Lockheed Martin's CEO doesn't see the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter losing prominence in the U.S. or partner fleet anytime soon, despite some Trump administration officials questioning the jet's usefulness as drones are made more sophisticated.
The U.S., its allies and its partners will only maintain air superiority over the next decades if they continue to use manned, fifth-generation fighter jets, Jim Taiclet said today at the Citi 2025 Industrial Tech and Mobility Conference. Autonomous drones are not ready to replace humans, he said, and may never be in some cases.
“The tech isn’t there,” he said. “The network isn’t there. The drones aren’t capable enough to do that mission. They’re not stealth. They will not survive.”
Trump adviser Elon Musk has publicly derided the F-35 program, saying on his social media platform X in November that “manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway. [F-35] Will just get pilots killed.”
The human pilot role will diminish over time, but Taiclet said he doesn’t believe that will happen for 20 to 30 years.
Taiclet pointed to years of speculation that fully autonomous cars would take over U.S. roadways. Even though those claims have always promised that future would be coming soon, few such cars currently exist.
Adversaries have a variety of electronic warfare tools to take down drones, Taiclet said, but most pilots -- if they are in a survivable aircraft -- can go through a mission regardless of the EW environment.
“There’s nothing that can be done today with drones, to my knowledge, against fifth-gen aircraft to disable and destroy them in flight,” he said. “Just, I don’t see it. Maybe it’s out there, but I don’t see it.”
Without advanced, manned jets, warfare becomes similar to the trench fighting seen in World War I, Taiclet said, as has been seen during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The difference is that now the front lines can be farther apart since drones are carrying out attacks rather than a soldier lobbing a grenade.
Taiclet compared that fight -- where neither side has a fifth-gen fighter in use -- to Israel’s recent defense and response to an Iranian barrage of missiles.
Iran had launched about 200 ballistic missiles toward Israel -- all of which were destroyed before reaching their targets -- on Oct. 1, which the country claimed was in response to Israel’s continued attacks on Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel responded with attacks against Iran Oct. 25.
“They went in, you know, I’m not supposed to say what kind of plane, but they had fifth-generation planes go into Iranian airspace . . . take out the whole air-defense system, bomb all the missile factories in one night with no losses and wiped out their entire ability to defend themselves,” Taiclet said. “You haven’t heard much from Iran since that night. That’s air superiority.”