The United Kingdom took its first one in in July.
The US has committed to more than 2K pricey high-tech F-35 fighters and the US and allies are busily working the so-called F-35 consortium that is by design backing F-35 war tech standards.
F-35 jets are pricey. The jet sales keep getting news coverage. Business looks solid. And just recently NAVAIR guys jubilantly blogged on what they called the first ever successful F-35 airborne weapons separation test.
Photo Credit F-35 Lightning II: Wikimedia Commons
This is war at its most profitable.
But are these edgy wartech systems ready to defend against viruses, organized hack attacks or even just malware? Not likely.
So far, anyway, the record is rotten.
Defense Department officials say Chinese hackers and various bad actors repeatedly penetrated the open systems based British Aerospace Engineering among numerous agencies to get F-35 early blueprints, not incidentally.
Or scroll down to read it in place. Defense against cyberattack in particular isn’t a popular point of discussion — offense is sexier. As a result there’s less money and less readiness for effective defense in the case of a real, broadscale digital attack on a goverment or major service provider, worry some, like author Richard Clarke, the defense contractor who penned this year’s Cyber Warfare: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It.
This infographic is jarring if you view it through Clarke’s lens. Check that out, below the photo, and come to your own conclusions.
As for the F-35, the US and allies are lining up inside a global consortium designed to control this particular war tech. Billions are on the table around the F-35. But could any hotshot Linux virus writer take it down? No one will know until someone tries, and some hacker historically will try. Are defense contractors ready?
Check out this cyberwar infographic timeline to see a history of how hackers have been targeting the world’s defense systems and how. Wild.
Cyberwar infographic credit: TheAviationist.com via hackmageddon.com
This is an amazing and broad collection of material re F-35. COOL.
It is! gs