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.
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.
all from the power of one potato no less!
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
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.
Come on Muskrat call the CEO of Lockheed Martin a pedo
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.
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.
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
it’s rich coming from dude whose brainchild is cybertruck to say that F-35 sucks
“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”
overly expensive and poorly designed
Oh, like a flying cyber truck?
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
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
he piloting equivalent to the Tesla “FSD”.
Seems perfect for suicide bombing drone. They are meant to crash after all.
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?
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.
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
“We made waaaay too much money off that jet to be idiots!”
I mean everybody is right by accident some of the time…
I love libs defending the f35 like the good warhawks they pretend to not to be.
Yes the f35 is a good fighter jet, if you ignore THAT IT COST 1.7 TRILLION and completely forget about the concept of lost opportunity cost.
Lol downvote me you fools the f35 was set in stone as strategic catastrophe before it ever entered combat by virtue of destroying an incomprehensible amount of our shared wealth. The f35 is a tool of the military industrial complex designed to suck up as much cash as possible, the functionality of the plane is a distant concern in practice which explains why it barely works even given the obscene amount of money spent on it.
F-15s cost 55-100 million depending on make and year. The F-35 is on the high end of that at 80-100 million but it is not outside the range of what we pay for aircraft. Furthermore Boeing’s Eagle upgrade the EX is actually more expensive than the F-35.
The only other option was to keep buying legacy aircraft. Which might work with Russia but the Chinese are actually figuring some stuff out.
…and the third option was a nextgen fighter development aircraft program that didn’t have horrific ballooning costs?
You mean inflation? Or the regular financial fear mongering? I can go back into the NYTimes Archives and find similar articles for the F-15, F-16, and F-18. Hell I’m old enough to remember the articles about the Super Hornet.
And now all of those planes are considered the gold standard. By the way, the F-15EX is literally just new F-15s with all of the updates applied, new engine, and stronger wings. Which strongly suggests this is just the cost of a new fighter jet in 2024.
The problem with the F-35 is their high maintenance cost and low reliability.
As it ever was with new military vehicles. Costs come down and reliability goes up over time. This isn’t the big deal Russia makes it out to be.
What does Russia have to do with anything? It’s the US military itself that has been having problems with it
Because this -
Aircraft that were combat-coded—which typically receive priority for spare parts and maintenance—achieved the best performance for availability, the report stated, noting that 61 percent were available on an average monthly basis. But that was still below the goal of 65 percent
Isn’t the horrible thing Russian propaganda makes it out to be. And every time people run around repeating their talking points they’re spreading misinformation crafted by Russia.
Another, less sensational way of stating it’s readiness would be, “Deployed F-35s were available for missions 94 percent of the time expected.”
Please explain how the cost overruns on the development program have any bearing on the effectiveness of the finished product?
Because anything you make with 1.7 trillion is going to look impressive unless you just throw all the money into barrels and just burn it?
Excluding the context of astronomical amounts of money like that is fundamentally disgenous to any accurate description of reality.
edit go on people, keep downvoting me to feel better because you don’t have an actual response, the jet looks cool and Musk is a pathetic loser with a billion dollars, but to admit the f35 is the same species of rot that the rise of oligarchs like Musk are an indicator of is too high a dose of reality for you :)
Hey I get your beef with the f35 but leave the national money hole out of it
The F-35 would be good if they hadn’t wasted so much time and energy and weight on having a pilot in it. On board pilots are a complete waste.
(Plus I bet dollars to doughnuts every F-35 we’ve sold to an “ally” has a secret switch somewhere to turn it into a drone.)
It would be impressive if it didn’t have a meat sack in it that needs climate control and fresh air and not to turn to hard…
there’s a reason the F-16 and F/A-18 are still the major US workhorses in the skies. (And of course my favorite the A-10 for blowing shit up on the ground.)
The A-10, good lord… 🤣
Why not bring back the p-51!
The Air Force just selected to use pilots in their NGAD fighter. Drones are not capable of standing up to humans yet. Especially in an electronic warfare situation where maintaining a communications link is not possible due to jamming. So the drone has to rely on on board tech for decision making. It would certainly be different if a super computer AI could control it over the communications link but that’s not where we are.
Edit to Add - The Air Force has more F-35As than they do all types of F-15, and about a 1:2 ratio of F-35 to F16. The F-35C had been slower to roll out but 100 have been delivered to the Navy and Marine Corps and the Corps is already using them in Yemen.
Also, as a former infantryman I love the A-10. But it’s time is done. The AF did it dirty and tried to cancel it a hundred times but it still did it’s job. But the F-35 is everything we asked for in a replacement except for grass stains on the fuselage. It carries a similar load, has a good loiter time, and benefits from more advanced precision technology so danger close is slightly more survivable.
And of course my favorite the A-10 for blowing shit up on the ground
Your favorite is the one famous for friendly fire?
Yeah, not surprising you’d hate the F-35 if you like that POS
The F-35 would be good if they hadn’t wasted so much time and energy and weight on having a pilot in it. On board pilots are a complete waste.
no, as a manned fighter the f35 is an embarassment of an arms development program independent of any discussion about the effectiveness of future manned vs. unmanned fighters. The program is a historic cost overrun and makes the litoral class of us navy ships look downright functional and frugal in comparison.
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
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…
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
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.
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 airplane 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 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.
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
“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
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.
