Sixth-generation fighter at F-35 costs? ‘That’s not going to happen,’ industry predicts.

AFA 2024 — As the US Air Force reassesses its plans for a sixth-generation fighter jet, its top civilian said the service wants to get the price per plane down to F-35 levels, about a third of what it originally projected it would pay.

The problem, analysts and defense industry officials told Breaking Defense, is that it may not be realistic or even possible without a complete reimagining of how fighters and drones will fight together in the future.

While the Air Force has yet to set a final unit cost target for a manned Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said the F-35 represents the “upper bounds” of what the service wants to pay per aircraft, adding that the F-15EX is “roughly” in the same price category.  

“I’d like to go lower, though,” he told reporters this week at the Air and Space Force Association’s air space and cyber conference.  “Once you start integrating CCAs [Combat Collaborative Aircraft] and transferring some mission equipment and capabilities functions to the CCAs, then you can talk about a different concept, potentially, for the crewed fighter that’s controlling them. So there’s a real range in there.”

For those in industry, Kendall’s comments represent a major break from the Air Force’s original vision for a manned NGAD fighter.

“That’s not going to happen,” one defense industry official told Breaking Defense, adding that there are “distinct differences” in design parameters, materials and fleet sizes that drive higher costs for a sixth-generation fighter versus older, more prolific jets like the F-35 and F-15.

Currently, unit costs for the Lockheed Martin F-35 ranges from about $80 million to $100 million per copy, depending on the variant, while the flyaway cost of a F-15EX is about $90 million. Conversely, Kendall originally estimated unit prices for NGAD would be about $300 million per copy.

If the Air Force wants to field an optionally-crewed sixth-generation fighter jet at a price around that of an F-35 or F-15EX, the only plausible option is by taking out most of the aircraft’s key mission systems — things like radar, other sensors and datalinks — and putting them into the CCAs that will fly near the jet, said a second industry official.

That would allow the service to focus on optimizing the range, improved stealth and aerodynamic performance of the sixth-generation fighter, but would have a few major downsides, the official said.

First, there is a “pretty significant” expense associated with all of those attributes, even if costs can be cut by segregating the NGAD fighter’s mission systems, the official said. And because the fighter will be reliant on those CCAs for mission capability, those drones may also need to have a similar level of stealth and range, potentially increasing CCA unit costs as well.

Potentially even more important, that concept would make the NGAD pilot much more dependent on the survival of the CCAs hosting critically needed subsystems like datalinks and electronic warfare systems, as taking down those drones could erode the fighter jet’s own chance of completing the mission and making it home.

In essence, offloading systems from the fighter to CCAs means the two have to be seen as one inseparable package – one which comes with potentially greater risk for the mission and possibly greater cost overall, as CCA prices could swell as a result. 

“It’s natural to want a Rolls-Royce for the target price of a Cadillac,” said Jeremiah Gertler, senior analyst at the Teal Group. “The question is whether you get either of those, or wind up with Frankencar.”

‘Quiet quitting’ NGAD

While aerospace companies are not permitted to confirm their involvement in the ultra-secretive NGAD program, Breaking Defense understands that Lockheed Martin and Boeing were vying for the NGAD contract before the Air Force hit pause on the program this summer. (Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy Warden acknowledged last year that Northrop no longer planned to compete for NGAD, though she has since said the company could reassess that decision depending how the Air Force rescopes the competition.)

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Asked about Kendall’s comments, Lockheed said its Skunk Works advanced development is adept at delivering both innovative and cost-effective solutions to meet urgent national security requirements.

“As we learn more about the requirements for NGAD, we’ll assess what it will take to meet the need,” the company said in a statement.

Boeing declined to comment.  Northrop did not respond to a request for comment.

Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with AeroDynamic Advisories, said the focus on the cost-element of Kendall’s comments is burying the more significant acknowledgement from the Air Force — that it no longer needs a “super fighter” like NGAD and is more interested in disaggregating capabilities and networking them together.

Which raises the question about whether it needs a manned fighter altogether if it can just put those capabilities into drones, said Aboulafia, who joked that the Air Force may be “quiet quitting” the NGAD program.

“The idea of backing away from a next-gen super fighter is just anathema to the service’s DNA,” Aboulafia said. “There’s no doubt about its utility in all military scenarios… it’s the formula that’s always worked. No drawback at all, except, oh Jesus, it costs $300 million. And we don’t want to spend that because you’ll never get the mass you need.”

While it was “always the plan” to offload some NGAD mission requirements to CCAs, “it’s possible that the Air Force has learned that more is possible than its earlier assessments,” Byron Callan said in a note to investors on Tuesday. 

Callan added that the emphasis on lower cost hints that the reworked concept for NGAD will have to be easier to produce and upgrade than an F-35, another potential challenge. .

Assuming that the Air Force actually can get the price down to what Kendall wants, Callan noted there could be one significant benefit: lowering the price per unit significantly, and offboarding some of the most sensitive and presumably export-controlled systems, would potentially open the door for the Air Force to position it for foreign sales.

Previously, experts told Breaking Defense that the $300 million price point for NGAD was totally unaffordable for export customers. While the Air Force has never indicated it would be willing to sell NGAD to allies and partners, if its price dropped to about $100 million, the sixth-generation jet would be on an equal playing field as the F-35, which hasn’t lost an fighter competition so far. (Currently, there are two sixth-generation fighters in development by American allies, one by a Franco-German team and one by the UK, Italy and Japan.)

Michael Marrow and Aaron Mehta in Washington contributed to this story