Starlink connecting hurricane victims lost to the incompetency of FEMA, SpaceX rescuing US astronauts stranded in space by the incompetency of NASA, Tesla creating a sustainable energy transport system along with power walls and solar, Neuralink bringing autonomy to quadriplegics and X as the world’s largest free speech platform clearly “weaken the U.S. government” as ordered by Putin. Hit the books Dick, you’re lost in a world of factual poverty.
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“Saved democracy and the western world from communism” Quite a bold claim, but I’d expect this from a Musk acolyte. The next four years promises to be a wild, chaotic ride with him having any position in govt.
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The value of an insightful comment does not depend on how much you like the commenter. Whether or not you like Elon Musk does not change the fact that he has affected significant change in multiple areas, suggesting that his understanding is broad-spectrum, not narrow focus. He has orchestrated significant changes in the areas of finance, motor vehicles, and spacecraft. He is, quite frankly, bringing rapid advance in multiple areas where society has stagnated.
So, that being said, whether or not I like him personally, I am willing to listen to him. I find his arguments compelling. Innovation has made the manned combat aircraft much more vulnerable. In a high activity exchange with an adversary, how long would it take to deplete our resources of aircraft and aircrew? What do you do then? Even if the F35 can generate a 20:1 kill ratio, what do you do when your adversary throws 1000:1 drones and/or missiles at you? The answer is, “They strip the sky of your ability to respond and end up dominating the air over the conflict.” That means you won’t be able to pursue a sea or ground war. Your forces will be impotent. To me that is a scary thought.
So even if Musk is only half-right it is seriously worth thinking about. History shows us that military strategy and tactics must change. Let’s start with the machine gun, Doolittle sinking the Ostfreisland, the German “mobile war”, the shift from battleships to aircraft carriers, the history of warfare is a history of change. Those who learn, adapt and innovate, win. Those who don’t, lose. I don’t want to lose.
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Fighter jets do have the advantage of helping Air Force officers get laid. Drones are much less effective in this regard.”
What a dumb-ass moron comment. Air Force officers have done a great job of getting laid without flying fighters. But what do you expect from someone who expect to exercise tremendous unearned and unknowing influence to satisfy a dictator than relying on decades of shaping our national defense.
Compare to experts in defense, he knows nothing. At what point does one person override our policy, production, logic and common sense? But then again, defense isn’t the only aspect of our existence that will go that way.
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As a note, this forum is the most poorly formatted and least legible of any I frequent on the internet. Whoever at AvWeb was responsible for guiding the “upgrade” squarely missed the mark by all assessments. I’m done commenting here.
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I’m past “acolyte”, holding shares in $TSLA for the past 8 years and paying for subs to Starlink, FSD and of course owning 2 Teslas I’m a full blown underwriter of the development efforts across all the “X” companies. I own DOGE coin as well but crypto discussions would trigger strokes in this forum. Huge economic upsides await those who actually understand what’s happening in the world around you. Sad you missed it.
Your “tRump” reference just blew away any credibility you thought you had. Go find a leftist discussion somewhere to spew your vitriol.
I am so tired of Lockheed-Martin bidding low and then over-running. 6-8 year programs to production almost always become 15-30 year programs with disaster after disaster in design flaws. But we have the government to blame also as so many in Congress (who provide the $$) are told that this is a “Must Have” program and cave-in to the lobbyists. And then there are the constant “Technology” improvements that are the mainstream of future profits.
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What bothers and scares me more than Musk’s rethoric is the polarisation that exists within the (avweb) pilot community, and the disappearance of any ability to reason, to distill, to argument, to think, to analyze news, to innovate. I have noticed this before : it’s like a dinosaur zoo here. Not completely : I support those who voiced some balance in this forum. Russian fighters cannot go anywhere near Ukraine or they will get shot out of the sky. Kamikaze drone warfare is the discovery of this latest war. Human reaction speed is very limited, our ability to focus is limited, as are our physical constraints. We consider ourselves useful - as opposed to cannon fodder. So I have to agree with Elon here. If the current generation of fighters were good value, perhaps a few more years. But the F-35 is a money pit, a dead duck, a product of a bygone era. Pump that kind of budget into drone warfare and you win any war in 1 day. Can you imagine hitting ALL your targets within 2 hours of starting a war ? In any case, I expect better of the pilot community than to get caught in the same trap as the broader society.
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Haven’t missed anything; your assumption is amusing. However, your response is sadly typical of the smug arrogance of those soaked in the Musk Kool aid. I thought you were done commenting here?
