Air Force wants NGAD to cost no more than an F-35. Is that even possible?

Can a sixth-generation fighter jet cost less than previous generations of fighter jets? U.S. Air Force officials say it’s possible.  

“The F-35 kind of represents the upper bounds of what we'd like to pay for an individual [NGAD] aircraft for that mission. The F-15EX and F-35 are roughly in the same cost category. I'd like to go lower, though,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told reporters Monday at the Air & Space Forces Association’s annual Air, Space & Cyber conference. 

But the feasibility of this target for the service’s Next Generation Air Dominance aircraft, about $80 to $100 million, remains to be seen, since it’s taken years of production to get the cost of its fifth-generation F-35 down to where it is: $82.5 million a pop in recent lots for the Air Force. And the F-15EX, a “fourth-generation-plus” jet, costs over $90 million. 

The service has paused its NGAD program after initial projections for the sixth-gen aircraft put the cost of the fighter at three times the cost of an F-35 and as changing threats and the advent of drones and new technologies are altering how the service views air superiority. 

The service was working with NGAD design concepts and requirements that were “several years old,” Kendall said.

Now the service is reconsidering all aspects of an aircraft that drive cost: “size, complexity of mission systems, propulsion,” Andrew Hunter, the service’s acquisition chief, told reporters, and admitted that it is a “very challenging puzzle to solve.” 

“Is it possible that we'll look at that Pareto curve and nothing on that curve is cheaper than an F-35? That is possible, yes, but we got to do the work. We got to do the analysis, and we know what would be most advantageous,” Hunter said Monday. 

Kendall also said they might lower costs by transferring some of capabilities once-envisioned for NGAD to collaborative combat aircraft, drones that will fly and fight alongside manned fighters.

“Once you start integrating [collaborative combat aircraft] and transferring some mission equipment, capabilities, functions to the CCAs, then you can talk about a different concept, potentially, for the crewed fighter that's controlling them, so there's a real range in there,” Kendall said. 

But despite the uncertainty surrounding the program, Kendall remained confident that NGAD would get built: “We're probably going to do one more version, at least, of crewed, more traditional aircraft.”

The service will reach a decision about the program “within the next few months” because industry teams are waiting for direction, the secretary said, and a number of other future aircraft programs also hinge on this decision.

How exactly NGAD will interact and control CCAs is still to be determined, Kendall said, but noted the service’s push towards greater reliance on drones. 

Initially, the service wanted each crewed fighter jet to control three to five CCAs, but “we’re talking about bigger numbers than that now,” Kendall said. 

CCAs, which will essentially act as weapons trucks and be loaded with autonomous software, will be under “tight control” and maintain a direct line of communications with the manned fighter, Kendall said.   

“One of the things you have to have if you're going to use CCAs and have them be armed and used and lethal is that they have to be under tight control,” he said. “And for me, one of the elements of that needs to be line of sight communications. And I think that that's an important thing to have in the mix: secure, reliable, line-of-sight communications. We're not going to have aircraft going out doing engagements uncontrolled, so the default, if they lose communications, would be for them to return to base, which takes them out of the fight, so we don't want that to happen. And when they do do engagements, we want them under tight control.”