Podcast: NGAD Is Up, NGAS Is Down & CCAs Are Inbound

Robert Wall (00:36):

Welcome to Aviation Week's Check 6 podcast, where today we take a look at where things stand for U.S. Air Force modernization. 

As many of you'll remember, the U.S. Air Force's Next Generation Air Dominance program, NGAD, was somewhat in limbo when we last discussed it here on Check 6. There's been some movement in that situation, if not in contractual terms, but in wording and framing. Things have also moved on a bit for the U.S. Air Force's Future Tanker Program, NGAS, and the uncrewed fighter projects captured under the CCA label for Collaborative Combat Aircraft. 

To help catch us up on where things stand with these programs and more are Brian Everstine, Aviation Week's Pentagon editor, and Steve Trimble, our senior defense editor. I'm Robert Wall, the executive editor for defense and space and your host for today. 

Brian, you were just out at the AFA Air Warfare Symposium in Colorado where you picked up a bit of a different vibe around NGAD, but also it was the first big air power event since the new administration has taken office and the DOGE campaign has really been unleashed on the Pentagon. So maybe give our listeners a bit of a sense of what you picked up around both those issues in the auditorium and in the show halls.  

Brian Everstine (01:45):

Yeah, so as I'm sure a lot of our listeners are aware, the AFA Air Warfare Symposium out in Colorado is typically one of the bigger events for the Air Force every year. Though I'd be hesitant to use the label big this year. It was pretty striking just from the opening keynote just to see how bare and empty the main hall was. I would probably say the crowd is about a third to maybe a half to a third of what it usually is to the point where the next time I walked in the room, they got rid of about half the chairs and the expo hall was relatively empty. 

What was really striking to me and definitely to all of my reporter friends out there was every single Air Force General, who had a press round table engagement, canceled. I think that's just kind of emblematic of how things are going in the Pentagon these days. Everyone's a little wary to make some hay and make some headlines. 

That said, there was a little bit of a shift in the talk around NGAD that we picked up on. If you recall, under former Secretary Frank Kendall, they made the pause and there was a lot of talk about we need to do a review, we need to make sure that this is the right way to go ahead. We can possibly lower the costs, lower possibly the requirements to move ahead if we do go with NGAD. 

This time there a relatively full-throated endorsement of NGAD starting with Chief of Staff General David Alvin who just went out and said, yes, we need NGAD along with all the other modernization. And he did kind of make an interesting comment that things were different under the previous administration. This is some of the comments I had heard, especially on Capitol Hill under Secretary Kendall, that Secretary Kendall was, okay, living under the Fiscal Responsibility Act cuts just playing by the rules. And this kind of prompted some other pushback like we've seen with Senator Wicker's plan. And this is starting to play out with General Alvin saying we need to go ahead and all our modernization programs and Maj. Gen. Kunkel, the services director of war gaming, director of Air Force Futures came out and talked a little bit about the NGAD review saying pretty much every scenario we looked at NGAD is the way ahead in these war games. We need NGAD to succeed. So as we come up on budget season, we'll see how this plays out.  

Robert Wall (04:00):

Yeah, interesting. So obviously as we will still have to see the numbers, but it does sound like a change in tone, much more behind making that program happen. Steve, you kind of watched the whole thing a bit further from distance, but you also picked up on that and just your sense more generally about where things stand right now with Air Force modernization. Maybe give us your sense on that.  

Steve Trimble (04:27):

Right, sure. Well, there's a lot going on. There's a lot of moving pieces. We're just two months into the new administration. We've yet to see the fiscal 2026 budget requests that is still being shaped and informed somewhat through these discussions that we're sort of witnessing on the stage there. But there's a lot of moving pieces in play. You've got next generation air dominance that's the crewed  fighter, the sixth-generation fighter that was allegedly going to replace the F-22 at some point. That has a huge influence on the collaborative combat aircraft or the CCA. That's not just one thing. That's several different things that are still being shaped and defined. There's the next generation air refueling system, the Air force's idea to create a survivable tanker, A tanker that could operate in airspace that's being actively defended by an enemy. So that's a lot different than what you see with a commercial derivative like a KC 46 or KC 1 35. 

And in the mix also is the big modernization programs that are also in various stages of development and production. That includes Northrop Grumman B 21, whether or not they can ramp up the production over the next few years to the degree that the proponents of that program would really prefer. And then what happens to the Lockheed Martin F-35? Can it hold on? Despite the whispers in Trump's ear from very high places, read  Elon Musk, who is not a fan of the program, he's been very explicit about that. Can it hang on  or does it get cut? And if so, by how much? Those are some of the big moving pieces in the program. 

But then of course there's all these other sort of outliers. There's the impact of what's going to happen with the Golden Dome, the homeland missile defense system, and how much money that's going to require.  

