Billionaire Donald Trump ally Elon Musk again fired insults at the Pentagon’s F-35 program as he prepares to lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency and advise the White House on how to best slash federal spending.
The Tesla and SpaceX founder slammed the “idiots” who continue to build manned fighter jets like the F-35 in a Sunday post on X, adding a trash can emoji.
“The F-35 design was broken at the requirements level, because it was required to be too many things to too many people. This made it an expensive & complex jack of all trades, master of none. Success was never in the set of possible outcomes,” Musk wrote in a separate post on X on Monday.
“And manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway. Will just get pilots killed.”
Musk has long argued that the Lockheed Martin fighter jets are headed toward obsolescence. The richest person in the world — who has a net worth of $332.5 billion, according to Forbes — has argued that drone warfare is the future. Specifically, he has called for fighter jets that are remote-controlled by humans with the capacity for autonomous maneuvers.
“We have combat capable aircraft in operation today and they perform exceptionally well against the threat for which they were designed,” a Pentagon spokesperson told The Post. “Pilots continually emphasize that this is the fighter they want to take to war if called upon.”
A Lockheed Martin spokesperson told The Post the jets are the “most advanced, survivable and connected fighter aircraft in the world” and that they look forward to working with Trump and his team.
Musk has reignited his attacks on the F-35 jets as he prepares to advise the White House on massive federal budget cuts. It is unclear whether the Pentagon’s F-35 program — its most expensive fighter program yet — will fall victim to the billionaire’s cost-cutting agenda.
The Pentagon’s F-35 costs rose 10% to about $485 billion this year to deal with overheating issues, according to a Bloomberg report.
The US government has delivered around 1,000 F-35 jets to its military and allies, out of a total of more than 3,000 planes planned for production over its lifetime.
The aircraft is expected to remain in service until 2088 and the program in its entirety is estimated to cost more than $2 trillion, according to the US Government Accountability Office.
Musk previously said DOGE can cut “at least $2 trillion” from the federal budget.
In a joint opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, Musk and agency co-leader Vivek Ramaswamy took aim at the Department of Defense.
“The Pentagon recently failed its seventh consecutive audit, suggesting that the agency’s leadership has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800 billion is spent,” Musk and Ramaswamy wrote.
And Musk has certainly laid into the F-35 jets in particular.
“It’s a s–t design,” he wrote in a post on X on Sunday.
In another post, Musk wrote: “Crewed fighter jets are an inefficient way to extend the range of missiles or drop bombs. A reusable drone can do so without all the overhead of a human pilot. And fighter jets will be shot down very quickly if the opposing force has sophisticated SAM or drones, as shown by the Russia-Ukraine conflict.”
“Fighter jets do have the advantage of helping Air Force officers get laid. Drones are much less effective in this regard,” Musk added with a laughing emoji.
Musk said “it is laughably easy to take down fighter jets” because their “stealth” can be defeated with elementary artificial intelligence and sensitivity cameras.
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