U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall cast doubt on the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter program in an interview with Aviation Week. Listen in as editors Brian Everstine, Steve Trimble and Robert Wall break down what we know—and what we don't know.
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Transcript
Robert Wall:
Welcome to Aviation Week's Check 6 podcast. Today we dig into what's going on with the U.S. Air Force's Next Generation Air Dominance Program or NGAD. On the cusp of a development contract award, the Air Force appears to be wobbling on the flight path for the F-22 replacement. Helping you unpack what is going on are Brian Everstine, Aviation Week's Pentagon editor who spoke exclusively with Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall about the topic and other issues, and Steve Trimble, our defense editor, who's been covering the program since its inception. I'm Robert Wall, the executive editor for Defense and Space at Aviation Week. Brian, so what did Kendall say and what does it mean?
Brian Everstine:
Yeah, so if you've talked with Secretary Kendall anytime recently, you'd know his top concern right now is resourcing. The Pentagon, obviously got its last 2024 budget late. It's right now required to stay under a spending cap because of the Fiscal Responsibility Act. And right now it's also staring down the barrel of some really high costs on nuclear monetization like the Nunn-McCurdy Breach on Sentinel. So right now with that context, the Air Force is finishing up its fiscal 2026 draft budget and its long-term spending plan. This was all on Kendall's plate when we sat down for a pretty long interview a couple of weeks ago, and I asked him how he's trying to balance all these funding issues.
And so he told me that, and I'll just quote here, "There are a lot of things that we probably might not have contemplated a few years ago we're taking a hard look at. The need for air dominance obviously is not going to go away, but what mix of systems and how we do that I think is something we can take another look at." So after he said that, I decided, so what does that mean for NGAD, which is a key point in the program right now where we're expecting a down select pretty soon. And so he said, "I don't want to get ahead of myself on any of this, okay? I'm just saying we're open-minded right now on the things that we're looking at." So that shows that the NGAD is in question right now within the Pentagon. And a couple days after this interview, Chief of Staff General Allvin was also asked about NGAD spending at an Air Force Association event where he reiterated some of Kendall's points and added that the service needs to make choices under a tight budget.
So while both of these comments focus heavily on the budget, one thing that Secretary Kendall also did go into is more about his changing vision for air dominance as the Chinese threat has progressed. He talked about a rethinking of standoff versus shorter range, a different mix of munitions. He also talked about operational limitations of a fighter, things like basing and runways that would be required in a China fight, coupled with a small bomber force that the Air Force is looking at right now with its B-21. So these are some of the context right now that's going on with these planning discussions on the future of NGAD.
Robert:
Yeah, very interesting. Steve, any speculation on your end or any thoughts on what may be going on? Is it PL-17, the Chinese long-range air-to-air missile, that's making people rethink things? Is it, you think, more of a strategic reset or review of where the Air Force wants to go?
Steve Trimble:
So, I think the most helpful thing to do is go back to when this program began and look at why the Air Force wanted to build a new fighter or build a new next-generation air dominance capability. And it was because they looked at the future threat in the 2030 timeframe and decided A, they still needed air superiority, that they wanted to be able to establish air superiority, maybe not that sort of blanket air superiority that they enjoyed in Iraq and Afghanistan or even Vietnam to some extent for years. But
what they call sort of pollster superiority and General Grynkewich at the time, he was Brigadier General in 2016, now he's the Lieutenant General. But he came up with a study that was sort of the foundational study for NGAD and he wrote an essay about it.
And we know from that essay, this was back when they would talk a little bit about what they wanted, and what they wanted to do was to have the ability to penetrate into this highly contested airspace populated by stealthy enemy fighters, integrated air defense systems that were very capable. Capable enough to push F-22s and F-35s out of that space, out of the heart of that space.
They could still occupy the fringes but not penetrate inside, and on the inside they'd have B-21s and they would have this penetrating counter air or PCA capability. And the B-21 would be there to hit the airfields and logistics centers like fuel depots and things like that, prevent the enemy fighters from taking off in the first place. That's one great way of establishing your superiority. So dwell in that airspace, hit those airfields, hit the fuel, make it very difficult for the air component of the enemy's air force to fight back, but you still have the integrated air defense systems and you'll still have leakers. And that was what penetrating counter air was for, to go after any aircraft that did manage to take off. And dwell in that airspace, wait for the integrated air defense systems to turn on their sensors, their active sensors like radars and so forth, and then either send that information to standoff aircraft like an F-15 with an AGM 183 hypersonic glide vehicle and have them lob that in to take out that target or go after it themselves.
