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Firing back at contentious comments made by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Lockheed Martin chairman, president and CEO Jim Taiclet has used the 2024 Reagan National Defense Forum to reaffirm the centrality of the F-35 in the 21st century defence capabilities.
While speaking with the panel, Taiclet emphasised the importance of piloted fighter jets like the F-35 in maintaining air superiority by sharing information and connecting assets in complex battlespaces.
The increasing complexity of the battlespace calls for an all-encompassing approach. F-35s, uncrewed aircraft, artificial intelligence (AI) and more are essential to ensuring Australia and its allies dominate the skies. Additionally, military leaders continue to highlight the critical role the F-35 plays in today’s battlespace.
Without directly mentioning the bombastic aerospace entrepreneur, Taiclet was quick to push back against claims that the F-35 and other manned aircraft were obsolete in the era of large-scale, low cost autonomous vehicles that could be configured for a range of mission sets without the physical limitations of a human in the loop.
Taiclet told the gathered audience, “So it goes back to multiple options and redundancy, having different approaches that an adversary cannot, with one fell swoop, take out your entire mission capability ... Drones are absolutely going to be part of the future of the air dominance app, or the air dominance mission, but we have to methodically step through where we are at time zero.”
The F-35 stands ready as the world’s most advanced aircraft, continually evolving to address future threats. Its current capabilities include sharing data across platforms, utilising advanced sensor fusion, evading enemy detection and more.
Taiclet added, “What aircraft do we have today? What command and control systems do we have today? What missiles do we have today? What is the potential adversary you have and how are they using it? And step forward and bringing in that technology, I’m pretty sure that a $25,000 drone will have no effect on a Chinese J-20 jet. When you see 400 J-20 coming across the Taiwan Strait, you better have 200 NGADs or F-35s or F-22s to meet them, or you will lose and you will lose right away.”
Importantly, Taiclet drew on real-world examples, in this case recent examples of the successful use of the F-35I Adir by the Israeli Air Force, saying, “The Israelis did demonstrate this in one of their missions, which was precision strike. They used, they didn’t say the Israeli government has not said what aircraft they used, but an ally that was involved in it, one of their senior officials said it was fifth generation...
“That mission was so successful, it basically eliminated the sophisticated Iranian air defence systems and a number of very specialised targets to take out their entire ballistic missile production system without losing a single airplane. I mean, that is an amazing demonstration of where this technology is. We can augment this technology, and we are, and this is public,” Taiclet further said.
Today, the global F-35 fleet includes over 1,000 aircraft, with more than 957,000 flight hours and 624 deployments completed by the US and among allies, including with the Royal Australian Air Force.