There's still fallout from Sentinel ICBM and how much that's going to cost and how that consumes available parts of the budget. And then there's other little pieces that not little, I mean they're big pieces, but comparatively things like E-7 (the new AWACS), B 52 commercial re-engining, T-7, all these things are on the Air Force's modernization agenda just for aircraft and everything is kind of in play. And so we're waiting to see how it all makes it through this process.

We understand from Air Warfare Symposium where the Air Force stands on this, where they definitely want in now they went silent on NGAD and when they weren't silent, they were saying that maybe we actually don't need it. And so we know that, but now we have to find out what the new administration thinks about that, and that's still, we're going to need a couple more months at least. I think before we know the answer to that question.  

Robert Wall (07:13):

Yeah. Steve, I was wondering before we go back to Brian here, talk a bit more about the NGAS situation, which you obviously wrote about for Aviation Week and the latest issue. And that does seem to be running on fumes, I think you wrote  

Steve Trimble (07:28):

Yeah. Yes, yes. When that came from some comments by Maj. Gen. Kunkel, the director of Force Design within Air Force Futures, he was speaking at I think a Mitchell Institute event, or no, it wasn't that it was CSIS or something like that. One of the think thanks in town, and it was just a couple of weeks ago and he said, we can look at now we're looking at NGAS from a very different perspective where it's not necessarily that you create a survivable tanker by developing a new platform itself. You can achieve survivable air refueling by going after the enemy systems that would target it. So you go after their sensors, you go after their shooters, their platforms that would be able to shoot down a relatively defenseless commercial derivative tanker. And that's a different approach than what we heard just a few months ago when Secretary Kendall, former Secretary Kendall now, was still running the show and seemed very enthusiastic about the idea of introducing this new survivable air refueling system. 

But the fortunes of that program have been going up and down for several years. I tracked it last spring going into the budget season. It didn't seem like there was a lot of support for it and there was a lot of support for NGAD. And then in June things kind of flipped where the Air Force leadership started saying, well, we're not sure about NGAD  and  we have to do this analysis to figure out if we still want it, but this NGAS thing that looks really interesting to us. So we really want to take another look at that and then see how maybe a bigger NGAS  can influence the design or a requirement for a smaller NGAD and things like that. Those were things that were openly discussed. And now it seems to have shifted back to where we started about a year ago with in a getting the full-throated support from the Air Force, from the military Air Force leadership. And of course we still don't have a permanent politically appointed civilian leadership at the Air Force in place yet they haven't had their confirmation hearings. The narrative on this, the public narrative on this keeps revolving, and this is where we are right now, but still, but it's still in this unsettled period.  

Robert Wall (09:51):

Yeah, interesting. Brian, just kind a question. Did you have a sense for if NGA is back on or is back in favor, where does that leave the CCA programs? Do you have the feeling they're out of favor or are they just kind of staying the course there?  

Brian Everstine (10:10):

Well, for increment one I would say there's still very much in favor still moving ahead quickly. First flights are expected now this summer. So that's coming up pretty quick.  

Robert Wall (10:19):

Can you just catch our readers, our listeners, sorry, up on what increment one is? 

Brian Everstine (10:24):

Yeah, so these are the first foray into a collaborative combat aircraft. The Air Force down selected General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Anduril to build the first examples for this. And they actually got their first designations at AFA, the YFQ-42A and the YFQ-44A. And the Air Force liked to make a lot of hay that it was the first ‘F’ designation for an uncrewed system calling it a fighter. So this is going to be proving out the idea, the concept, the initial technology for having an uncrewed loyal wing man serving as an off board gun truck, we bomb truck and some sensing for fighters. The first fights, as I said, are expected this summer. Increment two still seems like a big question from a lot of the sources I had talked to out, especially on the show floor, that the requirements are not set.  

It's still really in flux. You still we're going back to the discussion of do these need to be very exquisite, very capable, very long range, some in the space. For example, I talked with David Alexander at General Atomics who likes this open question. It gives industry a chance to be flexible and put forth what they think is the best idea. And on the other hand, I talked to some other folks, especially on the propulsion side of things who seem to want more direction so they can really curate their offer. So if you have what kind of range, then how can they modify certain engines to meet that sort of thing. So the requirement set for increment two is still very much up in the air, and I am not particularly keen on the timeline of when these will start to come out. I don't know if Steve, you have anything on that, especially on the timeline for increment two.  

Steve Trimble (12:06):

Well, if they want to stay on schedule, they'd need to come out with it pretty soon because the idea with the increments is to run them every two years and these are just the prototypes and then they make the decision on the increment one production in 2026 and so on. But I mean, the thing that we're trying to figure out here, and this is a huge debate and it's a huge debate in the Air Force, is huge debate within industry. This is a new thing. A collaborative combat aircraft is not replacing anything. It's a total white space in this world, and there's infinite debate and opinion on what it should look like and how much it should cost and what it should be capable of doing. Where the Air Force settled in increment one was sort of in the middle where they take something that can be reusable that has the range, they need 3,000 nautical mile range probably that can carry several missiles or bombs, but it's not necessarily all that survivable. 

