Elon Musk says human-piloted fighter jets like the F-35 are obsolete. Drone tech can't yet fill the gap.
US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class August Clawson
- Elon Musk criticized the F-35 and called crewed fighters obsolete in the drone era.
- Musk's comments align with tech leaders advocating for drones over traditional military assets.
- Drones can't yet replace crewed aircraft. Even if they could, a mix of both might be better.
Drones are changing war in ways we never thought possible, but are we to the point where uncrewed systems can replace top-dollar weapons like the F-35 stealth fighter?
Prominent tech industry figures are saying yes. But former warfighters and analysts say we aren't there yet, and replacement might not be the right call regardless.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has taken aim at the Pentagon's prize fifth-generation stealth jet, the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. In a series of social media posts on X, he called it idiotic to continue building them and criticized the design. Pointing to Ukraine, he also said human-piloted jets are "obsolete" and "inefficient" and will "just get pilots killed" as drones and counter-air threats become more prolific.
In the Ukraine war, drones are surveilling and striking enemy vehicles and troop positions. But they are not a substitute for crewed jets, which Kyiv has long sought in greater numbers even as pilots face a tough air-defense environment.
Musk's comments follow similar remarks by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who called tanks "useless" last month while urging the Army to "give them away" and "buy a drone instead." Musk went a bit further, speculating about ways adversaries could defeat the F-35's stealth.
Musk's criticism comes as he prepares to target wasteful government spending as part of Trump's Department of Government Efficiency initiative. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is the Pentagon's most expensive weapon system program, with the lifetime costs expected to top $2 trillion, and Musk has previously suggested the F-35, troubled by setbacks throughout its development, isn't the best fit for the military.
Four years ago, the SpaceX founder said a remotely controlled uncrewed fighter would be a better alternative to the F-35 and argued the future is autonomous drone warfare.
This week, he said that "manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones."
SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images
Drones are game-changers
Small, cheap drones are transforming land warfare by providing new options for tactical reconnaissance, targeting solutions, and threatening maneuver. For situations where air and sea combat over vast areas might be more prevalent, like a war in the US military's priority Indo-Pacific theater, these drones are too slow with inadequate payloads and range to be sufficient.
The US also needs fast, low-observable, and maneuverable platforms that can carry advanced sensors and stand-off weaponry across great distances through potentially contested airspace.
"That's just not something that small UAVs can do," said Justin Bronk, a Royal United Services Institute airpower analyst.
Providing the full range of capabilities for this theater means larger, more sophisticated platforms with a higher price tag. Existing remotely controlled systems only meet some of the demands, some can cost as much as an F-35, and they are vulnerable to intensifying electronic warfare and surface-to-air threats.
The US military is actively developing new semi-autonomous and artificial intelligence-driven aircraft, from pilotless F-16s to collaborative combat aircraft where a pilot directs the tasks, and there are great possibilities in this space but also limitations as the technology isn't yet mature.
"If I develop an aircraft that does not require a human in the cockpit, I could develop one that could pull 15 Gs, 20 Gs because you're no longer worried about the physiology of the human," Guy Snodgrass, a retired naval aviator and former senior defense official, said.
Without a human pilot, "you could then strip out the cockpit, you could strip out the oxygen generation, you could strip out a lot of the life support systems," potentially freeing up space for sensors, weapons, and more, the former TOPGUN instructor said, arguing that "there are definitely advantages."
But without crewed fighter aircraft, particularly the high-end systems like the F-35, the US risks being "stuck with a huge capability gap for a significant period of time because the drone technology and the ability to not only produce it but then to incorporate it in the military and actually employ it in a tactically relevant or strategically relevant sense isn't there yet," he said.
Andrej Tarfila/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Mixing the crewed fighters with uncrewed aircraft
In response to Musk's comments on X about their fighter this week, a spokesperson for Lockheed Martin told BI that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is "the most advanced, survivable, and connected fighter aircraft in the world, a vital deterrent and the cornerstone of joint all-domain operations," a reference to the jet's role as a combat quarterback.
The fifth-gen stealth jet is not only a US military aircraft. It is used by nations around the world, with more planning to establish F-35 fleets. That's because the F-35 isn't just a fighter jet. It's also a bomber, electronic warfare plane, surveillance tool, battle management platform, and key communications node.
An uncrewed aircraft can't yet match that capability. "That technology is simply not there," said Mark Gunzinger, a retired US Air Force pilot and the director of Future Concepts and Capability Assessments at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
If one day drones have all those capabilities, there are still advantages to keeping human pilots flying combat missions. Combat is unpredictable and requires making decisions in uncertain situations. Autonomous systems might be less prepared to look past the data, like a false radar return, to make the smart call.
Machines are more rigid. "The flexibility that human pilots give you to use the machine and the systems that it has in relatively unforeseen circumstances or across a very wide variety of mission types and circumstances is something that's very difficult to replicate in an automatic system," Bronk said.
For the US military, wargaming scenarios have shown that the better solution is not one or the other, crewed or uncrewed.
"We need both," Gunzinger said. "And the greatest impact on warfighting, the biggest leap ahead in warfighting capabilities and capacity, is in figuring out how to combine what they both bring to the fight in the most effective way. That's the secret sauce."
Much like the US isn't solely dependent on a single energy source, US national security isn't dependent on a single capability. In this situation, uncrewed systems enhance crewed systems and vice versa. The US military is still figuring out what comes next, but the F-35 is an imperfect but important bridge to that future of airpower, whether it's crewed, uncrewed, or some mix of both.
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