マスク氏、有人戦闘機は「時代遅れ」 無人機との置き換え提言

【ワシントンＡＦＰ＝時事】ドナルド・トランプ次期米大統領に「政府効率化省（ＤＯＧＥ）」のトップに指名された実業家のイーロン・マスク氏は２５日、有人戦闘機を批判し、空中戦の未来は無人機（ドローン）にあると主張した。（写真は資料写真）
　「ドローン全盛の今のご時世、有人の戦闘機は時代遅れ。パイロットが死ぬだけだ」と、マスク氏は自身が経営するＸ（旧ツイッター）に書き込んでいる。
　２０１５年に運用が開始された米ロッキード・マーティン開発の第５世代のステルス戦闘機Ｆ３５を名指しし、「一方で、Ｆ３５のような有人戦闘機をいまだに造っているばかがいる」と述べ、空中で編隊を組むドローン数百機の映像を投稿した。
　「Ｆ３５の設計は要件レベルで破綻している。あまりに多くの人から、いろいろ詰め込むように要求されていたからだ」とし、「高価で複雑な万能型だが、際立った特徴は何もない」と酷評した。
　一方、スイス連邦工科大学チューリッヒ校の研究者、マウロ・ジリ氏はＸで、「Ｆ３５が高価なのはソフトウエアと電子機器の費用のせいで、有人機だからではない」と指摘。
　「再利用可能な無人機も、Ｆ３５のような派手な電子機器を搭載する必要がある」と述べている。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2024/11/26-18:27）

Billionaire Elon Musk, tapped by US President-elect Donald Trump to slash federal government spending, lashed out at modern fighter jets on Monday, saying that drones were the future of air combat.
Manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway. Will just get pilots killed, said the head of SpaceX, Tesla and X, in a post on his social media platform.
Musk singled out the F-35 -- a next-generation fighter jet manufactured by US-based Lockheed Martin that entered service in 2015 -- for criticism.
Meanwhile, some idiots are still building manned fighter jets like the F-35, he posted, alongside a video of hundreds of drones hovering in formation in the sky.
The F-35, the world's most advanced fighter, is stealth capable and can also be used to gather intelligence.
Germany, Poland, Finland and Romania have all recently signed deals for the aircraft.
Its development, however, has suffered from issues, notably in the design of its computer programs, and its very high operating costs are regularly criticized by its detractors.
The F-35 design was broken at the requirements level, because it was required to be too many things to too many people, said Musk on Monday, calling it an expensive (and) complex jack of all trades, master of none.
For Mauro Gilli, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, what makes the F-35... expensive is the software and the electronics, not the pilot per se.
This is significant because a reusable drone would need to get all that flashy electronics of an F-35, he said on X.
He also pointed out that the existence of the F-35 had forced US rivals to develop their own aircraft and advanced radar to match it.
By simply existing, the F-35 and the B-1 force Russia and China into strategic choices they would not have to make otherwise (i.e. budget allocations), Gilli said, referring to B-1 heavy bomber aircraft.
Even if Musk were right (and he is not), deleting the programs would relax these constraints on them.