What do we already know about the NGAD fighter?
America’s Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, fighter program is continuing to
mature behind a veil of classified funding, but tantalizing details about this program
have emerged in recent months, bringing some of its groundbreaking aspects into full view.
And if what we’ve been hearing about this new family of systems can be believed, the
NGAD program will usher in a significant shift in the way America approaches air dominance.
In fact, the resulting aircraft might even look more like a bomber than a fighter in
some respects.
Late last month, John Tirpak, the editorial director of Air Force Magazine, released a
fantastic piece on the NGAD program, summarizing how funding for this new fighter and its support
aircraft has increased over time, and offering some of the more reliable rumors to come out
of Pentagon and Air Force offices.
Between his coverage and other public discussions of this program from the likes of folks like
former Air Force acquisition executive Will Roper, it’s beginning to look like the NGAD
fighter program is progressing both well… and entirely unlike any fighter acquisition
program ever to come before it.
The NGAD won’t replace the F-22 fighter with a fighter
The F-22 production line was famously cut short at just 186 delivered airframes out
of an initial order of 750 aircraft.
And earlier this year, the Air Force proposed retiring 30 of its oldest F-22s (aircraft
that were never combat coded and have been used only for training) in order to reallocate
their maintenance funding toward updates for the rest of the fleet.
With just over 150 F-22s left in service, America’s fleet of 5th generation air superiority
fighters is becoming endangered, but if you thought new NGAD fighters would swoop in to
fill the gap right away, you’ll likely be mistaken.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, however.
There are a number of reasons why the NGAD fighter program may not produce as many crewed
platforms as currently exist in America’s F-22 inventory; chief among them being that
the NGAD is expected to fly with a constellation of drone support aircraft.
This could allow one crewed NGAD fighter, accompanied by armed-drone wingmen, to fill
air superiority roles that would traditionally call for a larger number of crewed fighters.
At an anticipated cost per airframe of around $200 million for the piloted NGAD fighter,
that model would reduce some of the sticker shock associated with its high acquisition
cost.
But there’s another good reason why the NGAD program may not be looking to purchase
hundreds of new fighters at the onset of the jet entering operational service.
The F-35 is expected to fly for more than 50 years.
The NGAD won’t last anything close to that long.
The earliest parts of the Joint Strike Fighter program date all the way back to 1993, with
developmental contracts awarded to Lockheed Martin and Boeing in 1996.
Lockheed Martin’s X-35 submission was named the victor in October of 2001, with the first
F-35 flight tests beginning in 2006 and the Air Force flying its first F-35A in 2010.
In 2016, the F-35’s anticipated retirement was pushed back from 2064 to 2070; this will
be some 64 years after the aircraft first took flight.
That exorbitantly long shelf life comes thanks to the massive cost of the F-35 program — it
simply needs to last a long time in order to justify its expense.
But it also comes as a result of the Pentagon’s traditional approach to fighter acquisitions
and timelines.
As Roper explained on more than one occasion, the Air Force is shifting away from half-century-spanning
fighters, and instead toward short production runs of just 50 or 100 airframes expected
to remain in service for just 12 to 15 years.
That means fresher fighter designs in service, newer technologies being fielded regularly,
and importantly for the fiscally minded — a huge reduction in overall program costs.
According to a July 2021 report from the Government Accountability Office, the F-35’s total
program costs currently sit at an anticipated $1.3 trillion, but of that figure, less than
$400 billion represents the actual cost of procuring the 2,456 stealth fighters Uncle
Sam has on order.
That means actually buying F-35s only represents about 30 percent of the program’s total
cost, with most of the remainder allocated to sustainment over its 50-plus years of service.
It won’t be a banner program for one firm like Lockheed Martin’s F-35 or Northrop
Grumman’s B-21
Lockheed Martin’s winner-take-all victory over Boeing for the Joint Strike Fighter contract
granted it not only funding for the continued development of the fighter, but also the production
of the jet, and then sustainment for as long as the aircraft is in service.
This gave Lockheed a great deal of leverage over establishing costs and also left America’s
other primary fighter contractors with little reason to continue research and development
on advanced fighter designs.
After all, with more than 2,000 F-35s on order, there was little reason for other big firms
to keep working on fighter technology.
According to Will Roper, that is not how NGAD procurement will go.
The Air Force has already split NGAD into three separate contracts: one for design,
one for production, and one for sustainment.
As a result, firms now not only have to compete to field the best fighter, but they must also
compete to see who can build them most efficiently, as well as who can maintain them in the most
cost-effective manner.
This will allow smaller firms to get into the fight—as only a handful of companies
in the nation have the infrastructure needed to design, produce, and maintain a fleet of
advanced jets.
Now, firms that specialize in design can compete for one contract, while firms that may specialize
in sustainment can compete for another.
In the years to come, we may see new companies become rockstars in these individual spaces,
as small firms with big ideas get the opportunity to gain a foothold in the American fighter
market.
It’s entirely feasible that we could see a winning NGAD design come from a company
few outside of the defense space has ever even heard of.
And that winning design may ultimately see production from a more established firm like
Lockheed Martin, and then sustainment managed by yet another party.
In other words, NGAD could go on for decades, with a whole series of different fighters
being churned out as the Air Force crams new modular systems into the fuselages of the
latest and greatest designs that the industry’s best minds have to offer.
Despite the possibility that the NGAD fighter may be much larger than we’ve come to expect
of air superiority fighters, it’s still expected to be a high performer.
John Tirpak speculates that the NGAD will be able to fly at least as high and as fast
as the F-22, meaning a service ceiling as high as 70,000 feet and a top speed potentially
as high as Mach 2.8.
That idea may be backed up by Will Roper, who told the media the NGAD fighter’s flown
full-sized technology demonstrator had already “broken a lot of records.”