A Halt to Crewed Fighter Development May Save USAF From Ill-Timed Next-Gen Fighter on Eve of UAV Gold Rush

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said that the project to develop a suitable replacement for the F-15 and F-22 fighter systems has been paused due to concerns about the 'high costs' of the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter.

At the rate things are going, the next air superiority fighter was expected to have a final production price tag measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars, a pretty steep price tag when the Air Force can apparently do the mission just fine with F-15EXs that cost a fraction in comparison. Perhaps more decisive for the USAF was the apparent peerlessness of the F-35 Lightning on the world stage - unproven as it is, similar fighters from peer states abroad don't look like they'll be too much of a threat to the world fleet, at least in the numbers produced so far. The lack of polish, and shrug-worthy performance of the SU-57 and J-20 simply haven't opened up congressional pocketbooks in a panic, making the investment of a brand-new, next generation fighter a lackluster proposition as military planners watch the drone revolution evolve in Eastern Europe.

Funny enough, the industry has heard no shortage of water-cooler whispers regarding the death of NGAD, which were only put to rest when Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall spoke on the issue at the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center's Industry Day. His take on it was optimistic, in a purely bureaucratic sense: "Paused" sounds so much better than "killed" (read as "prematurely ended with nothing to show for it" by cynics), after all. And a 'pause' can always be undone, picked up right where it left off just by brushing the dust of the tools and getting to work. Will that happen in reality? Only time will officially tell, but any enthusiast of all things sleek, cool, and interesting in the procurement industry can think of their own handful of exciting pet projects that ended up quietly shuttered with nary an official announcement.

An optimistic view of the pause could say that the NGAD was simply timed wrong, born too early to be a truly "next-gen" UAV, born in the twilight of manned fighter combat. Kendall seemed to take that track, telling attendees of the Industry Day “You may have heard about this, but with the platform itself, we’re taking a pause. It’s at the time in any program where you really have your last chance to think very carefully if I really got the right design. We want to make sure we’ve got the right concept. We’re going to take a little bit of time to make sure you do, before we make a major commitment. That’s the biggest commitment in any given development program, which is to start design and development for production."

Kendall added that he was “absolutely confident we’re still going to do a sixth-generation crewed aircraft," making it seem as the the NGAD, whenever they pick it up, and by whatever name that replaces it, will be a more suitably futuristic aircraft than it would have been were it to be developed in 2024.

FMI: www.af.mil