The F-35 vs Drones Argument
F-35 is "Obsolete"
If you opened twitter/X in the past few weeks you’ve probably been subjected to the F35 vs drones debate against your will. This time you’re subjected to it because you willingly clicked on this article. See I’m a nice guy, this is all consensual :-)
This debate was sparked because the biggest account on twitter, Elon Musk, tweeted this:
Elon also eluded that building small cheap drones is better than building F-35 trash.
Is Elon Right?
To save you some reading time: no, he’s not correct.
Yes, the F-35 development was expensive and took a long time, that’s true. What they often forget to tell you is that today, an F-35A costs only around $20 million more than an F-16. Plus, these prices are based on export estimates, not the price the U.S. military pays, which is presumably even lower. Think about it: you can get the most advanced 5th-generation fighter on the planet for just $20 million more than a 4th-generation one.
The F-35 is the safest plane in the sky and, at this stage of its development, has had fewer crashes than any of the fighter jets that came before it.
The statement that the F-35 “is too many things to too many people” is a funny one. Elon made this comment, but I’m not sure what he’s referring to. We often associate “being smart” with Elon because of SpaceX, but nowadays, I’m less charitable. Is he talking about the F-35 being a multirole fighter instead of strictly a bomber or an air-to-air fighter? Well, we already had a strictly air-to-air fighter, the F-15(vanilla), and we didn’t get much use out of it. Militaries develop weapons based on the current potential threats they face. Why would the U.S. make more air-to-air fighters when would be mostly sitting on the ground doing nothing? Wouldn’t that be an even bigger waste of money?
Or maybe Elon is talking about the Marine Corps F-35B variant, which can perform vertical takeoff and landing for amphibious operations? Some big names in the media thrive on being vague, letting people assume what they mean. This is due to the halo effect, it makes a lot of people seem smarter than they actually are. I no longer give that charity, let Elon say exactly what he means.
“Jack of all trades, master of none” is an interesting one. Elon fails to understand that wars are fought as a team; there’s no lone F-35 looking for a duel with a foreign fighter jet. If you ever end up alone in warfare, it means something has gone completely wrong. Missions typically involve groups of 2–50 aircraft operating together, depending on the objective. These groups include fighters, bombers, command and control aircraft, fuel tankers, electronic warfare aircraft, and more. In war, the goal is to be flexible and creative because you’re solving very difficult and violent problems in real time. Multirole fighters like the F-35 are very modular, meaning you can customize their weapon packages. This allows them to take on many different roles.