The Navy’s F/A-XX Fighter Has a New Problem No One Saw Coming

Summary and Key Points: The U.S. Navy’s next-generation F/A-XX fighter boasts improved range, approximately 1,550 kilometers, significantly extending beyond current fighters.

-Yet this advantage may be undermined by a crucial vulnerability: reliance on aerial refueling. Current tanker aircraft, critical for extending combat ranges, face serious survivability issues in contested airspace, particularly against China’s advanced air defenses.

F/A-XX Fighter. Image Credit: Boeing.

-The U.S. Air Force acknowledges this vulnerability, emphasizing the need for more survivable tanker aircraft.

-Additionally, the forthcoming B-21 Raider stealth bomber’s anticipated shorter range further compounds future tanker fleet demands. Ultimately, fuel—often overlooked—may become America’s most significant strategic limitation in future conflicts with peer adversaries.

The US Navy’s Achilles Heel is Liquid—and a Serious Liability

Just like soldiers need beans, bullets, and bandages, naval aviation aircraft need fuel—and lots of it.

The Trump administration recently announced the winner of the Next-Generation Air Dominance program, dubbing the winner the F-47. Still unknown, however, is the winner of the United States Navy’s F/A-XX program, the advanced sixth-generation replacement of the US Navy’s legacy F/A-18 aircraft. But, in a recent revelation, one of the Navy’s top aviators perhaps inadvertently revealed a crucial aspect of the program—and one that does not bode well for questions of range.

Speaking at the Sea Air Space 2025 exhibition, a Navy League initiative, Navy Rear Adm. Michael “Buzz” Donnelly, head of the Air Warfare Division within the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, said that the upcoming F/A-XX will have “probably over 125 percent of the range that we’re seeing today to give us better flexibility operational reach.” Donnelly added that “it will definitely have longer inherent range.”

Unclear as that may be, estimates are ongoing. The F-35C has a combat radius of about 1,240 kilometers. Based on this figure, the F/A-XX would have a combat radius of about 1,550 kilometers.

F/A-XX will, “of course, have refuel ability, and all of our air wings, our tactics, and what we’re designing in the future considers organic refueling capability, so the F/A-XX will be able to leverage that,” Donnelly added.

“With refueling, you could say that’s indefinite, as long as refueling is available.”

However, questions about exact range aside, the air-to-air refueling fleet is potentially one of the weakest links in the future US Air Force.

Questions of Range, Tanker Abilities

Speaking at the Air & Space Force Association’s Warfare Symposium, General John Lamontagne of Air Mobility Command said, “It effectively looks at the trade-offs between how big … the runway [needs] to be, how much fuel can you deliver at range, and the signature management for how far we can go forward into the threat environment.”

Though uncertainties swirled due to the new administration’s murky intentions and the unclear path forward for the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter, or NGAD—now dubbed the F-47 and fully endorsed by the United States Air Force and the President—the future of the NGAS (Next-Generation Air Refueling System) may be more certain.

NGAS is “focused on ensuring that the tanker capabilities … [that] will be able to survive and operate in a much more contested environment than the tankers of the past, or the tankers that are in our current fleet,” Andrew Hunter, the US Air Force acquisition chief, said last month.

But now the United States Air Force is taking a hard look at the future survivability of a tanker fleet in a high-end fight against a peer rival in contested airspace.

“We have to have an approach that allows us to address those threats and still refuel the joint force, and allow it to engage in all of the critical operations that are required for high intensity conflict,” Hunter told reporters.

“Our mobility fleet can no longer operate forward with relative impunity,” former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said. “The air threat is becoming much more severe, with increasing range. A particular concern is the survivability of our tankers, which will have to be farther forward to refuel fighters that operate within a few hundred miles of the threat.”

The US Air Force will have to move away from legacy tanker aircraft to modernized refueling platforms that are “not a derivative of a commercial aircraft.”

B-21 Raider Bomber

The United States Navy’s upcoming fighter has more than Pentagon planners worried. The United States Air Force is awaiting delivery of the B-21 Raider stealth bomber, a follow-on to the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber of Cold War fame.

B-21 Raider Bomber U.S. Air Force.

Though outwardly similar to its B-2 predecessor, the B-21 is expected to be significantly more stealthy thanks to advanced stealth coatings and airframe contouring aided by advanced computer design. Those advantages aside, the B-21 is expected to underperform compared to the Spirit range in one crucial area.

B-21 Raider. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Thanks to an overall smaller size, the B-21 Raider is anticipated to carry less internal fuel than the larger B-2 Spirit. This smaller tank, in turn, translates to a reduced range, barring any significant jumps in engine performance. Complicating matters is the fact that the United States Air Force would like to replace a number of the bombers in their hangars with the B-21 and acquire at least 100 Raider bombers, if not more. If anticipations about the B-21’s reduced range hold true, the strain placed on the tanker fleet in the future could be significant.

About the Author: Caleb Larson 

Caleb Larson is an American multiformat journalist based in Berlin, Germany. His work covers the intersection of conflict and society, focusing on American foreign policy and European security. He has reported from Germany, Russia, and the United States. Most recently, he covered the war in Ukraine, reporting extensively on the war’s shifting battle lines from Donbas and writing on the war’s civilian and humanitarian toll. Previously, he worked as a Defense Reporter for POLITICO Europe. You can follow his latest work on X.