The F-35 Lightning is the most advanced fighter jet in the world, and set to be an essential part of Britain’s air defences for decades to come.
Yet Elon Musk believes the largely American-built aircraft is “a shit design”. In fact, any piloted warplane like this has been rendered “obsolete” by drone technology, according to the billionaire tech entrepreneur.
Sharing a video online recently, which showed hundreds of small drones flying together, Musk wrote: “Meanwhile, some idiots are still building manned fighter jets like the F-35.”
Coming from the man who’s set to become Donald Trump’s “efficiency tsar” in the new US government, potentially pushing Congress to reduce further US spending on the F-35 – endangering the project for the UK too – the comments may sound alarming to Ministry of Defence officials.
Britain has 34 F-35 Lightnings so far and plans to acquire 138 in total, more than the number of Eurofighter Typhoons in RAF service now. Each of the Lockheed Martin-built stealth jets costs £90m and it’s the only type of fighter that can be launched from the Royal Navy’s two £3bn aircraft carriers. Experts think the UK may need far more fighters in the future, given the increased threat from Russia.
But Musk added: “Please, in the name of all that is holy, let us stop the worst military value for money in history that is the F-35 program!”
So are his concerns fair and accurate?
If anyone should know, it’s Billie Flynn. He flew F-35s for a decade, racking up 800 hours in the jet. He was an integral part of the Lightning’s development, serving as a senior experimental test pilot on the project for 10 years. He also has combat experience, serving as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force while commanding a squadron over the former Yugoslavia in 1999.
He is adamant that Musk is talking nonsense.
“I’m a big fan of Elon Musk’s rockets and electric vehicles,” he says, speaking from Ontario in eastern Canada. “But the suggestion that manned fighters have no place and could be replaced by drones, at this point in time, is absurd.”
Musk knows lots about engineering, through his businesses Space X and Tesla. But Flynn believes he won’t have received intelligence briefings on the capabilities of what modern manned fighters “bring to real combat, versus some imaginary world.”
Explaining why he believes the F-35 is unrivalled, he says that although drones might look good in fireworks displays and are becoming more useful for certain military roles, “a $25,000 drone does not have the lethality and capability of a multi-million dollar supersonic fighter. There’s no comparison.”
The Chinese military seems to agree with Flynn, after its new J-36 stealth fighter was revealed during tests.
Musk’s F-35 rants
- Elon Musk has been critical of the F-35 specifically and of manned fighter jets in general.
- Late last year, he wrote: “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 series of posts on his social media platform X, he continued: “Crewed fighter jets are an inefficient way to extend the range of missiles or drop bombs. A reusable drone can do so without all the overhead of a human pilot.” He has previously written: “Drone swarm battles are coming that will boggle the mind.”
- He argued: “Fighter jets will be shot down very quickly if the opposing force has sophisticated SAM [surface-to-air missiles] or drones, as shown by the Russia-Ukraine conflict… It is laughably easy to take down fighter jets. ‘Stealth’ means nothing if you use elementary AI with low light sensitivity cameras. They aren’t invisible.”
- With typically irreverent humour, he added: “Fighter jets do have the advantage of helping Air Force officers get laid. Drones are much less effective in this regard”.
Unseen but omnipotent
Based on some simple, raw measures of its flying performance, the F-35 Lightning might not sound too impressive.
Its top speed is 1,200mph – far slower than its old namesake, the English Electric Lightning, an interceptor that was flying with the RAF more than 60 years ago. It can carry about 8,000kg of weapons, 1,000kg less than the Typhoon. The B variant used by the UK – which can take off over short distances and land vertically – has a combat range of about 450 nautical miles using internal fuel, barely any more than the Sea Harrier which entered service in the 1970s.
This is missing the point, says Flynn. The F-35’s advantages lie firstly in stealth, which stops an enemy from detecting it, and secondly in its sensor system, which gives pilots an unrivalled knowledge of what’s around them.
These two characteristics make the F-35 one of only three “fifth-generation” fighters in service, along with the Russian Su-57 and the Chinese J-20. The Typhoon, by comparison, is a fourth-generation design – like the American F-16, France’s Rafale or Sweden’s Grippen.
“It’s an extraordinarily unfair advantage to fly in a fighter that cannot be seen, yet you can see everything else around you,” says Flynn. “It’s like playing football where your team is invisible and the other team isn’t.”
Its stealthiness comes partly from its curvy shape, which helps to disperse radar waves, plus its radar-absorbent paint, and its electronic warfare system that jams enemy radars. Its design also reduces the heat signature from its engine, making it harder for infrared sensors to spot.
“And we’re very careful about our electronic signals, so they cannot be sensed,” says Flynn. He explains that the F-35 communicates to friendly aircraft using a special datalink, far more advanced than the system used by Typhoons “which is effectively a lighthouse that everyone can see.”
This is why the F-35’s physical performance is arguably less important. Unlike Tom Cruise’s character in Top Gun Maverick, who flies an F/A-18 Super Hornet, F-35 pilots don’t need to race in and out of enemy territory as fast as possible when the adversary can’t detect them. The Lightning doesn’t need to outmaneouvre other aircraft if they can’t secure a missile lock to launch weapons against it.
Flynn points to Israel’s use of F-35 jets to attack Iran’s air defence systems in October, refuelling in mid-air to fly on 1,000-mile missions. “They crushed that country’s air defences and were never even seen.
“The uniqueness is really the brains of the airplane,” he adds. “It’s a flying super computer, powered by the 10 million lines of software code.”
