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.

  • Snot Flickerman
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    23 hours ago

    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.

    • yesman@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      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

      • Snot Flickerman
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        22 hours ago

        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.

        • yesman@lemmy.world
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          22 hours ago

          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.

          • Snot Flickerman
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            22 hours ago

            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.

            • sepi@piefed.social
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              20 hours ago

              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.

    • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      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.

    • NIB@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      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.

      • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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        3 hours ago

        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.

        • NIB@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          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.

    • sepi@piefed.social
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      20 hours ago

      The F-35 is so bad that it was used to destroy almost all iranian air defense with impunity. Elon is such a dumbass

      • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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        17 hours ago

        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!

        • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
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          12 hours ago

          Iran had top shelf russian air defense systems, including radars that were promoted as “making stealth obsolete”. it was, of course, complete horseshit

          • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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            4 hours ago

            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.

    • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de
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      22 hours ago

      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

      • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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        3 hours ago

        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.