According to the U.S. ArmyTimes website, on June 2, U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said on June 1 that the highly classified U.S. Air Force’s “next-generation air superiority” fighter jet program has entered a critical stage of engineering and manufacturing development.
Kendall, who was the Pentagon’s top acquisition official at the time, said the Air Force launched the early demonstrator phase of the Next Generation Air Dominance program in 2015, Kendall said at the Heritage Foundation meeting. He also stated That phase was essentially a simulation project aimed at mitigating risk and developing key technologies needed for subsequent production projects.
Kendall noted that technology is constantly evolving, and the Next Generation Air Superiority program is envisioned as a “family of systems” with multiple elements, such as the technology to incorporate a small number of drones to accompany manned aircraft formations.
Typically, the Air Force’s acquisition program begins at the engineering manufacturing development stage and takes nearly seven years to achieve initial operational capability.
While the Air Force has been working on the Next Generation Air Superiority program for about seven years, it is still years away from achieving initial operational capability because it has only recently entered the engineering manufacturing development phase.
The Air Force is asking Congress to allocate nearly $1.7 billion from the Fiscal Year 2023 budget for the Next Generation Air Superiority program, of which $133 million will go to research, development, test, and evaluation efforts.
Kendall also said on June 1 that he expects the Air Force’s acquisition program to move more quickly into production. He said it often takes years to enter the production phase, and he has directed Air Force officials to develop a plan so that Airmen can gain meaningful combat capabilities as soon as possible.
“I’m not interested in demonstrations and experiments unless those demonstrations and experiments are necessary steps to achieve true operational capability,” Kendall said. “We like to do a quick demonstration first, then move into the engineering manufacturing development phase or start an R&D program, and then Wait for a few years, just because we didn’t start the R&D from the beginning.
If we don’t need to reduce risk, we should go directly to product R&D and get to production as quickly as possible.”
He also said he has a “sense of urgency” to incorporate cutting-edge technologies, such as unmanned combat aircraft to accompany human-crewed aircraft, and is willing to take even more risks.
