ELON MUSK MOCKED THE F-35. TWO YEARS LATER, DRONES ARE REWRITING WARFARE.
In 2024, Elon Musk argued that spending fortunes on manned fighters like the F-35 made less sense as autonomous drones became cheaper, smarter and easier to deploy at scale.
It sounded extreme.
Then came Ukraine.
Then Iran.
Today we are watching drones attack logistics, air defenses, energy infrastructure and targets hundreds of kilometers away — often at a fraction of the cost of the systems used to stop them.
That does NOT make the F-35 obsolete.
It changes the equation.
And three stocks represent the battle over what comes next:
$LMT — Lockheed Martin: the F-35 and the traditional high-end aerospace model.
$PLTR — Palantir: battlefield data, AI and software increasingly connecting sensors, intelligence and autonomous systems.
$NVDA — NVIDIA: the computing layer behind the broader AI and autonomy revolution.
The future may not be fighter jets OR drones.
It may be expensive stealth aircraft commanding swarms of cheaper autonomous weapons.
Ukraine and Iran are turning that theory into a real-world stress test.
Musk may have been wrong about the death of the fighter jet.
But he may have been early about something bigger:
THE NEXT ARMS RACE COULD BE ABOUT WHO CAN BUILD, CONNECT AND REPLACE INTELLIGENT DRONES FASTER THAN THE ENEMY CAN DESTROY THEM.
In 2024, Elon Musk argued that spending fortunes on manned fighters like the F-35 made less sense as autonomous drones became cheaper, smarter and easier to deploy at scale.
It sounded extreme.
Then came Ukraine.
Then Iran.
Today we are watching drones attack logistics, air defenses, energy infrastructure and targets hundreds of kilometers away — often at a fraction of the cost of the systems used to stop them.
That does NOT make the F-35 obsolete.
It changes the equation.
And three stocks represent the battle over what comes next:
$LMT — Lockheed Martin: the F-35 and the traditional high-end aerospace model.
$PLTR — Palantir: battlefield data, AI and software increasingly connecting sensors, intelligence and autonomous systems.
$NVDA — NVIDIA: the computing layer behind the broader AI and autonomy revolution.
The future may not be fighter jets OR drones.
It may be expensive stealth aircraft commanding swarms of cheaper autonomous weapons.
Ukraine and Iran are turning that theory into a real-world stress test.
Musk may have been wrong about the death of the fighter jet.
But he may have been early about something bigger:
THE NEXT ARMS RACE COULD BE ABOUT WHO CAN BUILD, CONNECT AND REPLACE INTELLIGENT DRONES FASTER THAN THE ENEMY CAN DESTROY THEM.