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!
Thanks!
Edit: I hope he will have to not have any normal people around him any more, as its that easy to get 250.000$ out of him. What a piece of shit.
or like when he brained up hyperloop to prevent normal high speed trains development in california, but this one is too glaringly stupid and it’s going against thing that already is proven to work, and with no equals
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.
he called the leader of that successful operation a “pedo” for absolutely no reason other than his own childish idiocy.
Come on Muskrat call the CEO of Lockheed Martin a pedo
Normally I’m opposed to the MIC drone striking US citizens, but apparently there are some exceptions
Elon isn’t a citizen I thought. More of a foreign combatant I’d say.
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.
There’s actually not much info on how often other jets break down.
…what?
This is…one of the single biggest metrics people talk about in evaluation of military aircraft development projects?
Why has everyone temporarily lost their critical thinking skills in this thread?
Sure, go ahead and link me the stats for the F-15C/E, F-16E, and F/A-18 then. Specifically the mean time between critical failures? That’s break downs. There’s information on mission availability, which is in the 60’s percent like all of the other combat jets.
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.
The criticism I’ve heard came from flag officers making statements like “It can’t run, can’t climb, and can’t fight”…
Yes. Indirectly or directly echoing ideas that have propogated through the military from Pierre Sprey and his allies in the “Fighter plane mafia.” Its genuinely hard to express what an undue influence these people have had on military thinking over the decades. These are the same people who convinced everyone that the Bradley (y’know, the one that has been fucking up tanks in Ukraine) is a bad vehicle.
“Can’t run, can’t climb, can’t fight” is the sort of thing you say when you’re under the impression that it’s still 1939 and we’re still using energy maneuver theory.
Dogfighting is as meaningful to modern combat as cavalry charges. The officers echoing this bullshit are no different than the ones who claimed that machine guns were overrated. Warfare has changed. Modern fighters operate like submarines; the goal is to detect and kill the enemy before they detect and kill you. Maneuverability has nothing to do with it.
As someone who has fought war…
You’re not right. You’re not even wrong.
Get back to me after you’ve at least done PLDC or BNOC.
I’m in Canada, we don’t have those. PLQ would probably be the closest equivalent up here.
Also PLDC is called WLC now. Sorry, I know it’s tough having to move with the times, but you really do have to try to keep up.
Wow I didn’t expect to come back and see an F-35 fan unironically defending the Bradley xD you’re a good ass troll I’ll give you that, you had me going the other day for sure
Oh, I’m sorry, clearly I just imagined all the footage coming out of Ukraine of Bradleys eating 125mm shells without even flinching, and fucking up T90 tanks.
But please, do explain how Pentagon Wars proves that its a terrible vehicle with no redeeming qualities.
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.
it’s all “hey don’t do the thing that works, instead give money to meeee”
The guy that can’t deliver self driving cars wants to talk about self driving planes?
To be fair™ planes are a bit easier. Fewer obstacles up there and typically a lot of things broadcast that they are there. They were landing the Russian space shuttle by computer in the 80s.
No one was jamming the Russian space shuttle, or shooting missiles at it.
It’s one thing to have an autonomous landing program on an aircraft, it’s another thing entirely to have a program that can react to surface to air missiles, enemy jamming, and over the horizon air to air missiles.
Elon musk is an idiot if he thinks a drone can replace all of the capabilities of even an F22, let alone the F35, which is a multi-role aircraft capable of handling all of the above and more. The F35 can jam, do reconnaissance, network with friendly fighters to fire over the horizon missiles, and drop bombs that weigh 1000 times what a drone can carry. Was it a good use of tax dollars considering the budget overruns? Probably not. But can it be replaced by drone swarms? Hell no. The F35 is an unmatched weapons platform, that’s why nato countries have been buying them.
Oh yeah Elon is a wanker for sure. I just wanted to point out that though they seem similar the problem spaces are different
all from the power of one potato no less!
The cars were going to fly short distances too.
He said he was going to use monopropellant thrusters to make his cars fly.
Hopefully I do not need to point out the many reasons this is a very bad idea, if not functionally impossible.
He also said he was working on an electric aircraft at one point.
Other companies have actually made such things… not Musk though.
if lithium battery fires were bad, i’m sure that firefighters are thrilled to see hydrazine fires, several hundreds of kg at a time, after random crashes. lmao. what the fuck was he thinking?
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.
it is also supposed to hit what it’s supposed to and not a random pedestrian
Not exactly fair to put the bar so much higher than most human operated US drone strike.
If the AI only hits a wedding every ten strike that would still be a massive improvement.
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
Self driving planes will be fully functional next year, I’m sure!
it’s rich coming from dude whose brainchild is cybertruck to say that F-35 sucks
overly expensive and poorly designed
Oh, like a flying cyber truck?
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?
he might be doing this because he has no idea what he’s talking about
Or his PR team makes his twitter “say” this and that. Or both.