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Most if not all of us here are pilots. We love aircraft and we love flying them. However, if one is pragmatic, one will agree with Bill B. Humans are the limiting factors in aerial combat. Maneuvers are limited, station time is limited, and if the aircraft is shot down you more than likely have lost a pilot, a human, with how much money invested in his training? A guy that wants to go home some day is going to be fairly limited on the chances he’s willing to take in combat.
Now take that same guy, who shows up at work, gets his coffee, sits down and logs in to his aircraft for the day. He starts his patrol in his AI augmented fighter. A few hours later it’s lunch time, his relief takes over while he get’s some lunch and takes a crap. An hour later he’s back in the cockpit. Then he gets in a tussle with some unfriendly up there. The AI helps him develop firing solutions based on the unfriendly’s fighting tactics, and based on all fighting tactics there has ever been. He sends the unfriendly to Jesus and heads home to kiss his wife and pet his dog.
Okay but what if an unfriendly takes a lucky shot while the AI is rebooting and the pilot is distracted? The aircraft is destroyed but he still gets to go home and kiss his wife and pet his dog. The AI learns a lesson and they are all back at it again on Monday.
Is that really a bad situation?
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Well : bring the cost of cruise missiles down (more likely : smaller, simpler versions), make the simpler to manage, and you have a 300 to 1 ratio. or better. Also : a pilot gets caught now you have to trade him in for 100 terrorists.
Sure. How about an attempt at argumentation ? Shouldn’t be much of a problem if he is as ignorant as you are suggesting…
I was wondering what you were on about, then 5min later I returned to your comment to agree. Not sure what your gripe is but mine is that responses are not “branched” under their mother comment. That also means that such ‘unbranched’ responses end up orphaned and lacking all form of context.
This exactly. You articulated the problem much better than I did. Thank You.
Yeah, typo. Sure. Smh.
Well, this caught the attention of the crowd. I wonder why…oh right, ‘Elon Musk’, God’s gift to himself.
Let’s clear up something, before there was Elon Musk, there was criticism of the F-35 project. Before “The Engineer” spoke many others said “It costs too much, It’s not as good, it is not safe” along with those that praised it. Elon Musk is not God, nor is he a real engineer so his opinion is just that and certainly tainted by his own needs, maybe not so much that of this country. He’s only news, because he makes himself the news.
Let’s clear up something else, Musk did not create Tesla cars, Starlink satellites ,or even the Falcon rockets. He envisioned them, he maybe had input into their development, but make no mistake, a small army of actual engineers created these products. Like Jobs before him he could put something together to create, but left to his own efforts, would fail as he does not actually build anything.
Wealth sadly seems to now allow public rudeness and baffoonary (even worse, some seem to venerate such Characters), but nothing in Elon Musk’s resume would indicate he is qualified to comment on in detail or make decisions on what is effective for the US Air Force or military, US Defense is not a business and whilst I can agree that there is waste in military spending, Elon has no experience in knowing what is and is not important for US defense.
Sure, there is an argument that x number of drones can defeat a flight of human fighters, but name a country that is putting such drone swarms up in actual flight and if they did, do you not think the US would have already explored such options? Drones and AI may be a future in warfare which in a way will be horrible in a way for without loss of life (other then those pesky civilians) what is the cost of war to politicians or military Staff.
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More smugness from a Musk worshiper clearly full of himself. Shouldn’t you be on a rocket to Mars already? I’ll see you off.
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Musk is a rare combination of intellect, imagination and leadership.
There were the same naysayers when he formed Space X about two decades ago. Musk has a unique combination of
- Vision
- Leadership
- Courage
- Focus
There’s no better comparison than Space X. vs Boeing
Boeing was a great company and then the corp HQ moved to Chicago (obama) and then DC with the swamp .
Space X was formed 4 years after Boeing was first given the contract for the next generation USAF Tanker.
Today Space X dominates the space launch business and Boeing has yet to deliver a fully functional Tanker. Over that period they have also had several felony bribery pleas, the Max crashes caused by the hidden trim system which was misrepresented to the FAA .
Leadership and character count.
If you watch some of the launch programs you might note that the President of Space X is a woman as are many of the firm’s technical employees and astronauts .
The wise person listens to and watches what Elon does and how he does it.
Musk is a unique combination of brilliant visionary and great leader. Part of his secret is giving lots of responsibility and authority to very carefully selected folks. When he started Space X he attracted some of the very best young people from ULA (my neighbor was pretty far up the ULA foodchain and looking at retirement)
One of the lessons from years in the development business was recognizing the differences between contractors who focused on managing the project vs those who focused on “managing the client”
It’s not surprising that the President of Space X is an incredibly talented young woman.