Elon Musk is slated to head up the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) and slash federal expenditure. With a barrage of messages on his own social media platform X, he has given some idea what he has in his sights. He wishes to make $2 trillion in savings and his signalling seems potentially alarming for defence contractors….at least for some of them. Particularly, Musk seems to have a beef with the F-35, America’s most vital combat aircraft…and with a few tweets, he brought down the share price of the makers Lockheed Martin in excess of 3%.

DOGE Versus Stealth

In a post on Sunday (24^th November 2024), Musk attached a video showing a formation of hundreds of small drones with a sarcastic comment that “Meanwhile, some idiots are still building manned fighter jets like the F-35.”

Musk elaborated on what he perceives as the F-35’s flaws in a follow up post, stating, “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. And manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway. Will just get pilots killed.”

Musk went further to explain why it is not only the F-35 he sees as outdated but all aircraft with pilots on board: “Crewed fighter jets are an inefficient way to extend the range of missiles or drop bombs.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”

Twitter is not at all a superlative platform for nuanced discussion and there was little informed comment in what followed. The Pro-Musk and Pro-F-35 factions both appear so deeply entrenched they cannot see over the walls to observe each other’s position. Musk’s anti-F-35 rhetoric reached the climax with this cry: “Some US weapons systems are good, albeit overpriced, but please, in the name of all that is holy, let us stop the worst military value for money in history that is the F-35 program!”

Whether Musk is right or wrong can be debated but one thing is sure that he is being put in charge of cutting government overspending and he seems to have identified a program he thinks should be cut. It is more a question of whether he has the authority and influence to make that happen.