Summary and Key Points: The Air Force’s sixth-generation Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter faces scrutiny due to its enormous $300 million price tag, raising questions about cost-effectiveness.
-Some officials suggest building purely unmanned versions or mass-producing to cut expenses.
-Another route might involve continuously upgrading existing fifth-generation fighters, like the F-35 and F-22, rather than investing in entirely new airframes.
-However, industry renderings of the NGAD reveal revolutionary, tailless, highly-stealthy designs, potentially signaling a technological leap forward in stealth, agility, and capability.
Despite budget concerns, the radical improvements offered by an entirely new aircraft may ultimately justify the high development costs.
The $300,000,000 Fighter: Why Does NGAD Cost So Much?
The Air Force’s project to develop a sixth-generation stealth aircraft, the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD), continues to linger in somewhat of a liminal zone.
As decision-makers contemplate the NGAD’s future, their greatest concern is the simple question of cost.
Is the idea of a $300 million fighter compatible with the current efforts to massively streamline government cost efficiencies?
Indeed, cost concerns may be one of the key reasons why the Pentagon has for some time been considering the possibility of using purely unmanned sixth-generation platforms to support new mission requirements.
Much of the discussion likely centers upon a key precedent: the F-35. Defense leaders, manufacturers, lawmakers, and industry experts all worry that a manned NGAD could see its costs spiral, like happened with the Lightning II. Certainly it is understandable that some would balk at a $300 million price tag for the fighter.
Cost Strategies for NGAD
Could the cost of NGAD be brought down? Realistic ideas for cost reduction do exist. If the service plans to build a large number of these aircraft and finds a way to mass-produce sixth-generation fighters, prices could be considerably reduced.
The Pentagon’s experience with the F-35 has shown how production in blocks can greatly lower the cost per plane.
This approach gives weapons developers the opportunity to acquire larger numbers of long-lead items in preparation for production.
The other critical question to consider is the simple matter of whether a sixth-generation aircraft is truly necessary at all. This is a viable consideration thanks to the Pentagon’s success in continually upgrading and improving the F-35’s and F-22’s capabilities.
NGAD 6th Generation Fighter: Original artwork courtesy of Rodrigo Avella. Follow him on Instagram for more incredible aviation renders.
Both the Lightning II and the Raptor are fifth-generation platforms, but they will be able to extend their targeting range and fidelity, improve their sensing capabilities, integrate additional weapons, and improve the ability to control drones from the cockpit, thanks to upgrades that will go on for the foreseeable future.
Can the F-22 and F-35 be sufficiently upgraded to meet the developing requirements to address new and future threats? Many anticipated future innovations are likely to take place in the realms of sensing, computing, targeting, networking, and command-and-control. By upgrading these very attributes, fifth-generation U.S. aircraft can surge into future capabilities without the need to construct an entirely new airframe.
While it is perhaps reasonable to think that upgrading the current generation of fighters is ideal, and those upgrades will probably eventually affect other sets of relevant variables, there may remain plenty of reasons to develop a new airframe.
New Generations of Stealth
Innovations in software, weapons interfaces, AI-enabled computing, and long-range sensing can move forward with no need to design a new airframe, but eventually, new technology might only be able to be applied to a new aircraft.
If available images and renderings of projected sixth-generation stealth fighter jets are any indication, the eventual sixth-generation prototype demonstrator may be built with a whole new suite of stealth technologies.
Images offered by Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing of still-secret sixth-generation fighter jet designs seem to suggest just that. All of the sixth-generation images presented by industry competitors show an entirely novel airframe configuration—one of a plane that flies without fins, tails, or vertical structures.
If the images presented end up being anything close to the final product that emerges from the NGAD competition, that plane’s radical external configuration might suggest that a new generation of stealth technology is available—one that can lower a fighter’s radar signature while still ensuring maneuverability—and the new design is meant to provide or complement those capabilities.
Specifics related to such a breakthrough airframe, if one does indeed already exist, are likely not available for understandable security reasons.
Yet it is entirely conceivable that some of the stealthy, tailless designs offered by the defense industry are delivering a new generation of stealth technology without compromising speed and aerial agility.
About the Author: Kris Osborn
Kris Osborn is the Military Technology Editor of 19FortyFive and President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a highly qualified expert in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.
