Summary
Lockheed Martin UK’s chief, Paul Livingston, defended the F-35 stealth jet program after Elon Musk called it obsolete due to advances in unmanned drones.
Livingston emphasized the F-35’s unmatched capabilities, including stealth, battlefield data-sharing, and cost-efficiency by replacing multiple aircraft types.
While Musk labeled the program overly expensive and poorly designed, Livingston argued drones alone can’t match the F-35’s capabilities or defend against threats like China’s J20 jets.
Despite criticism over cost and reliability, the F-35 remains integral to NATO defenses, with widespread adoption across 19 nations, including the UK.
Elon is such an idiot.
This is the same shit he pulled back when he pushed drones as a solution to all those kids trapped in a cave. They weren’t even remotely viable, and when human beings rescued them, he called the leader of that successful operation a “pedo” for absolutely no reason other than his own childish idiocy.
he called the leader of that successful operation a “pedo” for absolutely no reason other than his own childish idiocy.
I think it’s darker than that. Their solution involved doping the kids so they were heavily sedated during transport. This was out of fear they would panic and threaten their own life and that of the person transporting them.
The dark part is how Musk’s mind associated sedating a child to make them more docile with sexual assault.
He tried the “have sex with me and I’ll buy you a toy, but you can’t tell anyone” routine with a worker and got caught. Now he knows those tactics don’t work as well on adults.
Wow, source please!
That was the first time heard about Musk other than a few articles about him. And it was the moment I knew that he was an actual dumbass.
One is an example of a team of people doing what elon’s dumb solution shouldn’t. The F-35 isn’t a solution to anything other than funneling tax dollars to Lockheed, and he’s dumb for thinking drones will replace everything, but not much more stupid than people seriously defending and advocating for the F-35 to replace everything, let alone anything
The bad stories about the F-35 are greatly exaggerated. The niche it fills is lugging 18,000 pounds of ordnance into contested air without getting shot down. Something the A-10 is less and less capable of every year. In the future, the development roadmap, they want the F-35 to use it’s electronics to guide arsenal drones in that bring even more ordnance. In an air to air fight one F-35 out in front can already launch all of the AIM-174s that a Super Hornet can carry, before the F/A-18 can even see the targets. Vastly improving survivability and deadliness.
There’s several very good reasons to use these things.
But did you know it costs money?!
/s
I thought they ran on Freedom ^TM ?!
nope, it’s Element 710
All those reasons have nothing to do with the reliability. It sounds nice (insofar as anything military can sound nice), but they still break down a lot more often than other fighter jets. Literally read this in a report from the pentagon iirc, though it was like 10 years ago and maybe they finally make it out of stuff other than tin and cardboard
Reliability is always being improved, they’re already on version 3 of the F-35. But no, “a lot more”, is a subjective term. There’s actually not much info on how often other jets break down. But they’re also on block 70, not block 4. And they’re still developing tools that fix them faster and better. For example the F-15 got an OBD scanner like device in 2007, after being in service for decades.
Here’s the thing; every bad thing you’ve ever heard about the F-35 comes either directly or indirectly from Pierre Sprey.
And Pierre Sprey also believed that modern aircraft shouldn’t have missiles or radar. He is not a man to be taken seriously, and neither are his criticisms of the F-35.
No, most of the bad things I’ve heard about the F-35 come from stories and reports of how they break down and malfunction a lot more often than other fighter jets. Is that just made up by Sprey and the reports of it not working are just lies?
From what I can tell it’s not that the airplane is unreliable, but the logistics and training for maintenance and repair haven’t been ironed out.
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-105341
The gao cites issues with the contractor not sharing technical details, lack of availability of parts, lack of training, etc.
That would make sense, I haven’t followed the F-35 for a while so maybe it’s gotten better since then. I still remember specifically reading that it malfunctions more often than it should, but I never dove deep into the subject and for all I know it could mainly be this. Ty for the link friend :3
“Fifth columnist says top of the line weapons system that is already paid for and being fielded is actually fucking stupid and you should totally divest from it and pursue some vague futuretech solution.”
It’s all so tiresome.
The guy that can’t deliver self driving cars wants to talk about self driving planes?
Drones can be jammed. You cannot match a trained human pilot with an onboard AI pilot, as much as Mr Snake Oil would like you to believe. Imagine fighter jets with the piloting equivalent to the Tesla “FSD”.
Edit: here’s a paywall free mirror for the curious
he piloting equivalent to the Tesla “FSD”.
Seems perfect for suicide bombing drone. They are meant to crash after all.
Yup, I’m sure that autonomous aircraft will eventually be able to fly better than humans, but that’s very far out. If musk wants to start funding it he can start selling stock and do it himself, don’t give him a dime of taxpayer money
Is he doing this just to stay relevant?
You know, no publicity is bad publicity (in both meanings).
Why not criticise hospitals, roads, electric transport, burgers, breathing when he’s at it?
overly expensive and poorly designed
Oh, like a flying cyber truck?