That was the idea. Grynkewich made sure to challenge people to think we're going to call this a fighter, it's going to have an F in front of it, but don't think of it as a fighter. It's no longer a fighter. In the process, they looked at various other alternatives to doing that mission. Even at a fundamental level they asked, do we need to do the mission? The answer was yes, we need to do that to enable all these other things to happen. And then can we just upgrade what we have? Can an F-22 with some different types of capabilities, could that do it? No. Could we use strictly attritable and standoff capability? So CCAs that penetrate the airspace, they didn't call it the CCAs back then, but that was the idea and standoff capabilities like F-15. And they said, well, sort of except for the fact that they're not going to be able to find their targets, we need something inside that airspace to find the targets that are inside that contested bubble.
And they looked at other things like just cyberspace type capabilities, ballistic missiles and things like that. And ultimately what they came back to was that they need kind of all of the above, but they've got to have this penetrating counter error at the center. So when Kendall says we need to take another look at that. And this of course is eight years later. And of course Kendall was very familiar with the original studies because he was there at OSD with attack air portfolio in the 2016, 2015 timeframe. So he was aware of all that.
Has something changed? Has their basic understanding of the threat changed? Has their basic understanding of our capabilities changed? Are CCAs capable of doing something that they didn't know back then? Is the B-21 more capable than they were expecting? Or has that threat changed to make this capability less likely to be effective in the 2030s?
Now one thing that Grynkewich did talk about was that they were going to have to figure out if we could actually do this, if next generation air superiority could be achieved with the technology available at the time. And that was going to start with flight demonstrators, which we were only sort of vaguely aware of at the time we're actually in motion through the Aerospace Innovation Initiative sponsored by DARPA that led to the flight demonstrators. One of which we knew flew by Will Roper statement in September of 2020. So we think of that as sort of the explain. Grynkewich also said we also need something that's much more representative of the final aircraft. And he criticized how the F-22 got selected after a fly-off between two aircraft that weren't really representative of the final configuration of the F-22 or the YF-23 and the same thing with X-32 and X-35.
He said, "We need to have prototypes that are very advanced that represent the actual type of capability and the technology that's available." So those got presumably funded too. We don't know when they flew. Now we do know that there had been a previous deferral for this program, right? If you looked at the budget plan for Next Generation Air Dominance in 2018, it had a certain profile that made it look like they were looking at an EMD contract award in the fiscal '21 or '22 timeframe. And then in the following year they pushed that out again, by about three years so that the contract award would be now. So there's already been a deferral for this program, probably giving time for those advanced prototypes to actually fly. So now they know what those things could do. They have a pretty good idea of what those things could do.
The bizarre thing is that Kendall is making these comments now and General Allvin is making these comments now, despite the fact that they released an RFP less than 14 months ago in early May of 2023. So you had Boeing and Lockheed responded, Northrop decided not to participate in the competition. And so usually you don't turn the ship around after you've released the RFP and in the process of source selection, that seems to be where we are here and that's going to create some awkward situations. Are they going to award a contract? If they are going to award a contract, but they're not sure what they want to do anymore, how are they going to restructure the program after that? So there's a lot of questions about all that.
Robert:
Brian, maybe you can come in here as well. I mean, you've also looked in... In addition to what Steve's talked about, of course, we've also dealing with a clearly increasingly tight fiscal environment for the Air Force that seems to be really struggling to figure out how to fit all the stuff they want to do into a tight budget. Especially when you also think F-35 costs are not really coming down, given some of the delay issues there. Sentinel, as you alluded to the ICBM, the new ICBM costs are growing. So just in addition to the strategic environment that Steve detailed, talk a bit about just how difficult the Air Force seems to think the funding situation is.
Brian:
They think it's incredibly tight. I asked General Allvin about this directly. I mean we're heading a couple years away from a trillion dollar defense budget, how can things be so restrained? But they have the Nunn-McCurdy breach on the Sentinel that they said they will continue this program essentially no matter what. They need to keep flying, they're not going to be able to retire the F-22s under the bills that are making their way through Congress right now. There's just a lot of must-pay bills. And Steve, I was hoping to get your input on this because these are comments that General Allvin and Secretary Kendall have made within the past couple of weeks, but they were prodded. This aren't any things they volunteered out in any speeches or anything as a question from me and the interview with Secretary Kendall, it was a question to General AlLvin and AFA.
