What Elon Musk doesn’t get about military technology

We need to water down the enthusiasm over drones being a superior military technology to fighter jets.

Military weapons often become victims of ‘technology trap’. When technological innovations lead to new weapons, existing weapons are often ‘declared’ as belonging to ‘fossilised generation’.

Elon Musk, Tesla Motors CEO and ‘X’ owner, is the lead ‘thinker-in-chief’ of this school. His assertion that ‘drones offer more flexibility and safety in modern warfare compared to the American F-35 fighter jets’ is, however, debatable. Few military innovations from previous wars have succeeded in perpetuating their monopoly unopposed. The drones versus fighter jets tussle, instead, should be contextualised within the wider debate over competing weapon systems versus their co-existence in modern warfare.

Facts about the F-35 fighter jet

Musk is probably right when he says that the F-35 fighter jets suffer from high costs. However, this is partly because the designs have undergone many changes. These are early decades of F-35 production-cum-proliferation and the new jets are yet to reach ‘economy of scale’. Musk’s assertion that the F-35 jets also have a ‘flawed design and do not meet modern day operational requirements’ is not backed by significant statistical evidence. On the contrary, Israel has amply demonstrated the effective use of F-35 in its ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza and the air strikes over Iran. Contrary to Musk’s claims of being obsolete and outdated, the F-35 jets are still one of the best in the fifth generation fighter series and buyer countries are eager to stock it up in their fighting squadrons.

Musk would like us to believe, as he has been propagating in last few years, that we have actually entered the ‘age of drones’. Apparently, they offer more flexibility and safety in modern warfare, unlike the F-35 jets that apparently ‘kill pilots’. They also come with different innovative variants. Future warfare, Musk believes, would be between competing ‘swarms of drones’. However, contemporary warfare practices amply show that drones are not ‘genius weapons’ and do not provide battlefield edge in any way.

Putting drones in context

Within the air warfare domain, we have missiles of different range that are equally safe. Drones do not match the Mach speed of the fighter jets and can become floating ducks due to slow speed and absence of defensive capabilities. The computer-aided piloting have aerial limitations and drones are actually ‘horseless carriages’ over long distances. Incidentally, the US, despite boasting of the largest drone force, could not use them effectively in any of its wars, be it Afghanistan or elsewhere.

From a political economy perspective, drones may be cheaper to produce. Probably, that also speaks why it has become increasingly available to many states and even non-state actors as well. In the process, the intrinsic value of drones as an effective military tool stands diluted.

Technology and warfare

Technology matters amongst military weapons only when they enjoy decisive edge over the existing weapons through a generational advantage. We did have certain instances of ‘leapfrog technology’ that changed the warfare scenario in the twentieth century, such as innovation of submarines, tanks and fighter jets. These were effective war-machines since their innovation also led to global diffusion and proliferation amongst all militaries. Collectively, they changed the conduct of war by mid-twentieth century.

We are still not factoring the invention of nuclear weapons even though they singlehandedly stopped changed Japan’s position during World War II. Japan immediately surrendered since it had no alternate to the powerful military innovation.

Drones, on the other hand, made a very low-level, graduated entry into the world of military weapons in 1970s. Despite a long existential history, they are yet to significantly alter any war outcome on their own. We are yet to hear any eureka moment or phenomenal war achievements about drone usage. It only establishes that they do not have demonstrative military capabilities.

Drones are not the first challenger to the fighter jets’ domination. When the missile systems came into existence, they were similarly touted as ‘future weapons’, replacing the fighter jets. Like drones, they also had this benefit of saving the pilots from being killed or preventing large number of armed forces people from active soldering (tail support). That did not happen since missiles did not offer any generational advantage over fighter jets, despite weaponisation in different variants and ranges. Additionally, fighter jets improved from one generation to another. Today, missiles compete and co-exist with fighter jets in all countries that boast of significant military power.

Defence strategies comprise a mix of weaponry

Contemporary national defence strategies are, therefore, not based on exclusivity of one set of weapons vis-à-vis another set of weapons. Within the domain of air warfare, the defence or offence strategies are based on a mix of fighter jets, missiles of different range and anti-missile defence system. Interestingly, the US National Defence Strategy of October 2022, while emphasising on integrated defence, does not talk of drones at all in its force planning whereas missiles of different ranges figures prominently. Drones do figure in Chinese national defence strategy and China remains one of the largest exporters of drones to many countries. But even Chinese accord a greater significance to missiles and fighter jets in their offensive strategy. Drones, in fact, figure quite low in all national security discourses and defence strategies. They are not ‘silver bullets’, but just another platform, making the war business cheaper.

Modern warfare is increasingly getting complex and uncertain. Only countries having technological wherewithal would compete. Military powers, would, therefore, need technological warhorses like fighter jets and other competing weapons as well. We, therefore, need to water down or dilute the enthusiasm over drones being a superior or transformative military technology to fighter jets and its consequential emergence as the sin qua non of future warfare. The hype and hoopla over drones are hyper-inflated. Drones, at best, will co-exist with other new generation weapons and are unlikely to emerge as the centerpiece of national defence strategies. Musk would soon realise this after actually getting into the business of governance and defence.