The US Air Force realized years ago it had a distance problem. Specifically, its manned fighters – F-15 Eagles, F-16 Falcons, F-22 Raptors and F-35 Lightnings – would struggle to cross the vast western Pacific Ocean to do battle with Chinese jets over, say, Taiwan.
Under the best conditions, a USAF fighter might range 500 or 600 miles with a useful load of weapons. But there’s just one big US air base anywhere near Taiwan: Kadena in Japan’s Okinawa prefecture, 450 miles from Taiwan. Everyone expects Chinese missiles to pummel Kadena in the early hours of a war, possibly putting the base out of action.
Aerial tankers can extend a fighter’s range by hundreds of miles, but the tankers are big, slow and vulnerable. So when the Air Force wrote the requirements for its new Next Generation Air Dominance stealth fighter, longer range was a key requirement. And when the Air Force abruptly paused the NGAD project this summer, it left observers asking whether the world’s leading air arm was giving up on contesting the western Pacific in wartime.
When USAF leaders paused the NGAD program and pledged to reconsider the design parameters for the stealthy manned fighter, they mostly cited the projected high cost of the new jet – up to $300 million per copy. But according to aviation expert Bill Sweetman, there was another factor in their seemingly jarring decision to at least temporarily halt this flagship development effort.
That factor was the meteoric rise of collaborative combat aircraft – smart, stealthy, armed drones – in USAF planning. Where just a few years ago, the Air Force was still planning a long-term fleet dominated by traditional manned fighters, today these robotic, AI-assisted CCAs are quickly taking over.
“CCAs are the disruptive agent in USAF force planning,” Sweetman wrote in a new study for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
The US Air Force realized years ago it had a distance problem. Specifically, its manned fighters – F-15 Eagles, F-16 Falcons, F-22 Raptors and F-35 Lightnings – would struggle to cross the vast western Pacific Ocean to do battle with Chinese jets over, say, Taiwan.
Under the best conditions, a USAF fighter might range 500 or 600 miles with a useful load of weapons. But there’s just one big US air base anywhere near Taiwan: Kadena in Japan’s Okinawa prefecture, 450 miles from Taiwan. Everyone expects Chinese missiles to pummel Kadena in the early hours of a war, possibly putting the base out of action.
Aerial tankers can extend a fighter’s range by hundreds of miles, but the tankers are big, slow and vulnerable. So when the Air Force wrote the requirements for its new Next Generation Air Dominance stealth fighter, longer range was a key requirement. And when the Air Force abruptly paused the NGAD project this summer, it left observers asking whether the world’s leading air arm was giving up on contesting the western Pacific in wartime.
When USAF leaders paused the NGAD program and pledged to reconsider the design parameters for the stealthy manned fighter, they mostly cited the projected high cost of the new jet – up to $300 million per copy. But according to aviation expert Bill Sweetman, there was another factor in their seemingly jarring decision to at least temporarily halt this flagship development effort.
That factor was the meteoric rise of collaborative combat aircraft – smart, stealthy, armed drones – in USAF planning. Where just a few years ago, the Air Force was still planning a long-term fleet dominated by traditional manned fighters, today these robotic, AI-assisted CCAs are quickly taking over.
“CCAs are the disruptive agent in USAF force planning,” Sweetman wrote in a new study for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.