President Trump is correct to point out the additional safety that a twin-engine F-35 would provide the military with. But this would require a total redesign of the already-extortionate aircraft.
“F-35, we’re doing an upgrade, a simple upgrade, but we’re also doing an F-55. I’m going to call it an F-55, and that’s going to be a substantial upgrade, but it’s going to be also with two engines because the F-35 had a single engine. I don’t like single engines.”
So said President Donald Trump in Doha, Qatar, during his whirlwind tour of the Middle East. These remarks came after his strangely cheerful observation that the United States was preparing to spend $1 trillion on its already elephantine defense budget.
The New “F-55” Fighter: A Disaster of Trump’s Making?
In effect, President Trump is taking hard-earned tax dollars and lighting them on fire. The president would have better luck betting the house at the former Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, rather than blowing gobs of tax dollars to “upgrade” Lockheed Martin’s F-35. Adding to the quagmire, the forty-seventh president wants to upgrade the F-22 Raptor, too.
Proponents of the move to enhance the F-35 say that having two engines rather than one will increase the speed, lift, performance, payload carrying capacity, and altitude. These are all valuable qualities in the age of increasingly contested battlespaces. Yet unless these new engines can make the F-35 go hypersonic—which they cannot—then the upgraded F-35s will still be subjected to the realities of advanced enemy anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) systems.
What’s more, there’s nothing “simple” about upgrading such a complicated aircraft. Adding another engine to the F-35—or the new “F-55,” as Trump has taken to calling this proposed bird—would jack up the already exorbitant and unsustainable costs of the F-35 program. Maintenance and overall support for this upgraded system would be burdensome for the military. And Trump’s proposed redesign would make the plane heavier, requiring a raft of other changes in order to keep it aloft.
President Trump is correct to point out the additional safety that a twin-engine F-35 would provide the military with. But this is not a simple upgrade. It would require a total redesign. And such a redesign would be wildly costly for the entire force—at a time when the U.S. government is already wasting profound amounts of money to build the egregiously expensive F-47 sixth-generation warplane. The added burden of now funding a massive overhaul of the F-35 will not only impede efforts to get the F-47 going, but also further ensure that readiness is significantly degraded.
Why Is the Pentagon Still Asking for Manned Aircraft?
To put it bluntly, the age of manned aircraft is over. As the century goes on, they will be phased out in favor of drones—a development already seen in the unfriendly skies over Ukraine. And the drones of the Ukraine War will be positively rudimentary compared to those that could be seen in a true great-power conflict between the United States and China.
So why are Trump and his defense staffers so insistent on maintaining America’s bad investment into planes that are only marginally better than their predecessors and that can be destroyed with existing A2/AD systems?
The aforementioned drones are not fiction, either. Some of America’s finest innovative minds, notably Elon Musk of SpaceX and Palmer Luckey of Anduril, are working on them now. Eventually, for a fraction of the cost of the F-47 or so-called F-55, the Department of Defense can build endless swarms of hard-to-track, hard-to-kill drones that would swamp enemy air defenses and annihilate enemy targets.
Enough with the wünderwaffe. It’s time that America gets serious about acquiring the proper force for the next great war. At present, the Pentagon will be defeated as much by the delusions of its own grandeur—and popular anger at its squandering of tax dollars—as by enemy weapons.
About the Author: Brandon J. Weichert
Brandon J. Weichert, a Senior National Security Editor at The National Interest as well as a contributor at Popular Mechanics, who consults regularly with various government institutions and private organizations on geopolitical issues. Weichert’s writings have appeared in multiple publications, including the Washington Times, National Review, The American Spectator, MSN, the Asia Times, and countless others. His books include Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. His newest book, A Disaster of Our Own Making: How the West Lost Ukraine is available for purchase wherever books are sold. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
Image: Shutterstock.
