The U.S. Air Force’s Next-Generation Fighter Is Facing Headwinds
The war in Ukraine has brought renewed interest to the issue of controlling the air domain during conflicts, an area that the U.S. Air Force did not have to worry about in Afghanistan and Iraq but will be a priority in any potential conflict with China or Russia. The service’s Next-Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, program aims to develop a new fighter and ensure the Air Force’s airspace control. However, the program may be in peril due to budgetary issues and the legacy of the troubled F-35 multirole combat aircraft.
Throughout its recent “forever wars,” the U.S. military enjoyed complete airspace control. Now the U.S. and NATO air forces are preparing for a worst-case scenario: a conflict with a nuclear power, China or Russia, where control of the air domain will not be as easy to secure. As Kristyn Jones, the undersecretary of the Air Force, explained at an event hosted in January by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Air Force is “[coming] out of counterinsurgency warfare and [looking] to pivot towards peer competition or peer conflict with a very different adversary.” But Jones added that, for the moment, the U.S. is still not ready for such a peer conflict.
Russian defense companies are currently developing the sixth-generation Mikoyan MiG-41 fighter, to replace the Mikoyan MiG-31. The war in Ukraine will likely affect the timeframe for the MiG-41’s development and production, which is believed to be scheduled for the end of the decade, with a maiden flight expected to occur in 2025. Meanwhile, China is already developing a next-generation warplane with “open architecture that allows fast development, fast production and fast upgrades,” similar to its fifth-generation Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter. The new aircraft could be in service by 2035.
The U.S. military’s response to this evolving and more challenging world is the NGAD program, designed to produce a multipurpose platform that reflects the Air Force’s embrace of “a system-of-systems approach instead of a singular platform.” The combat aircraft, intended to replace the Lockheed F-22 Raptor fighter aircraft starting in 2030, will engage in counter-air missions, air-to-surface attacks and air-to-air strikes. Attached to NGAD is the Loyal Wingman program, which, at its core, is an AI-powered unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, designed to fly alongside the next generation of crewed combat aircraft.
The Air Force wants to purchase as many as 200 NGAD aircraft, at a cost of as much as $300 million each. It has budgeted $28.5 billion for 2025-2029 to develop the sixth-generation warplane and commence production. In May 2023, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall explained that “the NGAD Platform is a vital element of the Air Dominance family of systems, which represents a generational leap in technology over the F-22, which it will replace.”
The service is expected to commence soliciting proposals for NGAD this year, but the aircraft’s estimated price appears to have caused some second thoughts. In discussing the program at the Air & Space Forces Association in mid-June, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin acknowledged the need to make choices and decisions “across the landscape” of the NGAD program over “the next couple of years.” The statements caused defense news and analysis agencies like Aviation Week, Breaking Defense and Defense One to question the future of the expensive program.
Another problem for Washington and the U.S. military, particularly the Air Force, is that the expensive Lockheed F-35 program has not generated confidence that the force can maintain air superiority during wars with other peer military powers. So far, reviews of the F-35, a fifth-generation stealth aircraft, are mixed at best. On the one hand, the plane “is a remarkably easy aircraft to fly,” making flying skills “much less important in [the] F-35 than in any airplane ever before,” explained a pilot involved in its testing program.
The current debate over the NGAD takes place against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, which has brought renewed interest in airpower and control of the air domain, including air-to-air combat, in traditional interstate conflicts.
On the other hand, the Project on Government Oversight characterized the F-35 as a “part-time fighter jet,” because of the amount of time each plane is unavailable to perform its role. Michael Bohnert from RAND argued that, while “there needs to be a replacement for the F-22,” the F-35 “is not it,” for the simple reason that the F-35 is a strike fighter, while the F-22 is an air-superiority fighter. Moreover, an ongoing problem with the aircraft is the delay in a computing upgrade known as the Technology Refresh 3 to enable the F-35 to use newly fielded weapons. As Audrey Decker reported for Defense One, “the Pentagon still doesn’t know when it will be fully ready.”
All of this raises concerns about the NGAD program. It is meant to be a sixth-generation fighter, able to compete with and defeat similar platforms currently under development by U.S. adversaries. However, it does not have the luxury of the delays and mistakes that have tarnished the problematic legacy of the F-35, regardless of the two aircrafts’ different roles as a strike fighter and an air-superiority fighter.
Complicating things even further, the current debate over the NGAD takes place against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, which has brought renewed interest in airpower and control of the air domain, including air-to-air combat, in interstate conflicts, as opposed to counterinsurgency operations. In mid-2022, when it became clear that the all-out invasion of Ukraine would not be the short-lived operation Moscow expected, U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Tyson Wetzel, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, argued that achieving air superiority will be a challenge in future conflicts. The two main reasons, according to Wetzel, are “the proliferation of mobile, advanced [surface-to-air missiles],” which will “increase the risk to air forces seeking to establish air control,” and the “explosion” in the number of drones present on the battlefield. Similarly, Lt. Col. Herbert Bowsher of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve argued that “air superiority in a conflict among roughly equal combatants may not be feasible, even temporarily,” even as “the Ukrainians have demonstrated that air denial can facilitate battlefield success.”
The U.S. Air Force continues to describe the NGAD sixth-generation fighter, of which at least one prototype has been built and flown, as a “portfolio of technologies enabling air superiority.” However, whether it performs well in combat operations in highly complex environments remains to be seen—assuming the program moves forward.
Allvin’s recent statements suggest that the Air Force is having second thoughts about how the NGAD program is progressing, even as the tarnished legacy of the F-35 lingers. So while changes can certainly be made to the program’s requirements and prototypes, the reason NGAD may be under review is likely not solely related to budget and cost savings analyses. Washington cannot afford to fall behind Russia and China in developing a new generation of combat aircraft. But given the implications of the war in Ukraine for air control and superiority, neither can it afford to take a wrong turn in that race. Striking that balance will not be easy.
Wilder Alejandro Sánchez is president of Second Floor Strategies, a consulting firm in Washington. He monitors defense & security, geopolitical and trade issues in Central Asia, Eastern Europe and the Western Hemisphere.