Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) — United States

Next Generation Air Dominance, NGAD, is the US Air Force's effort to field a sixth-generation fighter and the family of systems around it, and it is one of the more consequential and contested defense programs of the moment, because it embodies both the promise of the next leap in air combat and the crushing cost problem that makes that leap so hard to afford. NGAD is not a single aircraft but a system, a crewed fighter designed to operate alongside uncrewed aircraft, advanced weapons, and networks, built for a specific strategic problem, maintaining American air dominance against China in the vast distances of the Pacific, and its development has become a case study in the difficulty of affording the cutting edge of air power.

What NGAD is for and what it includes

NGAD exists to solve a strategic problem that the current fighter fleet is poorly suited for: maintaining American air superiority against a capable adversary, principally China, in the Indo-Pacific, where the enormous distances and the growing Chinese air defenses and air force challenge the shorter-ranged, aging American fighters. The Pacific's vast distances demand aircraft with greater range than current fighters, able to reach and operate over the enormous expanses where American forces would have to fight, and the sophistication of Chinese air defenses and fighters demands aircraft advanced enough to penetrate and prevail against them, so NGAD is designed for range, stealth, and capability beyond the current fifth-generation fighters, built for the specific challenge of the Pacific and the peer adversary. The crewed NGAD fighter is envisioned as a highly advanced aircraft with the range, stealth, sensors, and weapons to operate against China in the Pacific, but crucially it is designed to work as part of a system rather than alone, reflecting the sixth-generation shift from platform to system of systems.

The most distinctive element of the NGAD system is the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the uncrewed aircraft designed to fly alongside the crewed fighter and extend its capabilities. These CCAs, sometimes called loyal wingmen, are uncrewed aircraft that accompany the crewed fighter, carrying additional sensors and weapons, taking on dangerous tasks, absorbing risk that would otherwise fall on the crewed aircraft, and multiplying the effect of the crewed fighter by adding the capabilities of the uncrewed teammates it directs. The CCA concept is central to NGAD and to the sixth-generation approach, since it addresses several problems at once: it adds capability and mass more affordably than crewed aircraft, since uncrewed aircraft can be cheaper and can be risked in ways crewed aircraft cannot, it extends the sensors and weapons of the crewed fighter across a team of aircraft, and it lets the crewed fighter act as the command node of a team rather than fighting alone. The vision is of the crewed NGAD fighter directing a team of CCAs, the human pilot commanding the uncrewed teammates that extend the reach, sensors, and firepower of the formation, a concept that reflects the growing role of uncrewed systems and that promises to multiply the effect of the crewed fighter while managing cost and risk.

The cost problem and the program's turbulence

NGAD's central challenge is cost, since the crewed sixth-generation fighter is projected to be extraordinarily expensive, so expensive that the Air Force publicly questioned whether it could afford the program as conceived, a remarkable admission that reveals the depth of the cost problem. The projected cost of each NGAD fighter, potentially several hundred million dollars, raised the question of whether the Air Force could buy enough of them to matter, since a fighter that costs so much can only be bought in small numbers, which limits its effect however capable each aircraft is, exactly the problem that has dogged expensive advanced aircraft. This cost concern led the Air Force to pause and reconsider the program, examining whether the crewed fighter as conceived was affordable and whether the concept should change, a turbulence that reflects the genuine difficulty of affording the cutting edge of air power, and the program's direction has been uncertain as the Air Force wrestles with how to field the sixth-generation capability within a budget that cannot support unlimited cost. The CCA concept is partly a response to this cost problem, since the uncrewed CCAs are meant to be more affordable than crewed fighters, providing capability and mass at lower cost, so that the expensive crewed fighter can be bought in smaller numbers while the cheaper CCAs provide the mass, a way to field capability affordably by combining a few expensive crewed aircraft with more numerous cheaper uncrewed ones, addressing the cost problem that pure reliance on expensive crewed fighters cannot solve.

NGAD also reflects new approaches to how advanced aircraft are developed and acquired, including the digital design and engineering methods meant to develop aircraft faster and cheaper, and the concept, sometimes discussed as a digital century series, of developing and fielding new aircraft more rapidly and in smaller batches to keep pace with advancing technology, an ambition to escape the slow, expensive development that has plagued programs like the F-35. Whether these new approaches can actually deliver advanced aircraft faster and cheaper is one of the open questions of NGAD, as is the fundamental question of whether the sixth-generation capability can be afforded and fielded in the numbers and timeframe needed to maintain American air dominance against China. NGAD, then, is a program of great importance and great difficulty, embodying the promise of the sixth generation, the crewed fighter teamed with uncrewed CCAs, built for the Pacific challenge, and the cost problem that makes that promise so hard to realize, the extraordinary expense that led the Air Force to question whether it could afford the program as conceived. Its outcome, whether the US can field an affordable, effective sixth-generation capability to maintain air dominance against China, is one of the more consequential questions in American defense, since air dominance has been a foundation of American military power and the challenge to it in the Pacific is real, making NGAD's success or failure a significant factor in whether the US can maintain the air superiority it has long relied on, in a future where the cost of the cutting edge and the capability of the adversary both make that superiority harder to sustain than it has been in decades.