Trump Was Right Again: It’s Time to Kill the F-35 and Build Missile Shields

One more hard truth from Russia’s war on Ukraine is that stealth aircraft are no longer the king of the battlefield. The future of warfare will be decided by waves of cheap drones that overwhelm the fighter jet’s armaments. Countries need missile shields, drone-killers, and the ability to protect real infrastructure.

Once again, President Trump called it first. He warned us years ago that the F-35 program costs were “out of control.” He questioned why we were spending over a trillion dollars on a plane that couldn’t even protect our electric grid, oil refineries, or military transport lines from waves of $50,000 drones.

True, F-35s have shot down drones and at least one cruise missile in Israel, Syria, and the Red Sea. But those are kinetic weapons shooting down “one missile,” “a drone,” or “two drones.” There has been no real-world engagement against a swarm of drones. They don’t have enough kinetic weapons to disable 50—or hundreds of—drones at a time. The F-35 electronic weapon (EW) capability theoretically can disrupt multiple drones at a time, but its onboard power and antennae are not designed for drone swarms.

Now, the rest of the world is waking up. In Europe, Czech leader Andrej Babiš is an unapologetic, Czechia-first politician. He is saying exactly what Trump said: dump the F-35 and invest in missile defense systems that actually deal with current threats.

He’s right. Trump is right. And the rest of NATO better get the message before it’s too late. […]

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