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The sunsetting of the Navy’s Boeing EA-18 and F/A-18 fleet might be pushed back amid funding questions surrounding the F/A-XX program.
The U.S. Navy’s aviation enterprise has big goals over the coming years, with plans to replace its Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler combat fleet, T-45 Goshawk trainers and Sikorsky MH-60 Seahawk helicopters for its future carrier air wings. But one thing has not become clear: Where will the funding emerge from the fog of budget planning?
The Navy’s carrier fleet in the mid-2030s and beyond is expected to include the F/A-XX fighter, a sixth-generation combat aircraft performing both the strike role of the Super Hornet and the electronic attack role of the Growler, bolstered by uncrewed Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA). The Future Vertical Lift (Maritime Strike) platform is planned to take over the search-and-rescue and anti-submarine role from the Seahawk helicopters. Next-generation pilots are to be trained on a new Undergraduate Jet Training System (UJTS) that is awaiting the formal start of competition.
- F/A-XX award expected in 2025
- Trainer competitors await new requirements
At the same time, the Navy is facing a dramatic backlog in building delayed Ford-class carriers, combat ships and submarines—a reality that is eating the service’s budget. Leaders in the Naval Aviation Enterprise (NAE) have over recent years said soon it will be the aviation community’s turn to take on increased spending, albeit probably not in the coming years, as Congress and the bulk of the Navy are likely to prioritize the nation’s shipyards over aircraft factories.
“The Navy doesn’t have a coherent plan for the next recap cycle, when it will have to deal with the aging MH-60, [Boeing] P-8, F/A-18 and EA-18G,” says Bryan Clark, a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute and an expert on the service’s strategy and budgeting. “The Navy could replace them with improved versions of similar platforms to avoid a big [research and development bill], but that may only be viable for F/A-18.”
This uncertainty about the F/A-XX is unfolding within current budget debates. In its fiscal 2025 request, the Navy called for just $453 million for the program for that year, a considerable cut from the prior year’s $2.1 billion. The Senate’s version of the fiscal 2025 policy bill slashed that to $53 million, although the simultaneous appropriations spending measure would increase the figure to $954 million. The disconnect has not yet been rectified as Congress appears headed to a likely long-term continuing resolution ahead of elections in November.
Clark argues that a further delay will probably occur in the next budget cycle, which is expected to be flat and deal with increasing Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine costs.
“The Navy’s original plan was to essentially develop FA-XX now and then move into procurement during the 2030s, after Columbia is fielded and a normal recap cycle for aviation would begin (the last one being from the mid-2000s to about 2015),” he says. “The problem is cost growth in shipbuilding and flattening budgets prevent investing in the amount of R&D needed for highly advanced aviation programs.”
Despite the funding uncertainty, the Navy is still expected to award an engineering and manufacturing development contract for the F/A-XX in fiscal 2025. The major primes—Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grum-man—are competing and in concept refinement, as the program overall is in a source selection phase. If the Navy is able to keep to its schedule for a contract award, it should leapfrog the U.S. Air Force Next-Generation Air Dominance program, which has been put on pause amid a review of requirements.
While the Air Force has charged ahead on the CCA, selecting Anduril and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. in April for its first increment, the Navy seems to be moving at a slower pace for its analogous program. The service is undertaking an analysis of alternatives, studying its future concepts for the CCA while undertaking early refinement work. For example, the Navy’s Air Test and Evaluation Sqdn. Two Four has established a small team in Australia, where the Royal Australian Air Force is developing the Boeing MQ-28 Ghost Bat.
The Boeing MQ-25 Stingray refueling UAS is the trailblazer for carrier uncrewed operations, and the service installed the first control station on the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) in August. This ground station would control future Navy CCA in addition to the MQ-25.
Replacing the T-45 trainer is a major priority for the NAE, as the Goshawk fleet has been grounded repeatedly in recent years because of a broader backlog in pilot training. The service is moving ahead on its replacement program, the UJTS, with a series of requests for information. The latest, released in June, pushes back the UJTS timeline by two years to an anticipated contract award in the second quarter of fiscal 2028.
Competitors for the program are largely in a holding pattern, awaiting more refined requirements from the Navy that would inform the design. The latest request for information states that the UJTS would not have to go to the carrier for training, a step the Navy has already taken with the T-45 to reduce training time. However, the request for information also states that the service is still considering whether the aircraft would need to conduct Field Carrier Landing Practice to touch down. If it does, the aircraft would need to take the beating of thousands of unflared landings over its lifespan—a decision that would require more development.
Current competitors for the UJTS are Boeing with its T-7A Red Hawk, Lockheed Martin with the TF-50N and the team of Leonardo and Textron Defense with the M-346N.
Beyond the F/A-XX and UJTS timeline, the Navy also wants to move ahead with its Future Vertical Lift (Maritime Strike) platform to replace the Sikorsky MH-60s. The Navy is targeting an initial operational capability for this platform in the early 2040s. In May, the service completed an analysis of alternatives and began work on a capabilities development document and a concept of operations.
The Navy wants the Future Vertical Lift (Maritime Strike) to build on what the Army has done with its selection of the Bell V-280 for its Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft and U.S. Marine Corps’ vertical-takeoff-and-landing family-of-systems efforts to buy an aircraft that can operate primarily from surface combatants. The service plans to hold an industry day for the program this year.
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