- 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 more effective.
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 say yes. Analysts and former warfighters say that we aren’t there yet and that replacement might not be the right call, regardless.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has targeted the Pentagon’s prized fifth-generation stealth jet, the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. In a series of social-media posts on X this week, he called it idiotic to continue building them and criticized the design. Pointing to Ukraine, he said human-piloted jets were “obsolete” and “inefficient” and would “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.
His criticism of the jet 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 weapons system program, with lifetime costs expected to top $2 trillion. Musk has previously suggested the F-35, troubled by setbacks throughout its development, is not 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 was autonomous drone warfare.
This week, he said: “Manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones.”
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.
“Most of the drones that the Pentagon is investing in to increase its ‘mass’ on the battlefield or provide enough capacity to overwhelm enemy defenses are not nearly as capable as crewed aircraft,” Stacie Pettyjohn, the director of the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security, said, noting “they are supposed to be cheap so that they can be purchased in large numbers.”
“They lack the range, survivability, and payload capacity of larger, more expensive crewed jets,” she added. “These, in particular, are not going to be able to replace the capabilities provided by crewed aircraft like the F-35 or B-2 bomber.”
In a theater like the Indo-Pacific, the US also needs fast, low-observable, and highly maneuverable platforms that are able to carry advanced sensors and stand-off weaponry across great distances and through contested airspace.
“That’s just not something that small UAVs can do,” Justin Bronk, a Royal United Services Institute airpower analyst, said.
Providing the full range of capabilities for this theater means larger, more sophisticated platforms with a higher price tag. Existing remotely controlled systems meet only 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 semiautonomous and artificial-intelligence-driven aircraft, from pilotless F-16s to collaborative combat aircraft in which a pilot directs the tasks. This space offers immense potential but with limitations since 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 G’s, 20 G’s because you’re no longer worried about the physiology of the human,” said Guy Snodgrass, a retired naval aviator and former senior defense official.
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,” which could free up space for sensors, weapons, and more, the former TOPGUN instructor said, adding 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.
Mixing the crewed fighters with uncrewed aircraft
In response to Musk’s comments on X about its fighter aircraft this week, a spokesperson for Lockheed Martin told Business Insider 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.
