NGAD: Not GonnA Do it?

Some thoughts on the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) sixth generation fighter project at National Security Journal…

But the NGAD is more than an aircraft; it’s an idea for reshaping how the US procures fighter jets. The NGAD has long been identified with Will Roper, former Air Force acquisition chief. In Roper’s vision the NGAD would look less like the F-35 and more like the Toyota Camry. The former is built to tight specifications that are extremely difficult to change or update, requiring an industrial infrastructure and workforce designed around precision and repeatability. The latter gets updated every year, and key components from the system can find their way into the Siena or whatever other platform the firm needs to produce.

Roper envisioned a disconnect (made plausible by advanced drafting software and modern manufacturing techniques) between design and production, consequently breaking the monopoly of the big aerospace firms over the entire life cycle of a fighter.  Roper explicitly cited the Air Force’s experience with the “Century Series,” a family of fighters that served at the dawn of the jet age, in descriptions of what the NGAD program might eventually look like.

Some other links:

• What to expect when you’re expecting F-16s
• Preliminary lessons on the failure of Ukraine’s 2023 summer offensive
• The complexities of learning lessons from a conflict happening in real time
• On the post-1945 logic of retaining battleships
• On legions vs. phalanxes
• Israeli intelligence failures prior to October 7