🔷 Musk vs. Manned Fighters

Musk vs.
Manned Fighters

This week, the world’s richest man went after the world’s most expensive weapons program, stoking a fire on the internet. In a series of posts, Elon Musk not only slammed the F-35 fighter jet but also the premise of a manned fighter—calling them obsolete in the era of drones.

While his statements grabbed headlines, they’re not new; Elon first expressed these views in 2020 during an Air Force panel, declaring, “The fighter jet era has passed.”

Industry 4.0

Let’s see where he’s coming from.

Elon’s argument is rooted in the principles of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), a technological wave characterized by advancements in robotics, artificial intelligence, and human–machine interaction.

Elon and other like-minded futurists envision AI-enabled drones as the future of air combat because they should be cheaper, faster, and more versatile than manned aircraft.

This is a logical, natural progression for a defense strategy that prioritizes qualitative advantage.

National Security

However, national security cannot rely on bold predictions alone.

Futurists and observers often overlook the pragmatic realities of the profession of arms: threat-informed force design, along with the doctrine, principles, strategies, tactics, and technologies that underpin it all.

A single technology or tactic rarely causes a revolution in warfare, but they do constantly evolve the character of war. Those are big differences.

Drone Warfare

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine illustrates this well. Frontline dynamics are influenced not merely by the presence of drones, per se, but by the underlying technological constraints of battery packs and com links.

Early in the war, FPV drones dominated the air littorals but had a range of just 3-5 km—maneuver warfare was still palatable, and you saw the front lines constantly moving.

Now, modified flight controllers, larger battery packs, and better comm links have extended that FPV drone range to 20 km, creating a temporizing ground that shaped a relatively static 20-km no-mans-land between Ukrainian and Russian defensive positions.

Drones and Airpower

Drone warfare is here to stay, but where and how it plays a role—and over what time horizons—are key distinctions. Proliferating FPV quadcopters is dramatically different than fielding squadrons of AI-powered fighter drones.

Among many obstacles is operational reach—the distance and duration in which a force can successfully employ military capabilities.

Projecting power at ranges 100X greater than what drones in Ukraine are doing requires a level of engineering and operational complexity that’s hard to comprehend unless you’ve lived it.

Each touchpoint requires a level of assurance and resilience to be a combat-credible capability and requires the range, speed, payload, sensors, connectivity, and survivability that have been a cornerstone of programs like the F-35 and B-21.

Will large AI-power drones get there? Absolutely—they are being developed right now and are being actively experimented with.

But they aren’t here yet.

The technology, tactics, and integration must be accompanied by doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership and education, personnel, facilities, and policy—DOTMLPF-P in defense parlance. It’s not sexy work, but it is required when fielding such game-changing technology.

The Pentagon should be applauded for being bold in rapidly fielding Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA)—not chastised for not immediately killing critical programs today on the allure of what might be possible tomorrow.

If anything, Elon should be advocating to increase funding to develop, deploy, and integrate CCAs.

The Real Capability

Another misnomer is that when CCAs arrive, these AI-powered drones will instantly make manned aircraft obsolete.

Wrong.

The best way to leverage this tech is to focus on the strength of the team, rather than the individual drone.

The true value lies in manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T), where the strengths and capabilities are combined to create a powerful synergy. Wargaming, studies, and ops analysis have all pointed toward this path. It’s not “either/or” it’s “yes and.”

Fully understanding the nuances of achieving MUM-T requires unpacking its many layers—an important discussion mostly glossed over on social media. Again, it's not sexy—but it is what those in the profession and industry do.

Humans will remain an essential part of the equation—somewhere on the loop, if not in it.

The Future

Elon Musk’s advocacy of drones and critiques of the F-35 highlight important conversations about efficiency and innovation in defense. We should all welcome the discourse but also acknowledge that it's not that simple.

Lives and livelihoods depend on it.

— Bonus —

• This 10-year-old article about the future of warfare is worth the read—the small, many, & smart vs. the few & exquisite

• For fun, there is a sarcastic trend on X if you search for “The F-35 is a failed platform”

• Here’s our take on Elon’s F-35 design critique 👇

In That Number

$5.7 Billion

The Navy is asking Congress for $5.7 Billion in emergency funding to account for unexpected “shortfalls” in the Navy’s Virginia-class fast attack submarine program.

That’s a ship-load of money to mis-budget.

TRIVIA

What was the target price per jet when the F-35 program was initiated in 2001?