How much of this would you say could be potentially just messaging within the department, messaging to the Hill like, Hey, we have these huge new bills. Can you set up an independent fund out of our budget to keep Sentinel going? Again, OSD, Hey, can you pick up some of the tab on NGAD to keep this going? And how much of this is some beltway politics or just NGAD is very uncertain just in general?
Robert:
And before you pick that up, let me add one. Someone had suggested to me the Air Force didn't like the pricing that's coming in from the two bidders and maybe to convince the folks that to maybe change their pricing ideas, they would just suggest that this program might not go forward otherwise.
Steve:
Now this is a somewhat dangerous game to play and the Air Force knows that if that is what is happening, because you can be trying to bluff either the contractors or Congress or both, but they can call your bluff, especially Congress. And so they have to be wary about that. And let's not forget that the Navy went through the same process last year without anybody realizing it until they released their budget. So in March, they released their 2025 future years defense program and they cut the budget for their FAXX, which is totally different aircraft, by about 70% over the fight it. And they cut it in a way that pretty much gutted the ability for them to go into an EMD phase during this five-year period where they were clearly planning to before. They had $10 billion last year in this fight up and this year they have 3 billion over a course of five years.
So I mean it was a dramatic one-year change for a single program like that, for a single line item. In their case, they may be trying to throw this at Congress's feet and ask them to pick up the tab by adding it to the budget at the end of the year, the risks that they're taking, first of all, it's not clear that there will be a budget passed by the end of the year or it could be another continuing resolution. There's a lot of dynamics that have to play out in the political process for that to happen. This is an election year. And second, Congress may have other priorities for that money, and so the Air Force is coming along essentially a year later with a very similar at least risk environment for the budget on their NGAD, right? Nothing is settled yet.
They're at the very beginning of, I would say the middle phase of the fiscal year 2026 future years defense program setting process. That's not going to get really locked in until August or September from the service's standpoint. Then it goes to OSD and then there's additional changes. Then it goes to OMD by the end of the year, and then there's additional changes and finally it gets locked in January. Last year, the Navy put up no public fight over this. They did not acknowledge that this was an issue and that they were looking at these dramatic changes to their Super Hornet replacement. The Air Force obviously being a bit more protective about its aircraft is certainly making some comments about the fiscal year 2026 spending plan that we normally don't hear at this time of the year, raising concerns and raising alarms that this is the case.
Maybe that's a strategy to get it reversed or maybe it's a communication strategy that internally they've actually done some new analysis or they found out something that has changed their fundamental understanding of what this program is all about and what the technology they need to establish their superiority in that timeframe. It's just a really weird time for that to happen. That is just not something you see happen after they release an RFP because the industry is making a lot of investment here in this RFP. Boeing has talked about all this infrastructure that they're building out in St. Louis with a $1.8 billion expansion in Mesa, Arizona where they're creating a new composites facility.
They just opened or announced that they were going to open a new engineering center at Embry-Riddle in Florida all to support their air dominance programs. So there's a lot riding on this right now. As the negotiating tactic maybe something is happening here, but it's impossible to say with what we know so far, how real that threat is to the future of NGAD. How much of it is a bluff, how much of it is real? But it's a big pivot in terms of that program's direction currently. We'll see how this settles out, but this is a big shift for that program.
Robert:
I find the timing also interesting. It comes not just before we were expecting an award, it also comes right after the announcement of the two CCA contractors, General Atomics and Anduril building that part of what essentially the NGAD architecture, so the uncrewed part of it. So it is kind of a very curious timing. Brian, go ahead.
Brian:
Just really quickly, the only other thing I wanted to add on timing is the Air Force is about a month or two away from a deadline from last year's NDA called on the Air Force to do a force design 2050 timeframe study, and that is in the final works right now. Kendall linked that to some of the big picture analysts that they're doing.
Robert:
It could be very well that as they look at what the force in 2050 should be, and then they look at the numbers both in terms of dollars and maybe assets, the math just didn't work out.
Brian:
Also, 2050 is a long ways away, and the analysis of the threat that they're talking about is on the matter of a couple years, not another 25.
Robert:
For sure. Steve.
Steve
Well, I just want to also just address the consequences of changing horses in midstream or making this big change, or at least the costs of this. So far, the US Air Force has been budgeted to spend, an approved spending for 7.2 billion on their version of NGAD. That includes some underlying technologies. It doesn't include the flight demonstrator that was funded by DARPA because that was in a classified account. We don't know how much that, and they've been budgeted to spend 1.489 billion on next generation adaptive propulsion, which would be the engine for this aircraft. And that doesn't include the 3 billion more that they spent on the preceding technology programs that led to next generation adaptive propulsion. So all that, well, maybe not all of it. I mean, they can probably harvest some of the underlying technologies and bring that into other programs, but they lose a substantial portion of that if they don't move forward.
