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."```I was picturing more like a custom ROM on XDA: “Bugs? You tell me.”
tell me more about the “Fly-Away” scenarios
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.
You wouldn’t download a
carfighter jet’s custom firmware
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
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.
The idea that $5000 will pay for replacing a core component or system is just plain preposterous.
A flash memory chip is a flash memory chip, whether it’s part of a USB stick or soldered to a custom board. You don’t need to replace the custom board, you need to solder on a new memory chip that contains the instructions you want it to.
Add some zeroes to that
Yeah, that’s not a job I’d be comfortable doing.
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?
In the most literal sense.
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!
What about replacement parts? Just cut your losses & get something not made by fascists.
I have one question. From where?
Name the other countries building equivalent aviation equipment and platforms. So far as I know they’re pretty much all fascist.
My question would be: do we really need a next-gen, multi-mission stealth fighter to safeguard ourselves from the Russians?
I’m not saying that’s not a relevant question.
But also, there’s not that many countries making their own military hardware anymore (fighter attack, electronic attack, stealth, or even just bombers). The ones that do are all pretty much on a fascism kick (Russia, China, USA).
And while we’re at it, The SU-57 would like a word. Because it’s the main reason so many countries do want the F35.
Hey Tuinman, congrats on having a bigger ego than sense of responsibility.
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.
Worked as an American consultant for the Dutch government in IT, can confirm this absolutely. It’s a case of finding private companies to funnel money to instead of actually creating capacity, all because of the incorrect illusion that the private sector is magically efficient.
My unofficial advice to my colleagues while leaving my posting was “stop hiring people like me. Spend the money on developing good internal devs”.
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 machinesThe 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.
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.
If you can jailbreak it, Tuinman, Vlad can jailbreak it.
