Interview: Paul Livingston hits back at the billionaire’s claim the fighter jets will soon be obsolete

Summary

Lockheed Martin UK’s chief, Paul Livingston, defended the F-35 stealth jet program after Elon Musk called it obsolete due to advances in unmanned drones.

Livingston emphasized the F-35’s unmatched capabilities, including stealth, battlefield data-sharing, and cost-efficiency by replacing multiple aircraft types.

While Musk labeled the program overly expensive and poorly designed, Livingston argued drones alone can’t match the F-35’s capabilities or defend against threats like China’s J20 jets.

Despite criticism over cost and reliability, the F-35 remains integral to NATO defenses, with widespread adoption across 19 nations, including the UK.

  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    0·
    3 days ago

    wow the terrible, frightening might of Iran’s air defense network! Good thing we have essentially (like…literally) infinite money to spend on negating and penetrating it or else those Iranians would sweep all of western Europe under their iron fist!

      • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        0·
        3 days ago

        Wait I thought it was patriotic to be casually racist about Iran? Did I do that wrong? Damn I didn’t slip in enough jingoism did I?

        I am not insulting Iranians and their capacity to develop weapons, I am in fact ashamed my country overthrew democracy there and yet pretends Iran is just irrationally evil like a stupid disney villain or something. Most of my country (the right, center and center “”“left”“”) isn’t interested in understanding anything beyond a superficial association of Iran with evil.

        I am insulting all of you who unreflectively accept these ridiculous framings of war and national security that feed right into the cancerous growth of the military industrial complex.

        I also wasn’t making fun of Iranians or being racist, I was pointing out the absurdly unfair matchup in military budgets between the US and Iran makes the comparison between the two and evaluations of the effectiveness of US weapons programs in terms of resources consumed an absolute joke.

      • EndlessApollo@lemmy.worldEnglish
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        3 days ago

        Calling someone racist is rich when your whole presence in this thread is vehemently defending the existence and adoption of the world’s most advanced* brown child killer

        Maybe you’re actually being anti racist bc you want the US to have worse planes to kill brown children with cx

        • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          0·
          3 days ago

          “Maybe you’re actually being anti racist bc you want the US to have worse planes to kill brown children with cx”

          hmm 4d chess I like it lol

    • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
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      3 days ago

      Iran had top shelf russian air defense systems, including radars that were promoted as “making stealth obsolete”. it was, of course, complete horseshit