Converging U.S. Air Force Modernization Plans Face A Funding Wall

The U.S. Air Force has outlined a plan to do modernization differently this year, creating a new structure by moving the requirements process out of its major commands and into one streamlined group. A major problem already is limiting the plan’s progress: funding.

The Air Force has three coalescing modernization programs: the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter, the Next-Generation Aerial Refueling System (NGAS) and the next increment of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA). The service has paused the NGAD program to review its requirements while an analysis of alternatives is finishing up on NGAS and a requirements review is ongoing for CCA.

• Fighter, tanker, drone analyses are influencing one another
• Major budget changes are necessary to free up funding, leaders assert
• Near-term tanker survivability enhancements are needed

However, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall warned attendees at the recent Airlift/Tanker Association Symposium and Technology Expo in Grapevine, Texas, that the service cannot afford the programs without a major budget change.

“The variable that concerns me the most as we go through this analysis and produce a range of alternatives is going to be the availability of adequate resources to pursue any combination of those new designs,” Kendall said at the conference. “Right now, given our commitments, our resources and strategic priorities, it is hard for me to see how we can afford any combinations of those new designs. What I worry about the most is the adequacy of our resources.”

Kendall sought to put pressure on contractors in September to lower NGAD costs, saying he would want to see a price more in line with a Lockheed Martin F-35 than the expected $300 million-per-aircraft cost of the NGAD crewed fighter. Industry officials quickly said that would not be possible, and Kendall’s latest comments show that the more expensive route is still under consideration.

However, he pointed to other budget priorities, such as nuclear modernization, increasing funding for the Space Force, air base defense and ways to attack enemy networks.

Service officials say that unless there is a major change—such as a substantial top-line increase or a congressional decision to remove nuclear modernization from the Air Force’s funding lines and outside the Defense Department—the programs would not be able to continue at planned pace.

The NGAD review is expected to finish by year-end, either reinforcing the long-standing plan to move ahead with an exquisite Penetrating Counter-Air fighter or substantially altering course.

The NGAS review also is expected to wrap up by year-end and is likely to inform the fiscal 2027 budget plan. Kendall said a specific threat change within the past three years forced the Air Force to alter its refueling plans and accelerate a potential new, clean-sheet design. After he took office in 2021, China developed “new counter-air systems that could threaten aircraft, especially tankers, at longer ranges—beyond the ranges in which we normally would refuel fighter planes,” Kendall said. “This put our whole tanker acquisition strategy in question. It’s still in question.”

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin told conference attendees that the service has a specific problem it needs to address: range in the Pacific. Distance is affecting characteristics of all Air Force programs, driving alternatives at different price points.

“We have a range problem, a challenge that we need to overcome,” Allvin said. “Tyranny of distance means we have a range issue, and unless and until we solve that range issue with propulsion, we have tankers.”

By combining NGAD’s work with the uncrewed CCA and a future tanker, the service could find ways to adjust the prices. For example, the Air Force could seek to offload some mission systems from a crewed fighter onto the off-board CCAs, thereby lowering the fighter’s price. A more capable tanker also could mean the fighter would need less range. But Kendall’s uncertainty on the price shows the work is still in flux.

The new approach to refueling has driven companies to get creative in potential designs. Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works unveiled a new concept of an optionally crewed tanker outfitted with wing-mounted booms. A display at the conference depicts the aircraft refueling two F-35As simultaneously (see photo).

“This graphic is depicting a notional concept of an optionally crewed future air refueling platform,” a Skunk Works spokesperson said in a statement. “Our team has been maturing the next generation of air mobility through investments in survivability, autonomy, resilient communications and digital transformation that will enable the range and persistence needed for contested air refueling operations.”

The newer concept is vastly different from another design unveiled this year that showed a larger, crewed stealth tanker refueling one fighter from a centerline boom, hinting at changing concepts under the NGAS process.

The Lockheed Martin concept also comes about two months after Boeing unveiled its own uncrewed tanker concept. Its design is a modified MQ-25 Stingray with larger wings to increase the amount of fuel the aircraft could carry, although it still has a hose-and-drogue setup that is not compatible with U.S. Air Force receivers.

Because NGAS is still years away, service officials emphasize that they need to be ready to fight with their existing fleet and to focus on short-term, cheaper modifications to make the current aircraft more effective. This largely has meant small numbers of communications kits that can be either rolled onto aircraft or more easily installed, such as Borsight’s Real-Time Information in the Cockpit system, first developed for Boeing KC-135s and now also used on small numbers of Lockheed C-130s and Boeing C-17s. Additionally, the service has been experimenting with the Sierra Nevada Corp.-developed Airlift/Tanker Open Mission Systems kit for beyond-line-of-sight data.

Air Mobility Command (AMC) has faced an uphill battle with the larger Air Force for substantial funding to bring on enough of the systems to have an impact.

AMC Cmdr. Gen. John Lamontagne tells Aviation Week that his group is working with headquarters to ensure there is a “robust prioritization” for the command. This would be more likely in the fiscal 2027 budget time frame. The previous AMC commander, Gen. Mike Minihan, had made connectivity a major priority, calling for 25% of the fleet to have systems installed by 2025. However, Pentagon-level funding and congressional approvals have fallen short of that, prompting Lamontagne to renew his focus.

“We have what we have, so let’s use and wring out everything we have to have the best situational awareness we can,” he says. “We’re not going to get a new defensive system on the airplane, but we need to be able to use what we have. We’ve got systems where we can talk over the horizon. We need to leverage all those things that we can so we can mitigate the threats, we can pulse in and prove that high-end combat effectiveness for the fighters, pulse out and then do it again and again.”

Kendall, Allvin and Lamontagne all warned the crowd of mobility personnel that in a potential Pacific fight, the service would face effective threats that can find, hit and kill U.S. tankers and airlifters in a way that has not been seen since World War II. While the NGAD, NGAS and CCA programs have considerable potential, they are far from imminent.

“It is . . . using the most of what we have to figure out how we can sense threats and then mitigate them,” Lamontagne says. “So you have to get some idea where the adversary is—whether it’s in the Pacific or in Europe, they’ve both got stuff that can reach out and touch us. We’re going to have the systems that we have today. We can dream about tomorrow, but we’ve got to leverage what we have today.”