NGAD: Building sixth generation jet is number 1 priority, USAF says

The US Air Force’s programme for a sixth generation fighter jet and related systems is the number one priority for the service, Air Combat Command chief Mark Kelly has said.

Speaking at a virtual event, Kelly said the service’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) programme, which will eventually replace the F-22 Raptor, is his number one requirement.

A USAF report in April outlined NGAD as “a family of capabilities that enable Air Superiority in the most challenging operational environments by enforcing the development pillars of digital engineering, agile software development, and open architectures.”

Speaking at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies event, Kelly added to this that the fighter will be able to operate at long ranges. This feature matches the above concept image released by USAF, which shows an aircraft with a larger blended wing airframe that would give more room internally for a larger weapons bay and fuel tank.

He added the next generation aircraft is “designed to operate beyond a single spectral band of the RF [radio frequency] spectrum, to thrive in a multispectral environment,” and it also “senses” the battle space and “connects” the rest of the force, so “that I can put [it] in the adversary’s back yard.”

In September at this year’s Air, Space & Cyber conference, a top acquisition official revealed the programme is progressing according to plan.

“NGAD is not one where I'm able to share a lot of details,” said Duke Richardson, military deputy in the office of the assistant secretary of the Air Force. “I will just tell you that it is progressing per plan. There’s just so much of it that’s not able to be discussed in an open forum.”

Kelly added to this at the conference with a call for more funding for NGAD.

“We do not want to be on the other side of coming in second in air superiority,” Kelly explained. “I would like to have more of a sense of urgency and a whole-of-nation effort towards it,” he said, drawing comparisons to the Manhattan Project that produced the first nuclear bomb in World War II.

Speaking more on NGAD, the Air Combat Command chief said: “Do I think we're going to field it? Yes. Do I think we're going to build it before our adversaries? Yes. Do I know we are going to build it before them? I would like to sleep comfortably knowing we've got a really good margin.”

Kelly said he would like the development phase to “go faster”, and asked if he would like to see more funding for NGAD, he said yes.

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