The f-18 is made by Boeing so is it really that much of a surprise that they have a tendency to belly flop into the ocean? Boeing has crossed the threshold to pure incompetencey and not even government contracts are safe. When you get into a Boeing you're putting your life at stake no matter if you're going to space, to war, or to the next city over.
I think its worse than that.
I think one our adversaries has developed and is currently perfecting a targeted EMP burst that can disable electronics at extreme range with high precision OR the Avionics of certain airframes has been compromised in one way or another but likely due to the sheer volume of networking equipment coming in from china and one dang fool let in traffic one time that they should not have and boom, whole system is compromised. Think of each air frames computer system as its own version of an Operating System or like Windows 10 vs windows 11 but far far more basic and streamlined for its single purpose.
Now their is highly robust encryption surrounding these systems but thats not how bad actors get in, or atleast very rarley, do they "brute force" their way in. far more often then do something that falls under the blanket definition of "social engineering" or tricking both people and the system your trying to penetrate into beliving you are in fact authorized to access the information or even to change it.
Ask any of your friends who know about computers if you can ever truly get a virus out of a system, the answer much like bacteria is you can get 99.999% but you can never be 100% certain that there is not some part obfuscating itself better than our ability to detect waiting and watching and still able to "strike" but until then gaining invaluable intel. If a network is breached EVERY SINGLE DEVICE, from the printers to the dang mice needs to be replaced. Now this level of security is only needed at the VERY HIGHEST LEVELS, top level military and 3 letter organizations type stuff but thats exactly what jet fighters fall under, high level military.
So all it would take is for 1 f-18 to have been network readable, that just means to have a wifi or RF card/antenna to revive/transmit a signal and be in range of a wireless singal, this is not hard to imagine as quite literally every single time they land and for the duration of their stay at any airport or field they will have such a connection. This goes back to the encryption issue though right, no one can get in even if they are connected via "secure" network lines, unless the systems deems them to be authorized.
The very last model of the f-18 was made in 2000, while I know there have been innumerable upgrades please remember what I states before about a complete replacement?
This next part gets into speculation on my part as we lack the requisite sources to base it in fact but know I think its within a very short approximation of reality and that all the above is not based on conjecture but lived experience and the testimony of many industry savvy colleges.
It would be rather trivial for a state level actor to compromise a 2000s era system, its just not complex enough to be stopped, far to many physical and firmware level failures that would be hard built into the air frame such as the countless IoT monitoring devices like fuel gauges and air pressure sensors. Each one of these would require retooling on the OS level and rebuilding the very structure and weight distribution of the aircraft. Shoot just stitching from cat 4 to cat 6 could completely ruin the weight distribution as its alot more copper and insulation and thats just the wiring, what about all the additional networking equipment needed to communicate security in a modern world, all thats going on a computer that has at best 2000s era wiring and connections.
So all it would take is just 1 slip up and good golly it could have happened DECADES ago and the Chinese or whomever it might be just waiting quietly to utilize it, building up their own capability first. They could still been in the throws of trying to prototype it and we dont see how many times it hasent succeed we dont know. But the cost of fully replacing the avionic system and wiring and sensors and all the networking equipment, a task that I dont think is possible as my understanding is airframes have very specific build limits that cant be exceeded and most upgrade are limited to functionally improvements not next generation leaps as its very rare that the layout and weight distribution will match. (this is unique to fighter jets, I readily acknowledge you can in fact upgrade a bomber with the upgrades mentioned above for 2 reasons. bombers cost far more per unit and have far more sheer size and so can play around alot more with weight distribution as its quite literally designed for large weight changes. But to a fighter jet? I mean there is a reason we are knocking on the door of 6th gen fighters while still primarily operating bombers made in the 50s.
Some general somewhere thought he would save a buck deferring "tech upgrades" to the, already in the 90s, againg fleet of fighters right after the soviet union collapsed, whats the worry? The base needs new streetlights and the only enemy that could contest america for 1000 years just shattered into 1,000 peices, why spend money on caution for this new fangled computer stuff? Im sure he though that the military wouldent put substandard security on it the first time and justify earmarking money for something else on its clear invincibility in the moment.
However it happened they got the source code or kernel level access and they have been very very patient with it and are just now flexing what they can with it.
I ask you, if China sailed all the way across the pacific ocean with a full carrier strike group and said "we are going to sale through Panama as a freedom of navigation act" (thats what we call it when we send our CSGs through the south china sea). They get all the way over here and when they are in sight of the channel islands they crash 2 military aircraft in SEPARATE INCIDENTS, totaling tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and claimed it was because of "water in the fuel" we would never EVER stop laughing at them.
For us its not even our worst week this year, the Houthis got 3 indirect kills on the same airframe and send us home with our tail between our legs and then sunk 2 more container ships to show us they dident hear no bell.
At what point do we start demanding some accountability from our military and elected officals, when they start sending home boxes with flags on them? is that the only way America can be galvanized to action or even to take a situation seriously is when it goes to far, its NOT OK and we should strive to be better.
Where there is smoke there is fire gentlemen, lets not wait for the house to catch ablaze before we fetch the water pail.
I also just want to make it clear, yes I belive both the f-35 and the f-18 avionics to be compromised due to their repeated number of eerily similar and dubious crashes during peacetime and many not even during some kind of excessive or complex maneuver but simply navigating to and from 1 destination to another. I think they have run the numbers and know its cheaper to design a whole new airframe not to mention infitantly safer than to try and double down on narly half a century old tech but fighter like it make up SO MUCH of our current airforce their would be riots in the street if they suggested to stop using them.
If im then, id be trying to keep it quiet as much as possible and sell off our old stock to small nations with large state resources that arent to politically suave like Nigeria or Burma to get our initial investment back and pour that shit into drone factories and R&D
