The Air Force needs a high-end aircraft that can operate in contested environments and work with new Collaborative Combat Aircraft semi-autonomous drones, the service’s top officer said March 18—requirements that still yet may be met by the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter.
“Instead of going all high-end and then breaking the bank and not being able to sustain it, we need to have that balanced capability mix. But we do need to have high-end,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin said at the McAleese and Associates annual Defense Programs Conference.
Allvin’s comments come as the Pentagon has yet to decide how to proceed with the NGAD fighter, a costly program to develop a sixth-generation piloted aircraft that the Air Force had previously cast as a high priority before it was paused for review at the tail end of the Biden administration.
“The family of systems does need high-end penetrating capability,” Allvin said. “With respect to the overall package and what gets put forward, I think this administration will be making that decision [on whether to proceed with a crewed NGAD fighter], and we’re going to move out on that. But you do need the ability to maintain air superiority and penetrate contested environments, and that’s what our Air Force does.”
The coming months will be decisive for the Air Force’s fighter fleet. The service’s first CAAs—General Atomics’ YFQ-42A and Andruil Industries’ YFQ-44A—will fly this summer, service officials say. The Trump administration is also poised to make a decision on what to do about the NGAD crewed fighter. CCAs are considered part of a broader NGAD “family of systems.”
Initially envisioned as a replacement for the F-22 Raptor, officials had suggested that NGAD crewed fighter would cost perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars per jet.
A decision is expected to look at the crewed fighter’s prospective capabilities compared to its high price tag, as well as how well that aircraft can operate with Collaborate Combat Aircraft. CCA flight testing will inform how the Air Force balances crewed and uncrewed platforms.
Photos by H. Darr Beiser and Mike Tsukamoto/Air & Space Forces Association
“We’re going to be on a learning curve with them understanding just what [CCAs] can do,” Allvin said. “That will determine the capability mix between that and our high-end platforms that they will be integrated with and aligned within the human-machine team. What exactly that looks like, the proportion, we don’t know yet. And to be able to or to try and drive towards a single solution right now is probably not responsible.”
The service has made clear it does not see future conflicts as fully autonomous—at least for the foreseeable future.
“I think we’re a ways away from fully putting combat in the hands of just unmanned systems,” said Lt. Gen. Dale R. White, the service’s senior uniformed acquisitions official. “I believe we will get there. We will iterate to that, and we will have mixed systems until we get comfortable as a function of time. … We have to get to a place where comfortable knowing that the system can act and do the unthinkable. We’re still going to need systems and capabilities in the fight. … We’re still going to need that Marine or that Soldier to jump on the grenade to save the platoon. We’re still going to need that function. We’re still going to be a human on the loop to do the unthinkable things that we have to do. And so there’s going to be a period of time of transition that we’re going to have to work through.”
The review of Air Force programs will also be influenced by other new service initiatives: the USAF’s evolving Force Design and its provisional Integrated Capabilities Command, which are designed to focus the Air Force’s thinking on which platforms it wants to develop and why.
The Force Design covers different “mission areas” in which the Air Force will sketch out a variety of capabilities to match a range of threats.
Integrated Capabilities Command, which is currently operating in a provisional status pending a review by the Trump administration, is focused on problem-solving for the service and the joint force rather than just the priorities of major commands.
“This is probably not comfortable for industry, but this particular environment does not favor long-term, big bets because we think we know what the future is going to be for the next 25 years,” Allvin said. “Because if you’re wrong, you’re really wrong. The ability to reinvest is sometimes tough.”
In addition to high-end platforms, Allvin said the Air Force is exploring what he called “asymmetric” capabilities “that are disruptive early on” in a conflict. This a new concept, he said, which seeks to confront adversaries with a dilemma so that the U.S. doesn’t “have to use all of your high-end kit from the very beginning.”
“We absolutely have to have air superiority. … What we need to break away from intellectually is we have to have our superiority the way we always have had it,” Allvin added. “Air superiority also does not necessarily have to be for days and weeks on end where the skies are clear. … Air superiority is designed to enable other things, so when you have air superiority, it might be temporal, it might be regional, but as long as it’s synchronized to the joint force objectives, we are still accomplishing what the joint force needs and what the nation needs out of its Air Force.”