Elon Musk Is Wrong: Why Drones Can't Replace the F-35 Fighter

Pity the poor F-35 Lightning II. Though she’s the pride and joy of Lockheed Martin’s legendary “Skunk Works” division and has been praised by her foreign users, she is the proverbial “unloved redheaded stepchild” of the fifth-generation stealth fighter world.

The latest public figure to bad mouth the Lightning II is no less than one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs and the soon-to-be co-head honcho of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk.

Musk’s beef with the F-35

Musk posted the following on his X (formerly Twitter) page:

“The F-35 design was broken at the requirements level, because it was required to be too many things to too many people … This made it an expensive & complex jack of all trades, master of none. Success was never in the set of possible outcomes … And manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway. Will just get pilots killed.”

In a separate post, Musk even goes so far as to slam the builders of planes such as the F-35 as “idiots.”

Now, mind you, I like and respect Musk a lot, but in this particular instance, I profoundly disagree with him. I shall explain why.

The case for keeping the F-35 (and manned fighters in general)

Given all of the advantages unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have over manned combat aircraft in terms of cost savings and reducing risk to aircrews, what possible reason could there be for not completely replacing manned with unmanned platforms?

Well, actually, there are multiple reasons, as articulated by Jacqueline Schneider and Julia Macdonald in an article for Cicero Magazine:

“Combat Scenario: Dispersed Enemy, Highly Dynamic Battlefield: Imagine a scenario in which a small U.S. contingent comes into contact with large clusters of maneuvering enemy personnel dispersed within and around separate facilities spread over a large area.  Manned weaponry has the advantage in this situation because the ground commander needs air support that can strike multiple targets near simultaneously, perhaps with large munitions capable of destroying hardened facilities. Additionally, because the situation lends itself to “squirters” (fighters who run to find cover from ground fire), the ground commander needs highly flexible platforms that can respond dynamically to targets outside of a standard camera field of view.”

 In other words, manned aircraft outdo UAVs in living up to early twentieth-century airpower strategist Giulio Douhet’s truism that “Flexibility is the key to airpower.”

Schneider and Macdonald continue by making two other wise points about tradeoffs between manned and unmanned aerial platforms:

Speed, Maneuverability, and Visibility: To illustrate this point, let’s compare & contrast the MQ-9 Reaper with the A-10 Warthog. The former is considered to be “the premier unmanned kinetic platform,” yet it “can only cruise at a maximum speed of 276 mph and is limited to 2 “Gs” of maneuver.” By contrast, the Warthog, which is a relatively slower aircraft by fixed-wing warbird standards, has double MQ-9’s maximum airspeed and more than triple its maneuverability. Regarding the visibility factor, “pilots and aircrew inside the aircraft are able to orient themselves in highly dynamic situations by looking out of the cockpit,” i.e., a 180-degree field of view not available to single-sensor platforms.

Wide-ranging Spectrum of Options: From the AC-130 fixed-wing prop-driven gunship to the AH-64 Apache helicopter gunship to the B-52 Stratofortress strategic bombers, “manned aircraft offer a vast array of capabilities for a wide range of air to ground missions. This is in contrast to the current unmanned inventory, which boasts only three aircraft operationally capable of carrying bombs or missiles.” In other words, there’s versatility to go with the flexibility factor.

Now, to bring those arguments back full circle to the specific case of the F-35, the Lightning II has a max airspeed of Mach 1.6 and can carry a weapons payload of 18,000 lbs. (8,200 kg), compared with a UAV’s mere 1,000-lb. (453 kg) payload. Meanwhile, this New York Post article offers a counterpoint to Musk’s arguments by quoting an unnamed Pentagon spokesperson who states that “We have combat capable aircraft in operation today and they perform exceptionally well against the threat for which they were designed. Pilots continually emphasize that this is the fighter they want to take to war if called upon.”

With all due respect to Musk, if he doesn’t want to listen to our own aerial warriors, perhaps he should consult with our allies’ aerial warfighters before he puts the Lightning II on DOGE’s death row. Killing the F-35 now would be every bit as premature a decision as then-Secretary of Defense’s Bob Gates’s decision to kill the F-22 Raptor back in 2009.

About the Author: Christian D. Orr

Christian D. Orr is a Senior Defense Editor for the National Security Journal (NSJ). He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch, The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security, and Simple Flying. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the Naval Order of the United States (NOUS).

Image Credit: Creative Commons.