Elon Musk has once again disparaged the Pentagon's F-35 program as he prepares to lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency and advise the White House on how to reduce federal spending.
Billionaire backer of Donald Trump's election campaign slams 'stupid people' who continue to build manned fighter jets like the F-35 In X's Sunday postadds a trash can emoji.
In another post on Monday, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk further emphasized:
“The F-35 design was broken at the requirements level because it asked too much of too many people,” he wrote. As a result, the product became an expensive, complicated jack-of-all-trades and master of none. Success was never in the chain of possible outcomes.
“And in any case, manned combat aircraft are obsolete in the era of unmanned aircraft,” Musk added. “It just kills the pilot.”
Mr. Musk has long argued that the Lockheed Martin fighter jets are on the verge of obsolescence and that the future is drone warfare. Specifically, they are looking for a fighter jet that can fly autonomously and be remotely controlled by a human.
“We currently have combat-capable aircraft in service, and they perform extremely well against the threats for which they were designed,” a Pentagon spokesperson told the Post. “The pilots always emphasize that this is a fighter that they would want to take to war if called upon.”
A Lockheed Martin spokesperson told the Post that the aircraft is “the world's most advanced, survivable and connected fighter jet” and that the company looks forward to working with President Trump and his team. .
Musk is reigniting attacks on the F-35 fighter jet as he prepares to advise the White House on major federal budget cuts. It's unclear whether the Pentagon's F-35 program, the most expensive fighter jet program ever, will fall victim to the billionaire's cost-cutting plans.
According to one report, the Pentagon's F-35 costs rose 10% this year to about $485 billion to address overheating issues. Bloomberg reporting.
The U.S. government has delivered about 1,000 F-35 jets to its military and allies, out of a total of more than 3,000 aircraft planned for production over its lifetime.
The aircraft is scheduled to remain in service until 2088, and the entire program is estimated to cost more than $2 trillion. According to the U.S. General Accounting Office.
Musk previously said DOGE could save “at least $2 trillion” From the federal budget.
in Wall Street Journal joint opinion pieceMusk and the agency's co-leader, Vivek Ramaswamy, set their sights on the Pentagon.
“The Department of Defense recently failed its seventh consecutive audit, demonstrating that Pentagon leadership has little visibility into how its annual budget of more than $800 billion is spent. “Suggesting,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote.
And Musk is certainly thinking deeply about the F-35 fighter jet in particular.
“That's not design,” he wrote. Post to X on sunday.
“Manned fighter jets are an inefficient way to extend the range of missiles or drop bombs,” Musk wrote in another post. And as the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has shown, if an adversary has sophisticated SAMs or drones, the fighter jets will be shot down quickly.
“Fighter jets have the advantage of helping Air Force officers mate. Drones are far less effective in this regard,” Musk added with a laughing emoji.
musk said Although “killing a fighter jet is laughably easy,” its “stealth” can be overcome with rudimentary artificial intelligence and high-sensitivity cameras.
Tech startups are increasingly challenging a handful of large Pentagon suppliers, such as Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics, which have minted billions of dollars through no-bid contracts over decades.
Palmer Lackey, the 32-year-old creator of the Oculus virtual reality gaming headset, now heads a company called Anduril Industries, which makes AI-powered drones and submarines. Mr. Lackey proposed them as a way to let machines do the fighting and put fewer soldiers at risk.
Anduril sells some of its autonomous weapons to the Pentagon, which keeps some of the drones itself and sends the rest to Ukraine. Anduril announced over the summer that it was selling autonomous weapons to about 10 countries around the world.
