Of all the new program starts that the Pentagon plans to pursue in this decade, Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, is probably the most important.
The goal of the program is to assure US forces continue to enjoy air superiority in the 2030s and beyond by fielding a family of airborne systems that countries like China cannot match.
Command of the air, as Italian air theorist Guilio Douhet first explained a century ago, facilitates every other facet of warfare. If you have it, your surface forces can achieve their tactical objectives more easily. If you lack it, surface forces may not be able to accomplish their objectives at all.
In fact, as Douhet predicted, many of the missions traditionally assigned to armies and navies can be accomplished faster and at less risk today from the air, thanks to smart weapons and super-capable sensors hosted on fast-moving aircraft.
But whatever the division of labor in prosecuting a military campaign, friendly forces must command the air to make it happen.
In 2014, military planners began thinking through what would be required to sustain U.S. air dominance through mid-century, in an effort initially called Penetrating Counter-Air.
As the name implies, the idea was to develop capabilities for fighting and prevailing in contested air space—even if adversaries spent heavily on anti-access/area-denial strategies.
US national defense strategy subsequently was revised to focus on China as the driving threat, due to its rising economy, heavy investment in warfighting technology, and persistent violation of democratic norms.
Putting China at the center of US strategy underscored the importance of what came to be known as Next Generation Air Dominance, and largely defined what capabilities the envisioned family of systems would require.
For instance, in order to deter Beijing’s aggressive impulses, US combat aircraft will need to operate far from home in the vastness of the Western Pacific—an area with relatively few usable bases and a great deal of distance to be covered in wartime.
The operational environment thus puts a premium on speed and range, but also the ability to survive in close proximity to the main centers of Chinese military power.
The US and its allies are currently fielding a fifth-generation fighter, the F-35, that is highly survivable thanks to its low-observable (“stealth”) features. But F-35 has limited range, which will constrain its use in the Pacific, and it is a multi-mission aircraft rather than being optimized for air dominance.
NGAD will be mainly about command of the air—not just with regard to the crewed fighter it fields to replace the Air Force’s twin-engine F-22 fighter (now several decades old), but also the unmanned aircraft and weapons that accompany the fighter into battle.
F-22 and F-35 are often referred to as “fifth generation” aircraft, emphasizing the survivability conferred by stealth, their ability to fuse diverse sensor collections, and secure networking features that enable seamless tactical coordination.
The crewed fighter at the center of the NGAD family, on the other hand, is called a “sixth generation” aircraft, signaling that it will be significantly more capable in integrating the technologies most relevant to assuring command of the air.
As anyone with access to the program will tell you, a fifth-generation aircraft can’t accomplish what a sixth-generation aircraft can—which isn’t surprising, given that fifth-gen fighters were conceived long before the China threat had assumed the urgency it does today.
I recently published a Forbes commentary laying out the features that I expect will drive design of the NGAD fighter, but the whole program is secret so the piece is speculative.
The Navy has its own NGAD effort under way, however that aircraft looks likely to reach the force later than the Air Force’s. Based on what little is publicly known about the Air Force effort, though, it isn’t hard determine which aerospace company is most likely to benefit from the program.
That company is RTX, which enjoys greater breadth of domain knowledge in relevant technologies that any other enterprise in the world. RTX contributes to my think tank.
We know from contract awards disclosed by the Air Force that three airframe integrators and two engine companies are actively engaged in the program. Only one of the airframe companies—Boeing
BA
GE
But there is a high likelihood that many of the sensors, controls, displays, weapons and other items carried on the crewed aircraft will be provided by RTX businesses.
RTX’s Collins Aerospace offers a vast array of applicable products, from actuators to flight controls to landing gear to ejection seats. If Collins were a stand-alone company, it would still rank as one of the world’s leading aerospace enterprises.
The heritage Raytheon businesses of RTX include the world’s biggest manufacturer of airborne missiles, a leading provider of airborne radars, a maker of advanced electronic-warfare systems and a diverse array of sensor products (including the new distributed aperture system on the F-35).
And then there is engine-maker Pratt & Whitney, the only supplier of propulsion systems for fifth-generation fighters and the Air Force’s future B-21 bomber. Pratt and GE have both developed prototypes of next-generation adaptive engines, one of which will likely be evolved into the powerplant for the NGAD fighter (possibly using a Collins power and cooling system).
Much of this hardware will be enabled by agile software that RTX businesses have pioneered, and networked across the NGAD family of systems and beyond via secure links that the company also engineers.
So while it’s too soon to say who will integrate the NGAD airframe or build the unmanned systems that support it in combat, it’s a safe bet RTX will play a big role in the program.
Meeting the Air Force’s standards for a fully digitized acquisition approach will not be a heavy lift for RTX—it relies on digital engineering and modeling in virtually all of its businesses.
The real question mark hanging over Next Generation Air Dominance isn’t whether companies like RTX have the necessary technology and skills, but whether the program will be funded at a sufficient pace to deter Chinese aggression in the years ahead.
RTX, Boeing and Lockheed Martin
LMT
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