Elon Musk hates the F-35 stealth fighter because ‘it isn’t really invisible’. Oh dear

A US Air Force F-35A fifth generation stealth fighter jet performs at an airshow. Billionaire Elon Musk has criticised the F-35, and manned fighters generally, as 'obsolete'
A US Air Force F-35A fifth generation stealth fighter jet performs at an airshow. Billionaire Elon Musk has criticised the F-35, and manned fighters generally, as ‘obsolete’ - Greg Eans/The Messenger-Inquirer via AP

Billionaire Elon Musk hates the Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter. And while there are good reasons to share Musk’s assessment – that the single-engine, radar-evading F-35 is “obsolete” – his reasons for concluding that are all wrong.

In a recent series of posts on his social-media website X, formerly known as Twitter, Musk claimed the F-35 and similar manned fighters “are an inefficient way to extend the range of missiles or drop bombs.” Drones are better, Musk asserted, because they don’t have to support a human pilot.

But the F-35’s supposed “inefficiency” isn’t why it’s not suitable for, say, a war with China over Taiwan. On a performance level, it’s a lack of range that could compel F-35s to mostly sit out that conflict.

Musk fancies himself a technological disruptor. And it’s true, to an extent. His electric-vehicle firm Tesla is one several EV-makers gobbling up more and more market share from gasoline vehicles. His space company SpaceX is a leader in reusable rockets.

But since buying the former Twitter for $44 billion two years ago, Musk has become more notorious for his increasingly right-wing politics and close ties to US President-elect Donald Trump, as well as his online trolling.

The latter would be easy to ignore if not for the former. After Musk donated $132 million to help elect Trump in a narrow win on November 5, Trump tapped the South African-born billionaire to co-head a new advisory group, the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” that will advise Trump on possible cuts to government spending.

DOGE, whose acronym is an internet joke, lacks statutory power. But two months ahead of his inauguration, Trump has already shrugged off many of the official strictures of a presidential transition – the requirement that cabinet nominees be vetted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to name just one.

So it should come as no surprise if Trump repays his billionaire donor by unilaterally heeding DOGE’s advice and withholding funding from government programs, possibly in violation of law and legal precedent.

When Musk rails against the F-35, supporters of US air power should take it seriously. And when he rails against the F-35 for the wrong reasons, those same supporters should be very, very concerned.

Musk appreciates that the F-35 is the product of a long and expensive effort by the US and allied militaries and Lockheed Martin to build a “jack of all trades” stealth fighter that works equally well from long runways, from aircraft carriers and, in its vertical-landing version, from smaller ships and austere bases.

The result is a warplane that does a lot of things well, but few excellently. The F-35 program is years behind schedule and many tens of billions of dollars over its original budget, owing in great part to the sheer complexity of its software.

But its worst attribute for the most serious wartime contingency – an American intervention in defence of Taiwan – is its short range. An F-35 flies fewer than 600 miles there and back on internal fuel and with a useful load of weapons.

There’s just one major US air base that’s fewer than 600 miles from Taiwan: Kadena in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture. And China could hit Kadena with scores of rockets in the early hours of a conflict, potentially rendering it unusable.

Given the vulnerability of aerial tankers to Chinese missiles, the only F-35s that might be able to fight over Taiwan are the handful of carrier-based models. It’s not for no reason that war games assume the US strategy for a war over Taiwan will hinge not on short-ranged fighters, but on long-ranged stealth bombers flying from bases potentially thousands of miles away.

It’s worth noting: those bombers are manned – just like the F-35 is. While the US military is an enthusiastic developer and operator of combat-capable drones, it recognises that most drones still rely on potentially jammable radio links to distant human operators. Those that don’t are piloted by artificial intelligences that are still in their infancy, and are totally untested in actual combat.

If Musk had fretted over the F-35’s lack of range, his opinion of the warplane – and any cuts he might impose on the F-35 program through his unelected advisory role – might be credible. But it’s obvious Musk barely understands the F-35 … and aerial warfare in general.

He even seems to think a stealth fighter is supposed to be invisible to the naked eye. “‘Stealth’ means nothing if you use elementary AI with low light sensitivity cameras,” Musk wrote. Stealth fighters “aren’t invisible,” he added.

It’s true. But they were never meant to be invisible. As anyone with even a passing familiarity with modern military aviation understands, stealth aircraft are designed to be less detectable by certain radars and infrared sensors from certain angles under certain conditions.

In seeming to believe Lockheed Martin pitched the F-35 as a literally invisible fighter, Musk actually echoes a similar sentiment Trump has repeatedly expressed in recent years. It’s an ominous sign a rogue future president and his unelected but powerful advisor share an obvious misconception.

The US military’s crisis, when it comes to aerial warfare, is a crisis of range. Describing a fighter type as “inefficient” or “invisible” isn’t just factually incorrect – it misses the point.