He fired his twitter account manager decade agk and has been increasingly more unhinged ever since
Count down until Musk throws a hissy-fit and calls Paul Livingston a “pedo”.
maybe he lost interest in F-35 because its first flight was 18 years ago
On one hand, unmanned airplanes (drones or remote controlled) will outfly anything with a human on board, because humans are generally the weakest part of the plane. No human = no cockpit or life support, no hatch, no windows, no ejection seats, etc. An equivalent drone plane will be lighter, more structurally sound, and can maneuver at g-forces that will kill a human pilot.
That’s the hardware side of things, of course.
The software and information security is definitely not there yet… But I’m sure Elon thinks it’ll be ready “next year” just like Full Self Driving…
Every word out of elons mouth is complete and utter bs.
It’s expensive, sure.
In some cases, it has no use. In a small Eastern European country, it makes more sense to buy drones, artillery and air defense. If the possible opponent is right next to you, an airfield hosting the F-35 would simply be smashed with ballistic missiles, leaving the fighter homeless. The same money in the form of other items would serve one better.
Far over the ocean, far in the rear - different things make sense. Projecting force quickly to a big distance or intredicting an opponent that does that - requires fighter jets.
For a country whose threat model involves supersonic bombers launching hypersonic missiles at its navy or shipping or coastline from beyond air defense range - that cannot be solved with today’s drones, but can be solved with F-35: “intercept the bombers before they launch anything, destroy their airfields”. Drones cannot currently stop a stealth fighter, or even stop an ordinary fighter: it will outrun them and possibly run circles around them.
Drones of the future? Could take any form. Maybe some day, the F-35 is indeed a mobile command post in the sky and drones do the hard job. But not currently.
what a take
yeah this must be why south korea, japan, singapore, israel, finland, poland, romania and greece don’t have, or procure, F-35
hardened hangars are a thing, and unlike magic drones, F-35s already exist
That is also why Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia and several other countries aren’t planning to get any. Easier to let others have fighters, based in safer locations. Always possible to bring them forward to local air fields.
South Korea doesn’t have a rear area to rely on, even its capital is in artillery range from the north - it has no plan B except overcoming the opponent very fast (to decapitate a command chain, you need stealth strikes through their air defense).
Japan is an island far from the mainland - plenty of advance warning about an incoming ballistic payload. Poland has strategic depth like Ukraine. Greece doesn’t have that kind of a neigbour, but otherwise would qualify. Since it has very articulated landscape, it must optimize its ability for naval and air operations, so it needs good planes.
Romania and Finland are the countries in your list that fit my categories and make me think - maybe there is some benefit to a country with small strategic depth in having a very expensive air force.
In case of Finland, they have a large GDP per capita (enough to sustain an expensive project) and want their airforce to survive in range of the St. Petersburg air defense district of Russia (relatively densely armed). I think that, given the options (Jas-39 Gripen vs. F-35), they decided that “we must have an air force” and “nothing but a stealth air force will last in predictable conditions”.
In case of Romania, I keep wondering why they chose it. I think they simply added Ukraine to their strategic depth calculation and and concluded “we have plenty of strategic depth, there will be lots of advance warning if anyone comes at us over Ukraine”.
As for hardened hangars, the last ones over here (Estonia) to have them were the Soviets/Russians. Forward-deployed allied planes spend their time in lightly built above-ground hangars. I have no doubt in the planners knowing the state of the art. They simply aren’t that optimistic. There is every expectation that in case of war, planes cannot stay, but must temporarily retreat out of harm’s way. But you are correct to mention hardened shelters for planes, they should exist. But if one wants to keep operating in range of SRBM-s and attack drones - hardened everything, not just hardened hangars. (Sweden for example decided it wouldn’t have hardened everything, and designed a domestic fighter capable of flying off straight stretches of paved road.)
To summarize: if you foresee fighting in a phone booth, don’t choose a longsword. :)
Wrong, Czech republic signed contract for 24 F-35s almost a year ago.
Thanks. Sorry for the error.
in case of poland, you’re forgetting about ballistic missiles stationed in belarus and kaliningrad. in case of japan and to some degree south korea, there are also possible adversary’s naval assets
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.
Regardless of what you think of the F-35, China stole the schematics and built their own.
But did they build a thousand of them to the same standard?
But then you miss out on guessing whether or not your weapons will fire in the middle of a vicious dogfight
No, they fixed the problems first :P
Lol those things definitely don’t work as well as intended.
Doesn’t the Chinese plane have twin engines?
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.
You mericans don’t read a lot. Y’all expect it all on tv from some talking head. This is why y’all get bamboozled all the time.
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.
it’s a superior replacement to about any other plane (with single exception of F-22 for air dominance, but it’s not made now anyway) absolute state of the art apex predator in air, and scale of procurement brings costs down
there is a reason why no one makes single-purpose planes anymore and it’s degree of flexibility multirole allows, simplified logistics, less number of airframes needed for mission and a couple others. drones are very narrow purpose tools with short range relying on unjammed radio spectrum, or else extremely specialized long range heavier systems available only in small numbers. these things are replacement of ATGMs and cruise missiles, not aircraft. these things don’t even come close to each other
Let me repeat myself because this keeps coming up,
It’s a superior replacement to about any other plane
Sure, if you pretend money doesn’t exist? Baseline for getting your money’s worth from spending 1.5 TRILLION more than anybody else on development of a type of airplane is that your airplane should be the best airplane of that type.
