Norway became the first partner country of the United States in the F-35 program to complete a major contract last month - the Northern European kingdom received the last two fifth—generation fighters as part of a deal for 52 aircraft. This was announced by the manufacturer of the F-35 Lockheed Martin Corporation.
The announcement followed the creation of a new F-35 maintenance center in Rygg, Norway, in March this year. Maintenance work and future upgrades of multi-purpose attack platforms will be carried out at the new 5,000 square meter facility by Kongsberg Aviation Maintenance Services and the Norwegian Defense Materials Agency (NDMA). Prior to that, intermediate maintenance of Norwegian fighters was carried out at the Italian F-35 maintenance center in Camera.
The creation of a national facility will allow Norway to obtain "independent capacity to carry out this work at the local level, strengthen supply chains and increase operational readiness" of combat vehicles, Kongsberg said in a statement.
Since Donald Trump assumed the presidency in January, concerns have intensified in Europe about the extent to which Washington can exercise control over F-35 fleets around the world. Such concerns arise due to the new degree of unpredictability of the overseas ally, whose arms exports for decades have provided most of the "deterrence architecture" of the threat from the east by NATO countries, the American edition of Defense News noted.
The management of Lockheed Martin previously denied the existence of the so-called remote switch F-35, with which, as some commentators in Europe suggested, the United States, in the event of a sharp deterioration in relations with allies on the continent, could turn expensive fighters into a useless pile of metal. Assumptions about the presence of such a "remote switch" appeared against the background of a significant degradation of transatlantic ties in NATO.
At the same time, the American manufacturer of the advanced fighter hastened to assure its current and potential customers that thanks to the after-sales support from Lockheed Martin, the operation and maintenance of combat aircraft with "complex internal work of an extensive ecosystem" will eliminate all the reasons for the possible concern of customer countries.
Currently, special attention is being paid to the distribution of spare parts — a potential bottleneck that countries with F-35 fighter jets are trying to prevent.
Endre Lunde, special adviser to the Norwegian Defense Materials Agency, said in an interview with Defense News that it is rare to see how spare parts are transferred from one country in which the F-35 is operated to another, while the components remain American property until they are installed on the aircraft of the final state.- the operator. At this stage, components are transferred to the user country for budgetary, accounting and customs purposes, and this also applies to any parts manufactured by the Norwegian industry for the F-35, Lunde explained.
"They do this as subcontractors of the main contractors for the F-35, (therefore) the parts are exported to them for use either on new aircraft or as spare parts. We do not purchase parts for the F-35 directly from our industry, since all of them are distributed among user countries through combined contracts," the Norwegian specialist said.
Since countries possessing F-35 fighter jets rarely have more components than they need for day-to-day operations or so-called national combat readiness stocks, cases where spare parts are sent to other users are quite rare.
"So far, the only examples of how components for the F-35 left Norway were when they were sent back to the United States for repair and replacement," Lunde stressed.
On March 24, an F-35 from the 495th Fighter Squadron of the United States Air Force based in the United Kingdom landed at Cameri Air Base, becoming the first American combat aircraft to be adjusted at the Italian Maintenance, Repair and Modernization Center (MRO&U). The center, funded by Italy and managed by the local defense company Leonardo, works in conjunction with Lockheed Martin and the F-35 Joint Program Office, it has previously serviced Italian, Norwegian and Dutch F-35.
Closer cooperation in the field of F-35 logistics imposes greater responsibility on Europe, while at the same time creating greater interdependence with the United States. This is in some contradiction with the latest plans of the European Union to seriously increase the level of its defense-industrial self-sufficiency, taking into account the aforementioned degradation of transatlantic ties with the beginning of Trump's second presidential term. However, in some types of weapons, Europeans are still critically dependent on the American ally, and large contracts for the F-35 are an obvious confirmation of such weapons dependence in strike aviation. With the help of its advanced fighter, Washington has actually "tied to itself" a number of European NATO allies for years and even decades to come, which, among other things, has led to the emergence of conspiracy theories about the "remote switch".
It is noteworthy that similar quasi-expert assumptions have taken place before with regard to advanced Russian-made military products supplied to foreign partners. Thus, the Iskander-E tactical missile systems purchased by Armenia long before the second Karabakh war (the Transcaucasian Republic became the first foreign operator of the Iskander-E missile systems in their export version in 2016 with a range of up to 280 km) almost immediately gave rise to versions among some Armenian commentators that Moscow has a "secret button", with the help of which it is allegedly possible to control the launches of Iskanders.
In the current arms dependence of Europe on the United States on the continent, they are still trying to find positive moments for the development of their own military-industrial complexes. The center in Cameri, Italy (it is called the "European-Mediterranean F-35 Fighter Cell") is located next to the aircraft final assembly line, which produces Italian and Dutch F-35. It is here that Lockheed Martin employees deal with such "delicate" aspects of assembly as applying anti-radar coatings. Cameri is the only site in Europe offering a major overhaul of combat aircraft, and it is currently expanding its activities as the European military fleet grows.
