A U.S. fighter jet with a troubled history became the subject of an online spat between an Arizona congressman and tech mogul Elon Musk, previewing possible tensions between the new Trump administration’s fiscal goals and the country’s defense sector.
Musk, who President-elect Donald Trump recently appointed to lead a government efficiency effort, took aim at the F-35, a fighter jet whose development was plagued by delays, soaring costs and reliability issues.
The aircraft was “required to be too many things to too many people,” Musk wrote on Nov. 25. “This made it an expensive & complex jack of all trades, master of none. Success was never in the set of possible outcomes.”
Development of the F-35 ran about a decade behind schedule and $183 billion over budget. A government review this year found the F-35 fleet still struggles with “reliability, maintainability and availability.”
Democrat Stanton defends the fighter jet
U.S. Rep. Greg Stanton responded in defense of the aircraft. “The finest pilots in the world are trained on the F-35 at Luke Air Force Base here in Arizona,” Stanton wrote.
“The head of ‘DOGE’ going after the F-35 undermines the 56th Fighter Wing’s critical mission and the cutting-edge tech that keeps the American military ahead,” he continued, referring to Trump’s government efficiency effort.
Musk has suggested his support for replacing fighter jets with drones, an idea Stanton has called “wrong-headed.”
The F-35 is considered one of the military’s most advanced fighter planes, and it is a mainstay of the country’s air weaponry.
Luke Air Force Base in Glendale announced in October it would shift toward training U.S. pilots exclusively on the F-35 aircraft, phasing out the less “complex” F-16 technology.
Still, the Department of Defense plans to fly the aircraft less than originally expected, in part due to reliability issues according to a report from the Government Accountability Office.
Arizona is a national hub for the aerospace and defense industry. Several manufacturing giants have operations in the state, and the sector brings in billions of dollars to Arizona’s economy every year.
Shortly after his victory in this year’s election, Trump appointed Musk to help lead the Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory commission that will focus on ways to reduce wasteful federal spending. Since then Musk has taken to X, the social media platform he owns, to identify possible areas of reform.
John McCain was not a fan of the F-35
The late Arizona Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was also a critic of the F-35.
As chairman of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, McCain vowed to increase accountability for cost overruns for the country’s weapons of war. He often pointed to the F-35 as an example of a program that cost taxpayers far more than originally expected.
McCain once called the aircraft’s history “both a scandal and a tragedy with respect to cost, schedule and performance.”