That doesn’t prove that money was well spent, it just proves you have way more money than anybody else to throw at things though I guess the confusion makes sense, we 'muricans have such a very hard time telling the difference between those two concepts.
These massive cost overruns aren’t just a single one time strategic failure, like a good modern western tech product the f35 is built to burn money over its entire lifetime by having WAY higher operating costs. Thus the failure is compounded and compounded and as Sun Tzu would point out, the battle has been lost before it even began.
Baseline for getting your money’s worth from spending 1.5 TRILLION more than anybody else on development of a type of airplane is that your airplane should be the best airplane of that type.
and it is
if you read the article:
Before the F-35, if I was going to fly a mission into a peer nation’s territory to strike against a well-protected target, I would need a minimum of 16 aircraft,” he said.
“You would have jamming aircraft – which, by the way, says, ‘Hello, we’re coming’ – then you’d send in suppression of enemy air defence aircraft, because you’d have to kill the radars off, then you’d send fast strike aircraft in.
“I can now do that same mission with four F-35s and no support. And they don’t need protection afterwards, because they can fight their way out.
this is in a war against a peer opponent, like everyone in europe is preparing for. F35 is not a COIN plane, you’re looking for something like skywarden there (A10 sucks balls and was outdated the day it appeared on drawing board - you cannot change my mind). advanced aircraft like F35 allows you to both decrease package size and allows you to do things that you straight up can’t do without them, and comparing to loads of other older aircraft needed it is cheaper to use the new shiny thing. because of sheer scale of manufacture - 1000 was made and deliveries are 5 years away because demand is so high - development costs will be spread across all of these. both russians and chinese develop their own stealth multirole planes, su-57 and j-20 respectively, chinese additionally are working on stealth bomber, h-20, so it’s obvious they see their utility too, unless your conspiracy involves them all.
another random example
you need separate AWACS less because F35 has powerful radar, and it can also double as EW suite so there’s less need for dedicated EW aircraft too. without stealth aircraft you can’t sneak on your target and if done right this can give you massive advantage
or this one https://mail.ausairpower.net/API-VLO-Strike.html
maybe you’re just a fan of human wave tactics in comically obsolete planes like F104 soaking up most probable adversary’s SAMs like there’s no tomorrow. but don’t pretend you know shit about fuck
if you prefer video format https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGwU9HKH_Eo extra details there https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH-aJEloMbs
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.
I guess you have never heard of the concept of “too big to fail”? because you basically just made an argument that pretends that massive, corrupt and ethically dubious corporations don’t routinely employ this strategy as a defensive bulwark against society getting upset about the extreme degree of systematic theft they are doing.
I dont understand what you are trying to say. Too big to fail is used to describe something that is failing but cant be allowed to fail because it is too big.
As i wrote, the F-35 is far from failing, it is one of the most successful airplanes ever made, at least in terms of sales. Many european countries, which were big proponents of the Eurofighter and kinda ignored the F-15/F-16/F-18 platforms, are buying the F-35 simply because it is not only better than the Eurofighter/Rafale/Gripen, but it is also cheaper.
If the F-35 was bad or even medicore, those countries wouldnt be so willing to buy it, in mass quantities, with deliveries all the way into the 2030. Many of these countries also intend of creating a similarly featured plane but they wont be able to make one for another 10-15 years. So in the meantime, they are dependent on the F-35. They could use their older planes but they obviously see something in the F-35 that makes it a must have in the meantime.
The F-35 is so bad that it was used to destroy almost all iranian air defense with impunity. Elon is such a dumbass
wow the terrible, frightening might of Iran’s air defense network! Good thing we have essentially (like…literally) infinite money to spend on negating and penetrating it or else those Iranians would sweep all of western Europe under their iron fist!
Iran had top shelf russian air defense systems, including radars that were promoted as “making stealth obsolete”. it was, of course, complete horseshit
Ignorant and racist. Well done.
Wait I thought it was patriotic to be casually racist about Iran? Did I do that wrong? Damn I didn’t slip in enough jingoism did I?
I am not insulting Iranians and their capacity to develop weapons, I am in fact ashamed my country overthrew democracy there and yet pretends Iran is just irrationally evil like a stupid disney villain or something. Most of my country (the right, center and center “”“left”“”) isn’t interested in understanding anything beyond a superficial association of Iran with evil.
I am insulting all of you who unreflectively accept these ridiculous framings of war and national security that feed right into the cancerous growth of the military industrial complex.
I also wasn’t making fun of Iranians or being racist, I was pointing out the absurdly unfair matchup in military budgets between the US and Iran makes the comparison between the two and evaluations of the effectiveness of US weapons programs in terms of resources consumed an absolute joke.
Calling someone racist is rich when your whole presence in this thread is vehemently defending the existence and adoption of the world’s most advanced* brown child killer
Maybe you’re actually being anti racist bc you want the US to have worse planes to kill brown children with cx
lol wut?
“Maybe you’re actually being anti racist bc you want the US to have worse planes to kill brown children with cx”
hmm 4d chess I like it lol
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.