A) $30 million
B) $50 million
C) $70 million

On the Radar

Turkey wants (their) F-35s—again. They recently requested delivery of the 6 jets they purchased that are being held in the US after Turkey was removed from the F-35 program in 2019. At the same time, Turkey submitted a request to buy 40 F-35s.

• The Merge’s Take: Turkey is on track to having a 4-fighter franken-fleet. If approved, these 46 F-35s would complement the 40 F-16 Block 70 fighters they pivoted to when the original F-35 deal fell through. They are also moving forward in buying 40 Eurofighters. Lastly, they are building an indigenous stealthier fighter, the TF Kaan, with plans for a 250-jet fleet. The recent moves may indicate the ambitious TF Kaan plan may get curtailed, so keep an eye on this.

Red Cat selected Teledyne FLIR to provide thermal cameras for its Teal Black Widow drone—the Army’s new short-range reconnaissance (SRR) quadcopter program of record. The Army intends to buy 11,000+ of these drones over the next 5 years, a potential $260m program.

• The Merge’s Take: We wouldn’t normally highlight a quadcopter program, but stick with us for a minute. The camera model selected is the Hadron 640R+ dual thermal-visible imaging device, which retails for—wait for it—$4,200 each. That’s just the price of the camera, not the drone. Yes, the price goes down with bulk purchasing, but even at scale, the projected cost of each drone is $20k—which is roughly 20X more expensive than an equivalent drone being used in Ukraine. That’s the wind-up; here’s the pitch: Fence in for massive market disruption once Ukraine removes its export ban on drones, a move it's currently considering. One example: here’s a $150 thermal FPV camera made in Ukraine.

The Air Force’s KC-46 takes forever to start, and Airmen are working on a solution. The issue is the APU, which has “a substantially slower start/initialization time” than the KC-135. The novel solution is a remote-start button that physically actuates the APU before the aircrew gets aboard.

• The Merge’s Take: The fact that the new 2-engined KC-46 takes longer to start than the 4-engined KC-135 is surprising—and sad when you consider no one thought about addressing it until now. Apparently, it’s a major drawback for alert operations. Better late than never, but when the end-user is solving design and engineering shortfalls, you know there is a larger issue (requirements process). 

Conflict Corner: some news from hot spots around the world

• Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire so Israel can focus on Hamas; Hamas saw the Hezbollah ceasefire news and stated they are also ready for a ceasefire

• In Ukraine, Russia launched a massive attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as a new report showed that a new Russian recruit has a one-month life expectancy, with tallies of killed or wounded exceeding 1,500 soldiers per day. President Zelensky is now open to a cease-fire if NATO protects the unoccupied areas of Ukraine from further Russian incursions.

• In Syria, rebels have entered Aleppo for the first time in 8 years and Russian air strikes are trying to slow them down. In case you’re wondering who’s supporting who in the Syrian war, it’s complicated…

They Said It
“A Ukrainian victory will serve as the most effective deterrent to future aggression.”

— Former Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, urging the US government to prioritize military aid to Ukraine despite escalating tensions between Taiwan and China

Our latest show is about the development and deployment of the Paveway laser-guided bomb during the Vietnam War—and we tracked down one of the F-4 fighter pilots who was there 56 years ago to tell us all about it!

Whether you have no idea about anything to do with laser-guided bombs or are an instructor fighter pilot who thinks they know everything about Paveway LGBs—trust us, you will learn something in this episode.

Check it out!

YouTube 

Apple 

Spotify

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Knowledge Bombs

• France used a Rafale fighter to aerial refuel an A400M cargo plane, and yes you read that right (here’s what it looked like)

• Bombardier Defense delivered its first HADES ISR biz jet to the Army

• IronNet & Asterion (US companies) have deployed their high-speed Hitchhiker interceptor drone to Ukraine for battlefield testing

• Leidos Dynetics won a $4.1B Army contract to produce AIM-9X ground launchers for the IFPC Inc 2 program (Indirect Fire Protection Capability Inc 2) (video on your platform of choice: IG, X, or LinkedIn)

• Greece is transferring all of its Soviet-made air defense systems to Armenia as part of a modernization effort to de-Russify its arsenal

• Turkey’s Bayraktar Akinci drone test-fired 2 air-launched ballistic missiles (video)

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ANSWER
B, $50m per jet, in 2001 dollars—BUT you have to factor inflation over time. This equates to $89m in 2024 dollars, which sounds close to the latest F-35A flyaway cost of $82.5m.