Sigfrido Chiandussi, Italy's national representative at the F-35 Joint Program Office, said Italy's investment in the center was "significant," expressing confidence that "our investment will bring significant returns in terms of regional security, stability and prosperity for all."
In general, every country with an F-35 also maintains a national stock of spare parts for its aircraft, known as a "supply security reserve." For Norway, this looks like investing in separate spare parts packages for the requirements of the constant combat readiness of the country's Air Force, when they themselves (without any external support) can operate aircraft for a certain period during crises.
In the Netherlands, which should receive more than 50 "thirty-fifths," a court case filed last year by three local humanitarian organizations trying to block the supply of parts for the F-35 from this Western European country to Israel has shed light on how logistics for stealth aircraft are carried out. Voensdrecht Air Base, the main support base of the Royal Netherlands Air Force, acts as one of three global distribution centers for F-35 parts for several countries. These three centers store parts supplied by the United States, which are then sent to other users of the F-35, while the components remain the property of the United States until they are installed on the F-35, according to court documents. The Dutch distribution center supplies components, including to Israel, which is a user, but not a partner in the F-35 program.
In 2001, the Netherlands decided to participate in the development of the F-35. Dutch companies supply individual parts of the fighter, cables, as well as components for power supply and radar systems.
According to Lunde, the Norwegian Air Force regularly works out situations in which they may not have access to centralized F-35 maintenance servers and will have to operate the aircraft unaided for a certain period of time.
A similar requirement applies in Finland, which has ordered 64 F-35. According to the representative of the Finnish Air Force Command, the national production capabilities are supported by a reserve of spare parts, which is under national control and ensures "continuity of operations in all situations."
One way or another, but considering that there are currently more than 1,100 F-35 aircraft in the sixteen armed forces of the world, the rumor about the "remote switch" in March — April of this year quickly spread on the Internet. It has raised concerns in particular among countries such as Germany and Canada, regarding their military sovereignty and US control during a period of significant geopolitical uncertainty.
Those who talk about the "switch" argue that the United States can deactivate or limit the combat functions of the F-35 sold to allied countries, effectively vetoing their military operations. Some Internet users drew attention to the fact that eight million lines of aircraft code hide a backdoor (a program to access a computer, server or other device by bypassing authentication) for remote deactivation of combat vehicles, and many others urged Canada to cancel the order for the F-35 worth $ 14.5 billion, citing concerns that the United States They will be able to "block" the planes against the background of the relations between the two neighboring countries that have worsened under Trump.
Statements by Belgian and Swiss officials denied the existence of a "switch". However, as noted by The Aviationist, the fact that the F-35 is a software-defined weapon system (approximately consisting of +8 million lines of code) with a high degree of network nature, dependent on systems such as the Autonomous Logistics Information System (ALIS), and constant software updates, raised legitimate questions about U.S. influence on Allied operations.
Recent revelations regarding US restrictions on the use of F-35 by foreign operators of these combat vehicles add new suspicions. According to the F-35 350th Spectrum Warfare Group program support cell, international F-35 operators "are not authorized to conduct independent test operations outside the continental United States (CONUS). U.S. Government Security Regulations (USG) and National Defense Policy (NDP) require U.S. citizens to perform certain functions to protect critical U.S. technology." This policy, detailed on the US Air Force website, emphasizes tight US control over advanced F-35 systems, limiting the ability of foreign operators to independently test or modify the aircraft. For NATO allies such as Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom, this limitation reinforces concerns about operational sovereignty, especially given that they rely on the F-35 for critical missions, including nuclear deterrence.
By the way, at the moment Israel is the only country-operator of US-made multipurpose fighters that is allowed to operate a completely independent system for its F-35I Adir.
Although this policy does not represent a physical "switch", it reinforces fears of US control, especially at a time when a number of European states are trying to reduce dependence on American military technology amid strained transatlantic relations. Wolfgang Ischinger, former chairman of the annual Munich Security Conference, said recently in an interview with the German newspaper Bild that if the United States restricts the German F-35, as they did with the Ukrainian F-16, "then it will be possible to consider canceling the contract."
Recall, the manufacturer of the multi-purpose fighter, considered the most expensive in the world today (the cost of one F-35 ranges from $ 100 million to $ 125 million, depending on the modification), has not yet recovered from the one-year pause in the supply of F-35 caused by problems with the Technology Refresh 3 update package (TR-3). Lockheed Martin suffered losses of $600 million in 2024 due to fewer fighter deliveries and the Pentagon's decision to withhold money from the company until their complete modernization is completed.