The United States Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program may not be too big of a project to fail, it may simply be too important – largely because there may be no other option.
“The entire joint force counts on air superiority,” said Air Force Gen. Ken Wilsbach, commander of Air Combat Command at last week’s 2025 Air and Space Forces Association Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado. “Anything else you want to do in the battle space, if you don’t have air superiority, it becomes much more difficult, if not impossible.”
The U.S. Air Force pressed pause on the NGAD effort last year, and former Secretary of the U.S. Air Force Frank Kendall had warned that the service couldn’t afford the NGAD while moving forward with other programs. For one, NGAD calls for a system of systems, built around a sixth-generation optionally-manned fighter that could be supported by unmanned aerial systems (UAS) that would serve as “Loyal Wingman” drones.
Those drones could be part of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) that is continuing to move forward. The service has focused on making these low-cost and expendable that can be modular, meaning they could serve in a variety of roles.
Is the NGAS Running on Fumes
One of the other programs that Kendall had said couldn’t be affordably produced alongside the NGAD was the Next Generation Air-refueling System (NGAS) stealth tanker program. After months of internal analysis and debate over its high costs as well as its usefulness, it would appear the NGAS could be running on fumes at best.
The NGAS was among the aforementioned system of systems, and was initially conceived to extend the range of the NGAD manned fighter in contested airspaces. Instead, some Air Force officials have pushed for any future sixth-gen fighter to be refueled by traditional tankers, like the KC-46, operating from safer locations while supplemented by smaller unmanned systems including the Boeing MQ-35 Stingray, a drone tanker that could extend the range of a combat aircraft at a far lower cost.
Air Force officials had also expressed concerns that an adversary could develop the capabilities to detect and target the larger tankers, even those with some low-radar signature features. For those reasons, the service may move forward with ways to disrupt the enemy’s ability to track and target the traditional tankers while employing the smaller unmanned versions.
“There are many attack surfaces that we can attack to bring survivable air refueling,” Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel, the Air Force’s director of Force Design, Integration and Wargaming on the Air Staff in the Pentagon, told reporters at the conference, The Aviation Geek Club reported. “NGAS might be part of the solution, but there are other places along this kill chain that we can attack the adversary, and that’s the approach.”
NGAD Still Needed
The biggest concern over the NGAD was that any aircraft developed now could be quickly obsolete thanks to the rapid adoption of new technology, notably artificial intelligence. However, Kunkel said that the latest analysis suggested that the NGAD is still needed, citing the latest studies on the aircraft.
“What we found is not only in the past, not in the present, but in the future, air superiority matters,” Kunkel added. “What this study told us is: We tried a whole bunch of different options and there’s no more viable option than NGAD to achieve air superiority in this highly contested environment.”
The final question will be one of cost, as Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin and Kendall had previously warned that any future manned fighter could cost three times as much as the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II or around $300 million per aircraft.
Sixth Generation Fighter Programs
Even as the Air Force paused the NGAD, the United States Navy pressed forward with its own sixth-generation fighter, the F/A-XX, which will replace the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet now in service.
In addition, two competing programs are underway by America’s allies – including the British-led Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), with Italy and Japan as co-partners; and the French-German-Spanish Future Combat Air System (FCAS), which Belgium could join as a junior partner. There has been speculation that GCAP and FCAS could merge, but even if that doesn’t happen, the GCAP consortium recently announced it expects to have orders of more than 300 aircraft from the partner nations as well as export sales.
China and Russia are also believed to be working on sixth-generation fighter aircraft – highlighting that it may be impossible for the U.S. Air Force to sit it out.
