Dear Fellow Social Media Avoiders,
A little knowledge can be a ridiculous thing. Take, for example Elon Musk’s November 25th X post series, disparaging the F-35, praising swarms of small drones, and (unevenly) hitting defense markets. That post, and Musk in general, sit right at the center of three of the most established, reliably recurring, time-honored Washington defense institutions:
1. Predicting the death of the manned fighter jet
2. A revolution in new defense technology that changes everything
3. Another commission to combat “waste, fraud, and abuse” in defense
Let’s take this in stages. First, the death of the manned fighter is an import from the UK. In the 1930s, there was a common belief that “the bomber will always get through,” so why bother trying to stop them? Thankfully, the UK built the Hurricane and Spitfire anyway. In 1957, the UK Defence White Paper stated that the English Electric Lightning would be the last crewed fighter the UK needed, because missiles were the future. The UK, like other powers, quickly discovered that not all security problems could be solved by lobbing missiles at them.
After bombers and missiles, fighters were going to be vanquished by UCAVs. The US FY 2001 defense authorization act, passed in 2000, aimed to make “one-third of the aircraft in the operational deep strike force aircraft fleet” unmanned. Fast forward 25 years, it’s Zero Percent.
The problem is that combat aircraft need payload and range, especially range. That makes them expensive, mandating survivability equipment (EW, etc.). Until we have guaranteed encrypted connectivity with no latency, they need sensors, too. At that point, a human in the cockpit is a tiny part of the cost buildup, and an insurance policy against vehicle loss or capture. Also, having a human on station is essential for Operations Other Than War (OOTW). So, while they proved useful as targeted assassination tools, UCAVs weren’t worth it as fighter surrogates.
Today, it’s CCAs, which sit somewhere between cruise missiles and those failed UCAVs. CCAs show great promise. But there are enormous issues with range and basing (particularly in the Pacific), to say nothing of all the other factors. The more they’re scaled up to cope with the tyranny of distance, the more prohibitively expensive they’ll become, reducing the appeal, and they risk winding up just marginally more successful than UCAVs. But there’s still hope.
Even if the piloted fighter was obsolete, the idea that it will be replaced by a swarm of very short-range toys, per Musk’s tweet, is just daft. “Russian bombers are coming in over the Bering Sea! A Chinese naval strike force is moving towards Guam!” “Scramble the quadcopters!”
As an aside, I’m pretty sure that in his phone calls with Vladimir Putin, Musk didn’t cast any shade on Russia’s new much-hyped Su-57 fighter. Just saying.
Second, Musk and other Tech Bros think there’s an unstoppable revolution in military technology that renders the past instantly obsolete. Musk’s belief that manned fighters are obsoleted by drones is part of a long and persistent overrating of new technologies. Today, many new ideas are in the works – some from new players – but we won’t know their effectiveness for years. Revolutions in defense take a very long time to play out, and there are many false starts. Cavalry looked obsolete when the English longbow arrived in the 1300s, but it was still crucial in warfare for another 500+ years, until machine guns arrived. The balance of power between tanks and anti-tank weapons, or between aircraft and anti-aircraft weapons, is taking generations to play out.
And remember when new technologies eliminated the need for combat mass? After 9/11, the zeitgeist held that a few commandos on horseback with laser pointers and a PGM-carrying B-1 would solve everything. Then came Iraq and Afghanistan, and boots on the ground were back in vogue. Today, the Ukraine war is all about masses of artillery and tanks. Drones are an important weapon, but an adequate supply of 155 mm tubes and shells is equally existential.
Third, Musk promises a reform commission, the Department of Government Efficiency. The first such commission bureaucratic enough to need two chiefs (Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, kind of a ChatGPT version of Musk), DOGE walks a well-trodden path (useful history here). Most recently, in 2010 we had the Bowles-Simpson National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. These commissions all fail for one or more of four reasons:
1. Failure to anticipate knock-on effects. Bowles-Simpson recommended canceling the F-35B STOVL variant, which would have saved billions, offering a sensible compromise. It also would have left the US with a fleet of useless amphibious assault carriers, and a very angry USMC.
2. Political ramifications. Most federal jobs aren’t in the Washington DC area. Many are in Red states, which might suddenly find that federal largesse works for them, even with a little waste. Much of the F-35 is built in Texas and Florida.
3. Economics versus defense. Per the great Edward Luttwak, from The Pentagon and the Art of War: “The trouble is that the outputs that count in war are very particular and very different from the outputs that count in peacetime, and when civilian notions of efficiency are applied, the difference is routinely overlooked.” He provides lots of examples, and the book’s a classic.
4. Feds cut costs. Gutting the deep state sounds easy and fun. Then, it transpires that many of those DoD and other government employees provide crucial oversight, controlling costs and preventing the private sector from getting everything handed to them on a titanium platter.
This is all a pity because Musk has done a lot for space and cars. If he started taking the time to delve into defense programs, he might have useful recommendations about encouraging competition, or perhaps increasing vertical integration (as with SpaceX), or disaggregating hardware and software. If he looked closely at combat aircraft, he might have much to say about requirements, programs, and the industry. The F-35 program is very far from perfect; he might have some useful perspectives on legacy or future alternatives.
Or, he could just keep tweeting, creating chaos and damaging markets and the industry, for as long as the Trump/Tech Bromance lasts (I’d give it a few months). To paraphrase Peter Thiel, We wanted innovation and reform. We got 280 characters.
Yours, ‘Til I Retire and Start A Reform Commission That People Ignore,