Is it possible to (electronically) disable an ejection seat? I'm currently reading &quot;2034: A Novel of the Next World War&quot; and my question may have minor spoilers:
One part of the plot comes into motion, when a F35E (the E is probably fictional) is hacked and maneuvered into a hostile airspace. The pilot wants to escape the inoperable F35 by activating the ejection seat, however, the hacker also made the ejection seat inoperable.
Now I'm wondering if this would be possible. Can ejection seats be deactivated? And if yes, why? I wasn't able to find something about this, which may indicate, that this is a bad idea to begin with. I found this answer and I would conclude, that there are indeed systems which can manipulate the behavior of an ejection seat, but nothing about completely disabling it.
I am not familiar with the current F-35 ejection seat, much less what design changes, (real or fictional...) might be made by the year 2034, but of the three ejection seat aircraft I flew in the 1990s, none were electronically actuated such that it might be possible to hack into and disable the seat.
While they are mechanically complex, the means of actuation for most seats is actually fairly simple; relying on springs, firing pins, cartridges, and rocket motors.  It would be a very poor design decision in my mind to manufacture a last ditch fail-safe system like an ejection seat that is vulnerable to EMP, or is connected to a hackable network.