It's not a flying wing. It's not an incredibly stealthy shape. It's a fairly conventional design like you would see with an F-16 or even less than that. But it still costs not incredibly small amount of money probably in the range of $25-30-35 million that that's not something you just throw away after one use. That's something you really want to have back except for the fact that it's not very survivable. So what do you do for increment two? Do you stay with that idea? Is that really the sweet spot? Maybe it is. Or do you go much more exquisite, make it much stealth so that it's more survivable can penetrate, that's going to be more expensive. Now you're talking maybe 40, maybe $50 million, maybe even more than that to kind of do the same thing, but with a bigger chance of actually having it come back. 

The alternative is to go all the way to the most affordable option, which is to make these things almost like missiles that they can come back, but that you could drop 'em off the wing of an F-15 it launches goes forward. It might have a payload inside, it might do its own ISR and targeting. It might also have its own warhead. So if it sees its target and it can decide or recommend to its human operator to hit that target itself, and then you'd have a lot of those and they'd be a lot more affordable each. So in that three to $5 million range, perhaps it's just a wide trade space. And the Air Force has kind of been all over the map about where they talk about what they want for the next increments of this. And one thing that incremental strategy is it gives you sort of infinite choice every two years to redefine these things. 

So it may never be that we get to that sort of sweet spot, this is what it's going to look like and that's it. But whether or not you have this six generation stealthy crewed fighter at the heart of this next generation air dominant family systems probably will have some big influence on what you need out of that CCA capability. Just depending on whether that thing is there or not, I would imagine would have a big impact. So that decision has to be made first and then we'll figure out what happens with increment too. I'm sure  

Brian Everstine (15:30):

Sticking in the autonomy space real quick, I just had a thought though. Within about a month and a half last fall at this fall, AFA Boeing rolled out a big wing version of its MQ-25, pitching it toward the Air Force is sort of an end gas, but a smaller autonomous vehicle. And then a month or so later at the Airlift Tanker Association, Lockheed Martin rolled out something relatively similar showing an autonomous system refueling two F-35s. So Steve, I'm curious, in your NGAs reporting, is there still a push, we're getting away from the huge stealthy tanker, but is there still interest in these sort of small autonomous refuelers as part of the CA push?  

Steve Trimble (16:09):

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think the interest, what the Air Force wants is as many booms in the sky as possible. It may not necessarily be volume on each platform, but they want as many booms available to do it. Now at some point you still need a certain volume of fuel on the tanker. MQ-25 is 15,000 pounds of offload, I think at 500 nautical miles. Maybe I'm wrong about the exact range on that. And that leads to a pretty big aircraft. I mean, and MQ-25 is about $120 million each because it's a pretty big aircraft. So that's one way to approach it.  

But the other issue with that is if you have a bunch of these smaller tankers, can you get a refueling boom on them? Can you make that refueling boom process low observable to radar or infrared type signatures? Because you do have this very angular with a boom contraption that attracts radio frequency sensors and other types of sensors that they prefer not to expose a stealthy aircraft too. So that's part of this discussion. Could you do it with probe and drug? It'd probably be a lot easier. But of course now the Air Force crewed aircraft fighters, bombers or what have you, can refuel from a probe and drug system. They all use booms, and that's another part of this. Now we do know  AFRL is developing a tactical boom called the shark pod that they could put, they say on an F-15, they could put it on a business jet, they could put it on the MQ-25, which is basically just a boom that telescopes and expands from a potted store under a wing and refuels an aircraft that way.  

And we also know AFRL is investing in Kronos, which is something that Brian saw at AFA, the picture of an MQ-25 refueling an F-35 A. What the Air Force is doing there is reviving the automated aerial refueling program to show or to prove out that you can refuel crude aircraft by autonomous aircraft and vice versa, or even autonomous aircraft refueling other autonomous aircraft. And that's all part of this. And especially if we go with that in gas family of systems, that's something that would be, these are the technological building blocks that are necessary to establish before you can actually do that. And there's a lot going on there. And we haven't even talked about airlift and we're going to address that on a webinar later this week, although I think it comes out before this podcast will be released. But where we go into that as well, because airlift is also going to this family of systems approach and there's this new member of it, the last tactical leg is very possible. You could see a refueling adjunct of that possibly, but more on that later for us. But before, for everybody listening to this, but you can go to our webinar page and look it up, I'm sure when this comes up.  

