A Boeing rendering of a next-gen fighter. (Boeing photo)
WASHINGTON — The US and China are locked in a “race” to field the next generation of airpower — and there’s no guarantee America will cross the finish line first, according to the Air Force’s outgoing acquisition executive.
“They could beat us to the punch,” Andrew Hunter told Breaking Defense in an interview at the Pentagon.
He suggested that the US Air Force wasn’t necessarily surprised when images of at least two new aircraft apparently belonging to Beijing flying through the air sent shockwaves through the aerospace community over the holidays.
“It’s fair to say we pay a lot of attention to what the Chinese are doing. And so, not everything that becomes public is a shock,” Hunter said. “But having said that, their pace is incredibly fast.”
Hunter previously warned lawmakers that the US was in a race with China for a sixth-generation fighter, and at the time predicted the US would win. Speaking with Breaking Defense today, Hunter acknowledged the US may not win the race to initial operational capability (IOC), but he was still confident the aircraft the US eventually fields would outperform whatever China is developing.
The Air Force’s “technical advantage[s],” he said, “are meaningful and that our system is producing good materiel” even if they may not always come to fruition as quickly as desired.
“So [the] IOC date on something, they may well beat us on that. I think we’ll have the better capability, but we certainly have no time to lose,” he said.
Experts previously told Breaking Defense that the images of the two jets could strengthen the case for the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter, whose fate will now be decided by the incoming Trump administration after officials paused the program last year.
The Air Force’s NGAD hesitancy came as a surprise to many in Washington, following years of investment and widespread expectation that the fighter would play a critical role in ensuring the US Air Force can rule the skies. Recent Air Force analysis supports a manned NGAD fighter, as Breaking Defense was the first to report, though other factors — particularly available funding for the jet and supporting platforms like a next-gen tanker — will determine its outcome under new Defense Department leadership.
In public remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies today, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said the service’s NGAD review arrived at a “consensus” that there is “value” in proceeding with the platform. Still, he said the program would need over $20 billion to finish the jet’s development on its current track, and that “there are other priorities that we really need to fund first.”
Kendall said that alternatives to current conceptions of the NGAD platform as a manned F-22 replacement could take several forms, including an “F-35 follow-on” multirole aircraft that would be less expensive and primarily tasked with quarterbacking the service’s forthcoming fleet of drone wingmen dubbed Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA). Additionally, Kendall said the service could rely more on long-range strike capabilities, though he noted that’s something the Air Force could pursue regardless.
“[T]o keep the industrial base going, to get the right concept, the right mix of capability into the Air Force, and do it as efficiently as possible, I think there are a couple of really reasonable options on the table that the next administration is going to want to have to take a look at,” Kendall said. He further reiterated that the Air Force is probably not yet prepared to do away with manned aircraft entirely, as some members of the incoming Trump administration have called for, though he said the approach could be considered.
“We could just continue to rely on F-35 and keep it going for the foreseeable future and focus on CCA. I’m not quite ready to do that personally, but the next administration could take a look at that,” he said.
“The culture and the history and the legacy of the Air Force […] is about the role of the pilot, and letting go to some degree of that, I think, is an incredibly difficult emotional thing for people to do,” he continued. “So I’ll be convincing from the outside, and we’ll all watch and see how this all plays out over the next few months.”