He explains that “its real secret is sensor fusion”. This takes separate results from the aircraft’s powerful array of sensors – plus any information shared by allied aircraft nearby – and displays combined summaries for the pilot in the visor of their helmet. In other aircraft, pilots have to check different sensors individually.
“We can see absolutely everything that exists in the air, over the water, on the ground, all presented in a remarkably simple picture.”
Flynn flew more than 80 different types of aircraft in his career as a test pilot and rates many of them highly. “The Typhoon is a fabulous flying airplane. The F-16 is a very aggressive, nimble fighter. The FA-18 is a great slow-speed air-combat airplane.” But in his experience, the F-35 is ” the easiest fighter to fly”.
Musk has criticised the F-35 for being fine at many roles but not excellent at any of them, dismissing it as a waste of money. Flynn rejects this, pointing out that its ability to do several jobs at once means that if F-35s are sent into enemy airspace on a bombing mission, they don’t need to be accompanied by other types of aircraft. This reduces the number of pilots putting their lives at risk and increases the likelihood of missions succeeding.
“Going back 25 years ago, I commanded 70 aircraft in massive attacks into Kosovo and Serbia, and we did the same sort of thing in Syria and Libya,” he says. Of those 70, only 20 would be carrying bombs to attack their targets.
“We’d need electronic-warfare aircraft with us to shut down surface-to-air missile threats. We’d need aircraft that could shoot missiles at those surface-to-air sites. And we’d need other aircraft specialising in air-to-air protection, to escort the pilots that were dropping the bombs,” he says. “Now in a fifth-generation aircraft, there’s no one coming with us, because all they do is hinder us.”
Lightning v Tempest
- The UK has formed an alliance with Japan and Italy to develop a new jet called Tempest, expected to enter service in 2035. The RAF says it will “boast a powerful radar that can provide 10,000 times more data than current systems”.
- The project’s stated aim is for Tempest to begin replacing Typhoon, but for a time both types of aircraft would be flying alongside the F-35. Some experts have suggested that having three different kinds of fighter in service at once is inefficient, because they would all require different parts for repairs and their own pilot training regimes.
- Reducing future orders for F-35s to invest more in Tempest instead would also boost the British manufacturing sector. Although BAE Systems produces about 15 per cent of each F-35, including its rear and the electronic warfare systems, a far higher proportion of Tempest would be made in the UK.
Musk isn’t a lone critic
Concerns about how well the F-35 actually works in the real world have been raised on both sides of the Atlantic.
The fighter has been “plagued by mounting costs and delays,” according to the US Government Accountability Office. The agency highlighted “software stability issues”, adding: “F-35 repair times have been slow, and there has been a growing backlog of components needing repair. This has reduced the jets’ availability for missions.”
A Pentagon report released in November revealed that the jet “takes at least twice as long to repair as required,” and a “poor failure rate of critical parts” means too few Lightnings are available to fly for US forces. It found that American F-35s often had to fly with their stealthy coatings compromised because they required maintenance.
The National Audit Office is examining the UK’s F-35 aircraft programme – which is forecast to cost £18bn over its lifetime – to report this summer if it’s effective.
The Ministry of Defence says: “Whether operating from land or onboard our aircraft carriers as a central component of the UK’s carrier strike capability, the F-35B delivers a cutting-edge capability for the UK.”
But in 2023, the Defence Committee reported that costs of keeping F-35s flying “remain unacceptably high”. MPs warned there were “too many unresolved questions about the development and operational deployment of the fleet”.
It’s rumoured that the UK Government may decide to reduce its orders when the Strategic Defence Review concludes.
However, it’s hard to think of any modern military technology programme that doesn’t run overbudget and suffer from teething problems. Typhoons have cost 75 per cent more than originally expected and have suffered technical from issues.
What might interest Musk is that the Defence Committee encouraged the Royal Navy to think how it might use drones on aircraft carriers in future – suggesting that if more of those are used, fewer F-35s would be needed.
But comparing F-35s to swarms of small drones, as Musk has done, is not like with like. Flynn agrees that pilotless aircraft will be vital in future air battles – but when it comes to fighter jets, the next step is for them to fly alongside manned aircraft, instead of replacing them.
Collaborative combat aircraft (CCAs) are now being developed. Between three and five of these could follow an F-35 in formation – putting just one pilot’s life at risk, but giving that pilot access to many more weapons. Costs would also be reduced. The US Air Force expects to buy at least 1,000 CCAs.
Flynn argues there’s an ethical dimension to consider, too. The morality of people sitting safely on the ground, thousands of miles away from warzones, while they command powerful drones to kill perhaps dozens of people at a time, has long been questioned – such as in the Helen Mirren film Eye in the Sky.
Having flown in combat, Flynn says: “I understand the extraordinary lethality that goes with pressing the right thumb on a red button and the death and destruction that you unleash. The ethical considerations of that were paramount.”
The issues become even greater when contemplating faster, bigger drones controlled by AI rather than any human at all.
“I have never talked to an expert who can even conceive of allowing artificial intelligence to be unleashed today without humans governing what tasks those drones are permitted to do,” says Flynn.
In any case, he says, manned aircraft remain far more effective, and there’s no plane ahead of the F-35 which he’d rather fly into war. “Its kill ratio is better than 20 to one against its adversaries, and that number would be incomprehensible for any generation prior to this… It’s going to be more capable and more survivable than any fighter for a long time to come.”