Elon Musk calls F-35 manufacturer ‘stupid’ and supports drone swarms

Elon Musk heads up the Department of Government Efficiency and plans to cut federal spending, but the flood of messages he’s been receiving on his own Twitter/X platform shows what he’s aiming for. He aims to save $2 trillion, and his signals appear to be alarming to defense contractors, at least some of them.

Musk, in particular, seems to be so in love with America’s most important fighter jet, the F-35, that he caused the manufacturer Lockheed Martin’s stock price to drop more than 3% in just a few tweets.

DOGE vs. STEALTH

“Meanwhile, some idiots are still building manned fighter jets like the F-35,” Musk wrote in a Sunday post about a video showing a formation of hundreds of small unmanned aircraft. I commented.

In a follow-up post, Musk elaborated on what he sees as flaws with the F-35, saying:

“The F-35 design broke down at the requirements level because it asked too much of too many people. So the product became an expensive, complex jack-of-all-trades, master of none. Success was never in the chain of possible outcomes. In any case, manned fighters are obsolete in the era of unmanned aircraft.

As Musk went on to explain, it’s not just the F-35, he believes all the aircraft pilots fly are obsolete.

“Manned fighter jets are an inefficient way to extend missile range or drop bombs. Reusable drones can do this without any human pilot overhead. can.

And, as the Russia-Ukraine conflict has shown, if an adversary has sophisticated SAMs or drones, fighter jets will be shot down very quickly.

Fighter jets have the advantage of helping Air Force officers mate. Drones are far less effective in this regard. ”

Twitter is not an ideal platform for nuanced discussions, and what followed was largely devoid of informed comment. Both F-35 and Musk supporters appear to be so deeply entrenched that they cannot see past the parapet and see each other’s positions.

Mr. Musk’s anti-F-35 rhetoric reached a climax with his cry: “Some American weapons systems are good, albeit expensive. But in the name of all that is holy, let us block the worst military value in history: the F-35 program!”

There has been a lot of unhelpful and often uninformed discussion about what exactly the F-35 and drones can do. What is the real issue here?

technical issues

To say that the F-35’s development was extremely difficult would be a gross understatement. The aircraft has been plagued by endless delays, cost overruns and technical failures. The program is estimated to be 10 years behind schedule, $180 billion over budget, and continues to struggle with “reliability, maintainability, and availability,” according to the Director of Operational Testing and Evaluation’s annual report. It is said that there is

However, the program is progressing well. With over 1,000 aircraft delivered, the F-35 has been successfully used in combat, although critics claim this is simply due to being “too big to fail” due to lack of investment and alternatives. . Training exercises and simulations suggest that the F-35 is highly capable, with one report stating that it shot down enemy aircraft at a 20-to-1 ratio in realistic test scenarios. How the F-35 Single-handedly Destroys the Air Force”).

Needless to say, the debate over whether the F-35 is overpriced, overvalued, or unfairly criticized has so far continued, as expected for a program expected to exceed $1 trillion. as well as noisy. Musk didn’t discuss much about why he thought the F-35 was flawed, but he did comment on the limitations of its stealth design, which makes it less visible to radar, and said in another tweet that it would be “ridiculously easy to shoot down.” said. Fighter plane. “Stealth” means nothing when using rudimentary AI with a camera that has low light sensitivity. They are not invisible. ”

Some questioned this blanket statement, but subsequent research has shown that Musk was actually talking about thermal imaging cameras with added AI (in fighter jet parlance, “infrared search and track”). was suggested.

The benefits of stealth technology’s limitations are an area of ​​active debate. It is wrong to say that stealth is dead or that stealth is essential. It may be at least noteworthy that Russian stealth aircraft are not participating in the current conflict, and that stealth attack drones have failed catastrophically. How well or badly the F-35 would fare in a similar war is another question.

But whether Musk is right or wrong may not matter. He has been tasked with cutting the government’s excess spending, and appears to have identified programs he believes should be cut. The bigger question is whether he has the power and influence to make it happen.

Winners and Losers: Join the Herd

As a recent article in Mother Jones pointed out, about half of the discretionary budget, the spending that Congress authorizes each year, goes toward defense spending, with more than $840 billion going to the Pentagon in the 2024 budget. Much of this will go to five major contractors: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, RTX, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman — exactly the traditional industry players Musk likes to disrupt. .

So Musk’s F-35 program, an old technology from the ’90s, is an obvious target for cuts. But there’s another side too.

President Trump said in a video on his campaign website that he would provide “record funding for our military,” so even if big programs like the F-35 are cut, overall spending is likely to increase. be. That would likely mean significant investment in new programs with high-tech technology favored by DOGE.

As the original tweet indicates, Musk is a big fan of drones and many drones, previously tweeting that “mind-boggling drone swarm combat is coming.”

“Future wars between developed countries, at least between countries with drone capabilities, are very likely to be drone wars,” Musk said at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit in London. It will happen,” he said.

This seems like good news for companies like Anduril, Shield AI, and Palantir, which are involved in supplying AI-powered systems to the Department of Defense and already have AI-enabled small drones and even drone swarms at the ready. Unlike existing drones, swarms can operate as large cooperative groups with minimal human oversight. These companies are Mr. Musk’s spiritual cousins, Silicon Valley startups rather than traditional industrial companies trying to bring new technology to the military. And you may notice that the wind direction is changing.

The extent to which large numbers of small, low-cost unmanned aircraft can augment, replace, or replace traditional air power remains an open question. And just as importantly, whether it would be just as affordable if manufactured by a U.S. contractor. However, evidence from Ukraine suggests that drones will play an increasingly dominant role in future wars. (As the author of a book about how small drones will conquer the world, I have a certain bias here, but I declare an interest).

While Ukraine and Russia each buy more than 1 million drones a year, the United States still buys drones by the thousand. If Musk has his way, the future U.S. force will likely have fewer F-35s and more small unmanned aircraft. One thing is certain: the debate will continue. With so much money at stake, not to mention national security, no one should remain silent.