The U.S. Air Force Is Now Clear: 6th Generation NGAD Fighter Is a ‘Must Have’

Article Summary and Key Points: The U.S. Air Force’s Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter is intended to replace the advanced but costly F-22 Raptor, initially set for retirement in the 2030s.

Key Point #1 – However, recent strategic reassessments and rising geopolitical threats have prompted the Air Force to extend the F-22’s service life through modernization and slow its drawdown. The NGAD program underwent a temporary pause to evaluate its strategic necessity, cost, and potential effectiveness.

Key Point #2 – With China rapidly developing competing stealth aircraft, the Air Force has concluded NGAD remains critical for maintaining air superiority, despite potentially surpassing the F-22’s already high cost, possibly up to $300 million per aircraft.

Why America’s Sixth-Generation NGAD Fighter Jet is Vital Despite Soaring Costs

Since air power became an essential component of almost any modern military, the United States Armed Forces have always maintained air superiority in every major conflict. For example, America as a world power would have been impossible without the country’s overwhelming advantages over the Axis powers in the air in WWII.

In the 21st century, the US Air Force (USAF) is determined to maintain that status as having the world’s greatest fleet of combat aircraft and the air vehicles (i.e., tankers, AEW&C platforms, etc.) that support them.

From the USAF standpoint, this means replacing the force’s current leading, heavyweight stealth fighter, the F-22, with a 6th-generation fighter aircraft.

Former USAF Chiefs had stated the “sunset years” of the F-22 would begin in the 2030s, leaving less than a decade before this new-generation fighter, Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD), would come online.

However, the F-22 decision appears to have since been amended, with the service planning to spend $7.8 billion in aircraft modernization between now and 2029 and keep the aircraft in service for significantly longer.

There will be some reduction in the number of F-22s in inventory during this time. This drawdown will probably mean the retirement of about 32 aircraft, reducing the fleet to 153 of this type.

What Was Learned During The Pause on NGAD Fighter

The cost of the proposed NGAD fighter is still unknown, and there have been contradictory statements from USAF officials on the subject in the past.

Speaking at this year’s Air Force Association (AFA) 2025 Warfare Symposium in Washington, DC, this week, Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel, director of Force Design, Integration, and Wargaming within the office of the deputy chief of staff for Air Force Futures, explained that the initial cost numbers had been one of the causes for the program taking a step back last year.

“Many of you know, we put a pause on NGAD, and we put a pause on NGAD to reflect, and we did a study on it,” he told one of the early panels on the first full day of the event.

“With that study, we asked ourselves some hard questions,” he explained. “Is air superiority dead? What does air superiority look like in the future?  Does the Joint Force need air superiority? And what we found is, not only in the past, not only the present, but in the future, air superiority matters.”

“We tried a whole bunch of different options, and there was no more viable option than NGAD to achieve air superiority in this highly contested environment,” he concluded.

“The entire joint force counts on air superiority. So, anything else you want to do in the battle space, if you don’t have air superiority, it becomes much more difficult, if not impossible,” said Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, head of Air Combat Command (ACC), who was on the same panel.

“So, if we want to collect intelligence, if we want to do casualty evacuation, if we want to drop some bombs, if you want to sail some ships around, or if you want to have some ground maneuver, if you don’t have air and space superiority, you will not be able to or you will have a very difficult time achieving any of those other objectives,” he added.

When, How Ambitious, and How Much? 

To date, the F-22 is the most expensive fighter ever produced, and the cost-per-flight hour of the aircraft is also “no bargain,” said James Stevenson, a widely published author on advanced combat aircraft programs.

Among other titles, Stevenson wrote “The 5 Billion Dollar Misunderstanding”, the history of the collapse of the US Navy’s A-12 stealthy, carrier-capable attack aircraft.

If Kunkel’s statements are taken at face value, the conclusion of the studies performed during this pause in the NGAD development was that the service should not scrimp on the spending for the program to the point where this aircraft could easily break the F-22’s record.

In January, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall stated that $20 billion would be needed to complete the developmental stage of the program.

The serial production of NGAD could have a per-unit price of $300 million.

No one has said how many NGAD aircraft would be produced, but replacing the F-22 one-for-one, plus other aircraft that will also be retired, such as older F-15s, would mean buying 300 aircraft or more.  That would add billions more to the program cost.

Lockheed Martin NGAD Fighter. Image Credit: Lockheed Martin.

The two Chinese stealth aircraft that flew in December 2024, one from Chengdu and the other from Shenyang, have prompted a renewed interest in the NGAD’s progress, to which the speakers at the forum also responded.

The function of these aircraft “we believe are for air superiority,” Wilsbach added later. “As we observe what China has produced, and we can presume we know what that’s for, for air superiority, what are we going to do about it?  And I don’t believe that nothing is an option.”

NGAD fighter artist concept from Northrop Grumman.

About the Author: Defense Expert Reuben F. Johnson 

Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is now an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw.  He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design.  Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.