to reverse engineer is incredibly difficult in normal times. The Dutch have plenty of intact war planes to study.
“ATTENTION! Your jet has been hacked by MilitaryGod Tech Team[LOL]. Your radios and controls have been disabled. Do not attempt to eject. Please send 10 bitcoin to wallet 214d93120cd3192ea019ab03928f1fa03 immediately to unlock your controls. If we do not receive payment in 15 minutes, all weapons onboard will be launched at nearby friendly targets. Thank you for your prompt attention to this urgent matter. Have a nice day!”
tbf, that can happen without jailbreaking
Can you elaborate on the Gripen?
Edit: my ore-coffee dyslexic ass read just like the Gripen.
I fully support Canada getting manufacturing here…
deleted by creator
It’s not dependent on constant software updates.
I bet every modern fighter jet is. “Dependent” might not be the best word, but if you can make your existing jet better just by optimizing the software, then of course they should.
It’s probably true to say that F-35 is objectively better than a Gripen, but it’s way more expensive too. More Gripens might actually be better than fewer F-35s. My understanding is they’re more focused on electronic warfare.
Constant software updates is like one of the main features SAAB boasts on it lol
These mainly aren’t actually “engineer changes two lines of code” updates. These are actually more like internal database updates. Every time an F-35 or Gripen is flown, it generates data about itself and I believe also about the other planes it’s up against. This gets synced to other F-35s (or Gripens) for their future missions.
Upon hearing this news I ordered a F-35 from Ali Express but they sent me a J-35 instead. Does the jailbreak still work on this device or am I stuck with the stock software? What’s the character for landing gear again?
Check budgetfighterforums.com
Next F35-frimware-dump on Piratebay:
[ RELEASE INFORMATION ] ------------------------------------------------------------------- NAME......: F-35_Series_FW_Utility VERSION...: v2.4.0-OPEN DATE......: 2026-05-04 PLATFORM..: Embedded Linux / RTOS TYPE......: Firmware Dump & Tools SIZE .....: 14.2 GB (840x50MB) ORIGIN....: Internal Flash (SPI/NAND) [ DESCRIPTION ] ------------------------------------------------------------------- This package contains a jailbreaked binary dump of the flight controller. Included are scripts for: * Hex-signature verification * Partition table analysis * File system extraction and flashing [ INSTALLATION / USAGE ] ------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Ensure your Fighter jet is in USB-Debugging mode. 2. Run 'python3 F35_jailbreak_flash.py --check-signatures' 3. Take Off CAUTION: Modifying firmware can result in a bricked device or "Fly-Away" scenarios. Use at your own risk. [ GREETS ] ------------------------------------------------------------------- To the researchers, the tinkerer community, and all those who believe in the right to repair and modify their hardware. ------------------------------------------------------------------- "Information wants to be free."```I was picturing more like a custom ROM on XDA: “Bugs? You tell me.”
Help, how do I unlock the bootloader
During startup, press the fire missile and eject buttons at the same time for 20 seconds
What??? In earlier versions, we had to lift a couple of legs on the chips, a 50cm bodge wire, and finally shorting a capacitor while booting. Finally the write protection disabled, which allowed one to flash an older BIOS that allowed usb booting. The major downside was that it was a tethered jailbreak. But we made it work…except for the fly-aways.
I’m having issues with this step, I can’t seem to hold the eject button for the full 20 seconds I keep getting forcefully ejected to the boot screen.
tell me more about the “Fly-Away” scenarios
You wouldn’t download a
carfighter jet’s custom firmwareFlashing failed 5 minutes in, and now an upside down jet with a big yellow ! coming out of the belly is on the screen. Did I brick my F-35 or is it recoverable?
Depends on your altitude…
Depends. You did schedule backups, right? Right?
Yes, but I can’t get to them as they are on the jet.
Don’t worry, fighterjetstockroms.xyz has you coverd. Just download the the ROM for your locale and start over again. One short warning, US versions on EU hardware could lead to unexpected behavior as the binary blops expect altitudes and speed measured in USCS and not in meters as the EU model sensors do.
I put the US fw on and it started to bomb brown people for oil. Is that intentional or a bug?
I didn’t know our state secretary was a Warthunder enthousiast.
The only thing that is certain, is that the logistics chain of the F-35 can easily break down. It is best for the EU to rely on a chain that is fully within their custody.
