"The F-35 design was broken at the requirements level because it was required to be too many things to too many people," tweeted Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who was picked by President-elect Donald Trump to co-lead the new Department of Government Efficiency. "Manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway. Will just get pilots killed," he added.
Musk is correct in his assessment of the Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter, retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former Pentagon analyst, tells Sputnik.
"The F-35 is very nearly a modern Rube Goldberg machine [a contraption that does a very basic job in a complicated way - Sputnik] - with many parts that drive whole new requirements, and new remedies," Kwiatkowski says.
The program will cost more than $2 trillion, becoming one of the most expensive in US history, according to the Government Accountability Office. Despite this, the US military continues to discover new technical risks that cost American taxpayers more money.
"[The F-35] was designed, much as the last tranches of US aid to Ukraine in the Biden administration, more of an exercise in consumption and waste as the current military leadership wonders how to get out of its 60 year productivity and performance rut," Kwiatkowski says.
The F-35 has repeatedly come under heavy criticism:
X influencer Mario Nawfal appears to share Musk's skepticism: "China is building swarm drones," Nawfal tweeted. "Meanwhile some idiots are still building manned fighter jets like the F-35," he quoted Musk
Matt Gaetz, a former US congressman and Trump pick for attorney general, called the F-35 "a $100 million paperweight" earlier this year
Adam Smith, the Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, dubbed the F-35 a "rathole" in March 2021.