The U.S. Air Force revealed this week that it has secretly designed, built, and tested a new prototype fighter jet. The fighter, about which we know virtually nothing, has already flown and “broken records.”… The most interesting, and perhaps revolutionary, thing about NGAD is that the Air Force developed and built it in just one year. The world hasn’t seen such a short development time since World War II. In fact, the trend has been for fighters to require longer, more expensive development times as technology becomes more complex—particularly with the adoption of stealth.
China’s Chengdu J-20 fighter, for example, broke cover in 2011 after at least 10 years of development time, while Russia’s Sukhoi Su-57 “Felon” fighter still hasn’t entered production, despite the fact that we first saw it in 2010.
That was from the article, “The Air Force secretly designed, built, and flew a brand-new fighter jet.” To those who argue that 10 year development timelines are a rule of nature, take that! And to those who profess that weapon systems developments are not actually taking longer than they used to in previous decades, and that cycle times are shorter in periods of centralized acquisition, take that!
Of course, we haven’t actually seen the Air Force’s demonstrator. And then it will take some more years to get an operationally effective/suitable model ready for production. Some hints put the IOC in 2022! It took the F-35 more than 15 years to reach that point since Milestone B, and more than 20 years since the start of prototyping!
The featured image for this post is the Air Force’s 73rd anniversary logo. Anyone care to speculate whether that’s the shape of the demonstrator?
Here’s a bit more from the excellent Steve Trimble on Twitter:
So, Goldfein in 2019: “Here’s our NGAD strategy. We have five key technologies that we’re investing in that we don’t intend to have all come together on a single platform. To be able to do the mission in the future we expect these technologies to be adaptable to existing platforms, and we expect these technologies to come forward into a family. I know we use family of systems a lot, but, really & truly, that’s the next generation of air dominance. So our intent is to keep these joint technologies moving aggressively & have them come together. They will all mature and accelerate at difference paces. As they become ready, you will see us adapting them on existing platforms, sensors & weapons, and also looking at new platforms, sensors & weapons.”
I asked him again if there was a plan to apply adaptive cycle propulsion on the NGAD in the near future, as Congress seemed to be demanding. Again, he avoided answering my question, but said: “There has to be a test article to be able to take some of these technologies to mature,” he said. “That’s probably about as far as I can go.” That’s the NGAD flight demonstrator. It’s testing the 5 NGAD technologies.
The Air Force built a full-scale flight demonstrator. Not a prototype. That’s a hugely important distinction since the latter can have residual operational capability (and be subjected to operational test) and former cannot.