Robert Wall (19:17):

Great. And we'll put a link to that in our show notes. Maybe just before we wrap it up, let's briefly touch on F-35. I mean, this is, all these discussions about what's going to come aren't just about the future programs. Obviously F-35 looms large, and there were certainly some questions about the future of the program given Musk's comments about it. And then I think maybe certainly some folks in industry breathe a bit of a sigh of relief when the president talked about getting the F-35 to India in the future, which means suggests that an F-35 will exist to give to India. So a bit of an endorsement, so to speak. Where do you see things right now for F-35? Really either of you, frankly?  

Steve Trimble (20:07):

Well, I can take a stab at that programmatically. They're under a lot of pressure right now because Lockheed still isn't delivered fully operational TR three or Technology Refresh three software, which it's actually a package of hardware and software, and that unlocks the block four software standards. So I hope all those numbers and designations make sense, but they need to get to block four. It was supposed to be delivered in July of 2023. It wasn't ready. The JPO put deliveries on hiatus for about a year of those three aircraft. They accepted a truncated of the software for training coded F 30 fives only starting last July. And so Lockheed has been allowed to continue or resume deliveries of those aircraft, but they're reserved for training missions. They don't have a combat mission. Meanwhile, they're still trying to complete certification of that three hardware and software and get that first release of the block four software tape out.  

And then once you have that, then you can work on the electronic warfare upgrades that we're supposed to come with block four as well as the new APG-85 radar, but only for U.S. operator. So it's a lot to say there, but the programmatically, they're under the gun to get that done. It was supposed to be this summer hearing more of the language is more by the end of the year, maybe that, maybe not. Who knows? They're having a lot of trouble with that. So that creates an additional pressure. And then of course you've got Elon Musk in the president's earshot constantly talking about how we don't need any more crewed fighters at all and that the time has come to move to autonomous aircraft. And I would have to say that's an outlier perspective among the people we talk to who understand how the current state of autonomous technology to believe that today we're ready to do that. 

Maybe in 2040, maybe 2035, there's debate. But yeah, it would be an outlier to say that it's ready today. So that's one thing. The second thing is that he thinks the F-35 is terrible. He does not like the F-35. He's made that very clear. Trump has also had gone back and forth about the F-35. I mean, there was at one point he called it the Invisible Fighter and that had all these incredible capabilities, but he is also been down on Lockheed about a lot of other things too. So usually decisions made at that level don't impact individual programs like F-35, but that's different in the Trump administration. We saw that in the first administration too, the first version of the Trump administration. So we're waiting to see how that plays out here. But there's also the international component, as Robert mentioned, it's not just India.  

There's a question of can they open up the order pipeline in the Middle East, which Trump tried to do in his first administration with the UAE, which was subsequently suspended by Joe Biden, and then Saudi Arabia is still out there as well. There's some issues they have to deal with with Israel about opening up those kinds of aircraft in that world. But that's another part of this as well, another vector and the F-35 starting come under a lot of pressure. In some places, Trump's foreign policy has become much more aggressive, and a lot of international partners who bought the F-35 have voiced some concerns about their sovereignty with the F-35 and so forth, whether it's Finland or Canada or Germany. And so there's starting to be some pressure on those foreign sales. I wouldn't say that there's anything, I mean, I haven't heard any concrete proposals to make any adjustments to those things, and I think that would be unlikely at this point, but we'll see how it plays out. But yeah, so that's why I have to say in a nutshell that is I think one of the biggest questions that comes out of this fiscal year 2026 thing is finding out where the Trump administration is going to land on the domestic orders for the F-35. 

Robert Wall (24:16):

Brian, anything you picked up out there at a AFA or anything you want to kind of let our listeners know before we move  

Brian Everstine (24:25):

Here? I think the only thing that we haven't really touched on, we very briefly mentioned Golden Dome, but that did come up a lot at AFA and really under the context of Secretary Seth has pushed this 8% was originally called a cut, but now it's going to be kind of a reprioritization across budgets in the Pentagon. And there was really a lot of optimism, I'd say, within the Air Force about their place on getting this extra money. And Golden Dome was really the top recipient that was touted, but also, honestly, NGAD did come up a little bit as getting some of that extra money. So we'll see if that does play out, but that might just be some wishful thinking  

Robert Wall (25:03):

That seems curious when shipbuilding was such a point of conversation and other things. But I guess if you're in NGAD land, you're going to figure out  you've got to hope. If hope springs eternal or whatever you want to call it,  

Brian Everstine (25:20):

That'll be a conversation at Sea/Air/Space in a few weeks.  

Robert Wall (25:23):

Well, great. Let's leave it there for now. Lots more to talk about here even now, and lots more as this evolves in the coming weeks. We'll obviously be back with our audience on that as things develop. So thanks for now. Thanks for listening. Thanks to you, Brian and Steve and Guy Ferneyhough,who produces this podcast. And to our audience, we ask you to check back soon for another episode of Check Six. And for now, have a good rest of your day.  

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