Not only that, they've gone to Congress each year saying, we've got to retire a huge portion of our tactical aircraft fleet, whether F-16s, F-15s, A-10s, even to the point where they've tried to retire a portion, a subset of the F-22 fleet, which Congress has prevented them from doing so far. Premised on the idea that they need the funding to pay for in NGAD and if they retire all those aircraft as they've been doing and then don't buy the NGAD, they're doubly worse off at that point. And my question would be for Secretary of the Air Force, Chief of Staff Air Force, how can you go to Congress, how you can go to the Joint Chiefs and say that you're going to be able to provide this air superiority mission? What is the plan? What does it look like if that one piece, that penetrating counter air piece isn't there? What else is there to assure us that that's possible? Obviously, a lot of that answer is going to be classified, but at the same time, somebody needs to answer that question to some degree.
Robert:
Right. I mean, I think in that perspective also, good to remember, it's not the first time the Air Force numbers have come down drastically on the Air superiority fighter. The F-22 was originally of course, a far larger program. The big difference is the F-22 cuts came into a very different strategic environment, piece dividend. No one's talking about piece dividend right now. So it makes it particularly curious.
Steve:
Well, at least in that case, they actually built an aircraft and delivered some of them. It was a 180 or 195 versus 750, but at least the Air Force got something for the... I think it was $40 billion or so that they spent on it.
Robert:
So if you are one of the bidders, or not even the primes, but also the subcontractors, I mean, it's not just the primes that are affected here. I mean, you're dealing with a monopsony buyer, so it's not like you can have it fit and walk away, but on the other hand, it does after years of hearing, you should invest more, you should take more risk. You should put money into this as well. It can't just always be government funded R&D and then a curve-ball like this. I mean must not sit well, to say the least.
Brian:
I'm interested to hear what the Pratts and the GEs have to say about this because with the cancellation of AETP, the NGAD was really the only game in town for advanced military aircraft engine development. And if the ropes going to be pulled out from under them, what's going to be the future there? I mean, the Air Force, the past couple of years, lifecycle management centers talked a lot about how by canceling AETP, you're just hammering the advanced engine development that this country has and if net with NGAD now, is there going to be any option for that?
Steve:
It's a really tough question. Of course, industry is dealing with this all the time. They've already sort of voted with their feet by, like I mentioned, Boeing making those big investments. There is construction underway now in St. Louis on this new campus for this purpose. There's the Advanced Composite Center. Brian went out to see the ribbon coming for that a couple of years ago. Those investments are already in place. Lockheed actually hasn't made any of... I mean, they've been silent about what their infrastructure plans are for NGAD, but presumably they've done something too to prepare to be ready to go into EMD. On the other hand, I mean where the Air Force was going with the acquisition strategy on EMD has proven to be challenging for industry to sort of keep up with in the first place. Northrop Grumman withdrew from this competition saying that the structure of it wasn't something that they were interested in, which is this idea of doing small production volumes, maybe a hundred, maybe 200, maybe even less with a different mix or a higher mix of aircraft types and a perpetual competition.
So the Air Force was going to make sure that they weren't going to be locked into the monopoly that Lockheed had on the F-35 and F-22, for example. They wanted to have the ability to compete airframe production even, but also things like the OFP and the ability to add new sensors, add new weapons, add new applications for the sensors they already had without going through the OEM. As a challenging model for a defense industry that has been sort of custom-built to support a very different way of doing business with the government and there is this transition phase going on beyond NGAD with a lot of different programs involved right now. And so the NGAD was going to be the centerpiece of that whole strategy with a new platform, but... You could argue industry would be relieved to some extent given the dynamics of the acquisition strategy. So a lot going on.
Robert:
To say the least. Yeah, for sure. I'd say let's leave it there for now as we try to sort out if NGAD's current status is a massive US Air Force bluff, a zombie program or something entirely different. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Check 6. Thanks Brian and Steve for your insights and thanks Guy Ferneyhough, who's our podcast producer in London, and as always, special thanks to you, our audience for your time and attention. Don't miss the next episode, so follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever else you get your Check 6 podcast. We hope you'll be with us again next time. Thank you
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