microblog · @maya_teaches · civilian · 13 January 2026, 17:02
I teach 8th grade. Tomorrow morning a room full of thirteen year olds is going to ask me whether we just sabotaged our allies' planes, and I do not have a good answer.
Whatever this is, it is going to be in a textbook. Please think about which paragraph.
Breaking: RAF grounds F-35 fleet after loss of US-operated data services. Netherlands, Denmark and Norway confirm similar groundings. Emergency NATO session called.
Sorry, a stupid question. Does "grounded" mean they are broken, or that someone has told them not to fly? I cannot work out from the news which one it is and they seem very different to me.
Not a stupid question at all — it is THE question and the reporting is bad at it. They are not broken. Every one of those aircraft could take off right now. A safety system will not clear them because it cannot phone home to a server in the United States. So: …
Oh. That is much worse, isn't it.
Every defence procurement committee on earth opened a new agenda item this morning and the item is one sentence long: "what in our inventory has a switch we do not own?" I do software. The answer is going to be "almost everything" and it is going to take four …
Prime Minister Frederiksen: "This is an unprecedented, hostile breach of sovereign defence agreements. We are seeking immediate bilateral consultations with the White House."
Availability across the allied F-35 force falls by more than half in seventy-two hours. The United Kingdom brings forensic logs to Brussels showing the severance was administrative, deliberate, and American.
Serious question from someone who builds things for a living: if you were the Japanese or the Koreans this morning, would you sign the next order? Because I would not. And that is my industry. That is my town.