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.)
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."```Help, how do I unlock the bootloader
deleted by creator
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.
I don’t want to be the guy to tell my boss I’ve bricked the F-35
Even broke the warranty seal over the USB port.
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.
You’re assuming they’ll still sell you parts after you tried to bypass the locks
Add some zeroes to that
Yeah, that’s not a job I’d be comfortable doing.
And here I thought the military would want their stuff to work without software updates and be open source.
What sounds better, LibreJet or Free35?
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, 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 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?
I’m late to this reply, but Chinese pilots and aircraft have actually become quite competent this decade. Their behavior with international intercepts doesn’t mean anything, especially when its usually done by some ye olde J-11s. And amazingly they kickstarted the LRAAM arms race again with their highly successful PL-15.
The F-35 does get to face off against China’s J-20 and J-35, but to answer your question, the thing was built as an export product to make a ton of money for Lockheed.
While there is obvious technological advancement from the F-22, it has a top speed akin to a dated block I JF-17, reliability as good as a land rover, and parts/munitions expensive as golden caviar.
It’s just an export all in one stealth solution because there is no alternative that was developed.
Which is why I want to see it pitted against any nation that has properly delved into counter stealth operations. I feel like if you can successfully light it up, it would struggle in a BVR fight, unlike the F-22 which has plenty of power to mess around.
There’s no direct Chinese equivalent because both the J-20 and J-35 are more akin to the F-22 (although J-35 is a bit closer), but I would not be surprised to find the F-35 not being able to keep up with such adversaries.
And I’m fairly certain USAF is completely aware of this in their redteam exercises, which is why they continue to field the F-22 as their primary stealth air superiority fighter, if not outright their primary air superiority fighter.
Even more annoyingly for the USAF, I don’t think the upcoming F-47 is going to come before China decides to jump on Taiwan, so they’ll more than likely be fighting with whatever they have today.
Thank you for the thought provoking comment!
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.
The goal for the F-35 was to create jobs and taxable revenue. Projecting power indeed. Manipulating other countries to “keep up with mil tech” even tho we all know our adversaries are 20 years behind. Maybe investing in schools or diplomacy could have created greater returns for the American public
Install Graphene on it lol
Graphene Devs: We can’t support it because it doesn’t have a Titan M Chip blah blah blah
Right to repair my F-35!
Can it run doom?
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
I didn’t know our state secretary was a Warthunder enthousiast.
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!
Hey Tuinman, congrats on having a bigger ego than sense of responsibility.
The racist sack of shit, Hegseth, will have his sick fucknut friend, Doug Wilson (Christian Nationalist), bless each F-35. I hope one of you posts the Pentagon Prayer service given by the fucking lunatics.
If I had the F-35 in my inventory, I would hire a bunch of hackers to prepare the aircraft’s software for the just in case moment.
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.
The F-35 mainly uses Pratt & Whitney engines; the RR engine is for the B variant. Although, 15% of every F-35 is designed and built in the UK.
If you can jailbreak it, Tuinman, Vlad can jailbreak it.