Every word out of elons mouth is complete and utter bs.
Elon thinks bcz he’s rich the defense contractors can’t get him? Michael Hastings got ended bcz he talked a little too much about a general.
Elon might have an accident with his Special K.
I mean, Musk isn’t totally wrong, the F-35 isn’t all we’d hoped for. It had a well documented history of cost over-runs, problems in development, and failing the way all multi-tools do, they generally don’t do as good of a job as specific tool. Further, the drone war in Ukraine/Russia is showing how effective drones really can be. However, drones are also a specific tool for a specific type of job.
I think it’s reasonable to think that both types of flight-based warfare will continue to be relevant, and neither will necessarily dominate the other, because… once again… the right tool, for the right job.
I mean, Musk isn’t totally wrong, the F-35 isn’t all we’d hoped for. It had a well documented history of cost over-runs, problems in development, and failing the way all multi-tools do, they generally don’t do as good of a job as specific tool
Your views hew ridiculously close to talking point that heavily associated with Russian state media. Please don’t be offended, this isn’t an insult It’s an FYI.
Ask yourself: how does the F-35 (in cost overruns, accidents, re-designs, ect…) compare to other fighter jets developed by the US and her allies? If you don’t know, wonder how you only bumped into info that paints the project in a bad light. Who benefits from the F35 being perceived as a boondoggle?
Youtuber Lazerpig addresses all of this directly and with sources if your interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxVsS9ZNUOU
Thanks for the heads up, but yeah, my opinions of this were developed during the Bush era and it was from US media sources discussing the issues with the F-35’s development. I honestly hadn’t thought about the F-35 in years and had to go to Wikipedia to make sure I was thinking of the right plane. I’m generally anti-war so I thought it was pretty wasteful in general at the time.
during the Bush era and it was from US media sources
Your being defensive. Yes, the misinfo campaign is that old, and yes plenty of Western journalists have repeated the talking points.
I’m literally just a cancer patient in the states, but go off bud. I’m not being defensive, I’m telling you my experience. I’m not disputing the possibility that a disinformation campaign went on that long. But cool cool, your original message was kind, but this is being a jerk. Not everyone can know everything and you can take what people tell you about their experiences or you can say they’re “being defensive” for admitting they hadn’t actually thought about it in years.
Idk what’s up with F-35 fanboys just blatantly ignoring facts to pretend it’s not a shit plane, and I certainly don’t get attacking you for disagreeing. Never heard the russian propaganda angle before, that’s a funny stretch cx
You’re*
The F-35 is good bc… Russia says it’s bad so we have to knee-jerk in the opposite direction? Am I interpreting that right?
It’s the worst fighter jet we have xD the cost is inexcusable and the reliability is dog shit, we don’t need to be defending overpriced balsa gliders just bc russia bad or something
If you’re saying it’s bad for the exact same reasons Russia said it’s bad you may want to consider your position a bit more thoughtfully.
You have no friggin idea of whether it’s a good aircraft or not. Of that I’m sure.
Yes, the F-35 is so bad that literally every single allied country is ordering and is willing to wait for like 5+ years just to receive it. It is the best selling aircraft out there, with insane capabilities for its price. America cant produce these things fast enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II#Operators
More than 20 allied countries have bought/ordered it and in significant numbers. It is going to be the future backbone of the airforce of most of those countries. Just because it had issues, doesnt mean that it isnt good or that many of its serious issues havent been resolved.
Also the F-35 has built-in networking and infrastructure to work as a mothership for “drones” or other remote controlled/ai platforms.
The difference between an F-35 and a drone is that the F-35’s Electronic Warfare suite can force the drone to do a factory reset in mid-air and return it to the sender.
Okay that’s an exaggeration, but cutting it’s communication link and spoofing it’s navigation to make it crash are in the realm of possibility.
Regardless of what you think of the F-35, China stole the schematics and built their own.
Doesn’t the Chinese plane have twin engines?
The broken clock strikes (but actually not really, the idea that drones can entirely replace all manned aircraft in the near future is kinda ridiculous. He just happens to be right about the F-35 being bad lol)
Instead of downvoting me, why not prove me wrong? Why not post some evidence of how it’s actually not super unreliable and overpriced? Wasting time and energy defending the air force’s biggest waste of money isn’t actually going to do anything good
Because he never talked about the f-35 program costs up to this point, you brought that up. he’s just claiming with no basis that we can build networked drones to replace the whole program and they’ll be cheaper and perform better than trained pilots, which at our current stage of tech is asinine
That’s literally exactly what I just said. That doesn’t mean the F-35 program isn’t stupid, it’s just funny that elon is finally right about one (1) thing, even if for stupid reasons
Instead of downvoting me, why not prove me wrong?
You ever consider that it’s not worth it? Kinda like wrestling a pig in mud - you end up filthy and at some point realize the pig is enjoying it.
But speaking of pigs…
