Mission systems sold separately: Air Force debuts ‘next-gen acquisition model’

The Air Force, long accustomed to buying its aircraft with everything included, is moving toward ordering the mission systems separately.

An “element of our next-generation acquisition model is having direct relationships, where it makes sense and where we can, with our mission system providers, and not simply working through a prime on individual platforms,” said Andrew Hunter, the service’s acquisition chief. “The reason why is: your mission systems have to integrate across a broad swath of our force in order to accomplish the missions that we have to do, the complex mission threads that go into high-intensity conflict with a peer competitor.”

The Air Force is using this approach for its next-generation tanker, called Next-Generation Aerial Refueling System, or NGAS, Hunter said, pointing to a recent call to industry for information on the new plane’s mission systems.

“We want to engage industry early [and] have them help us inform our requirements-generation process and do it in an iterative fashion. We don't want to do it with just one part of industry,” Hunter told reporters last week at the Air & Space Forces Association’s annual Air, Space & Cyber conference. 

By year’s end, the service aims to wrap up an analysis of alternatives that should give officials a better sense of future refueling needs and when the NGAS plane might arrive. If the next tanker takes longer than expected to be fielded, the service will need to buy more near-term refueling aircraft to serve the fleet. Hunter has previously said that interim buy will likely, but not definitely, be the Boeing KC-46. 

“We're going to need to buy something to cover down continued tanker production. That construct is still the case, but it's critically dependent on getting after NGAS and how quickly we can get to NGAS,” Hunter said last week.

The Air Force is trying to measure-twice-cut-once for both NGAS and its Next-Generation Air Dominance program, which has been paused as the service mulls the cost and design of the sixth-generation fighter. These future programs are intertwined, officials say, as previous concepts of air dominance have evolved. 

“We are looking at not just the NGAD platform. We're also looking at NGAS, using the AOA as a big input on that, and also the work we've been doing on [collaborative combat aircraft] increment two, so those are all kind of coming together. We're going to have, hopefully, decisions on what that package of capability is going to look like. Then, by the way, we've got to figure out how we pay for it, which I think may, at the end of the day, be our biggest problem,” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said last week.