AURORA, Colo.—With the future of the Air Force’s sixth-generation fighter jet in limbo, service officials pointed to a recent internal study to buttress their argument that there’s no better way to secure the air in future conflicts than the Next Generation Air Dominance program.
“Bluntly, what this study told us, we tried a whole bunch of different options and there was no more viable option than NGAD to achieve air superiority in this highly contested environment,” Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel, director of Air Force force design, integration, and wargaming, said Tuesday at the AFA Warfare Symposium in Colorado.
But the formal decision to proceed with NGAD or modify the program now rests with the incoming service leaders. The Air Force had paused the program last summer due to soaring cost projections that put the price of the sixth-gen fighter at three times the cost of an F-35. This led to an internal study to look at alternative options. In January, then-Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said there is “value” to building a crewed sixth-gen jet, but emphasized that other priorities need to be funded first.
While Air Force leaders at the conference stressed the importance of NGAD, they said discussions are still ongoing about how exactly the service will achieve air superiority and remain “open-minded” about new solutions.
“I don’t think the Air Force is sticking its head in the sand and saying there’s only one way” to achieve air superiority, said Lt. Gen. Dale White, military deputy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics. “We’re being very open minded about what different opportunities there are, or different capabilities we might explore and things of that nature.”
As these deliberations continue, China is building its own sixth-generation aircraft programs. Those aircraft are built for “air superiority” and the U.S. can’t sit back and do “nothing” while China fields these new platforms, said Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, commander of Air Combat Command.
“We have some choices to make as we observe what China has produced, and we can presume we know what that’s for—for air superiority. What are we going to do about it? And I don’t believe that nothing is an option,” Wilsbach said.
In addition to new threats from China, the service is grappling with budget constraints as the Pentagon reshapes its budget to adjust for a 8% shift in funding to account for new priorities from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Kunkel warned that fiscal constraints “don’t change what it takes to win,” and further investment will be needed. “If America doesn’t want to make those investments, then we’ll take more risk, and I’m not so foolish to think that this is a black and white decision or win versus loss. There’s a degree of risk involved. But if we fund more Air Force, we decrease operational risk, we decrease the risk of our policymakers,” he said.
But Kunkel maintained that the Air Force will fare “well” with the budget reallocation.
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