Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or perhaps even President Donald Trump will have the final say on a way forward for the Air Force’s Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter, the nominee to serve as the Pentagon’s No. 2 civilian said at his confirmation hearing.
Stephen Feinberg, nominated to be Deputy Secretary of Defense, also acknowledged the Air Force’s diminishing capabilities and promised lawmakers he would take a close look at next steps for the service, to include a more robust pursuit of hypersonic weapons and divestment of older aircraft systems.
Feinberg is a billionaire and the co-chief executive of Cerberus Capital Management, a private equity firm which invests in defense contractors.
Asked by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) for his thoughts on a manned sixth-generation fighter—such as NGAD—Feinberg noted that “it’s a controversial issue, and I know there’s views on both sides.
“I want to get in there, if I’m fortunate enough to be confirmed, [and] look at all the classified information,” he added. “And ultimately, that decision could be made by the secretary or the president, even, and I’ll see if I can add some value to it.”
Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall paused the NGAD program last summer for additional analysis, saying it wasn’t clear that the program’s requirements had kept pace with technological change and its affordability was of concern. Eventually Kendall deferred the decision to the new Trump administration, saying it should decide because it would have to live with the choice.
The topic of NGAD came up once again when Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) asked Feinberg if the Trump administration would take steps to reverse the aging and downsizing of the Air Force, noting the service plans to retire hundreds more planes than it will procure in the coming years.
“This will further exacerbate the Air Force’s current state of being the oldest, smallest and least ready, perhaps, in its history,” Peters said. At the same time, Hegseth has asked every Pentagon organization to identify 8 percent in “offsets” to shift money toward Trump administration priorities, and manned fighters were not among the programs exempted from that, while surface ships and submarines were.
“I think it sends a conflicting message on the future of the Air Force fighter planes and missions,” Peters said. ” … Can you help give this committee some reassurance that the leaders at OSD understand the need to continue investment in next-generation tactical fighters so that we can improve readiness and, in the process, surpass our adversaries?”
“It’s a really tough question,” Feinberg replied. “Some believe that we can go straight to full autonomous systems, we don’t need a next generation fighter, and we could use the F-35, updated,” to meet the needs of national strategy.
“Others feel we really need the next-generation fighter, despite its expense and difficulty,” he said, before reiterating that he has not received classified briefings on NGAD or China’s fifth-generation fighter the J-20 and that “ultimately, that might be the secretary’s or the president’s decision.”
Feinberg’s comments throw into sharp relief just how weighty that decision will be. In written testimony, Feinberg repeated that after getting classified briefings, he will pursue “a balanced and affordable plan.”
Big Picture
In his opening statement, Feinberg laid out in broad strokes his views on the Pentagon and the defense industrial base: “We really need to plug these shortages, focus on our priorities, get rid of legacy programs, be very disciplined, and while at the same time focusing on the economics. If we do that, given America’s great innovative capability and entrepreneurship, we will defeat China.”
Pressed by Democratic lawmakers on Hegseth’s 8 percent “offset” and major planned personnel cuts, Feinberg largely demurred, saying many of the personnel reductions are “are still to come” and he does not yet know what role Hegseth will ask him to play in implementing cuts or offsets.
Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) pressed Feinberg hard for his commitment to nuclear modernization. After he first called the effort “one of our very top priorities,” Fischer pushed him to say “there’s nothing that could be more important than our nuclear modernization.”
“One reason why I hesitated on this: modernization is key. We also need hypersonics. Because if our enemy can carry nuclear capability on things faster than ours, it’s a big problem,” he said.
At a different point in the hearing, Feinberg added that “we have to develop hypersonics. We can’t allow the Chinese to be faster than us, both in their weaponry and aircraft.”
Nuclear modernization, however, is still crucial as the U.S. faces “two peer competitors” in nuclear weapons and that the existing force structure was crafted “before Russia and China modernized, before they expanded their arsenals,” Feinberg said.
In written testimony, Feinberg acknowledged that the Air Force is the “oldest and smallest” it has ever been and argued the solution is to “invest in a family of medium- and long-range penetrating airframes coupled with modern munitions, human-machine teaming, and a hardened warfighting network.”
He said he thinks the Air Force has “taken meaningful steps in that direction,” but there remains the “tension between near-term readiness and readiness for the future fight” due to fiscal realities.
Feinberg also acknowledged in the written testimony that the demands on the Air Force “exceed its capacity to fulfill them.” He said he believes USAF “accepted risk in modernization accounts to fund minimum-essential readiness,” while adversaries are advancing their own capabilities.
Asked if he supports the stated requirement to acquire 72 new fighters for the Air Force annually to maintain force structure, Feinberg said the service needs “a mix of fourth- and fifth-generation aircraft to balance capability and affordability.”
Feinberg also said in oral testimony that “clearly we need to develop autonomy; autonomy in significant numbers, with a centralized command—effectively a brain—and we have to make the right decision on whether we need to build the next generation aircraft where we can rely on autonomy.”