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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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.”
