Faced with the rising costs of the NGAD (Next Generation Air Dominance) program, which aims to provide the U.S. Air Force (USAF) with a future sixth-generation fighter, military leaders in the country are beginning to consider redesigning the program to better manage the investment required. According to approximate figures from officials’ statements, the future platform is projected to cost nearly three times as much as an F-35, reaching approximately 300 million dollars.
This information was revealed in a recent interview conducted on June 28 by the specialized media outlet Defense News with the Secretary of the U.S. Air Force, Frank Kendall: “I can tell you that we are looking at the NGAD platform design concept to see if it is the right concept or not. We are seeing if we can do something that is less expensive and make some trade-offs there (…) It’s a very expensive platform. It costs about three times as much as an F-35, and we can only afford to buy it in small quantities.”
Efforts to reduce costs seem to be focused on changing the propulsion system that would equip the aircraft, which initially sought to be composed of engines adaptable to flight conditions as required. In this regard, the U.S. Air Force is looking for a smaller and less complex alternative, which would significantly reduce the program’s costs.
Following this logic, the costs expected to reduce the potential production of the NGAD should be around 100 million dollars, according to Secretary Kendall: “Ideally, I would like to bring it down to less than an F-35, or at least in the range of an F-35. The F-35s, as you know, are not cheap aircraft (…) Scale matters, numbers matter, and so does timing.” Given that the platform is not yet in an advanced stage of development, this goal is not entirely far-fetched, although it remains to be seen how it will impact capability reduction beyond the mentioned engine issue.
It is worth noting that in recent weeks, the future NGAD of the U.S. Air Force has been heavily scrutinized in budgetary terms. With the approval of the Fiscal Responsibility Act for fiscal year 2025, all U.S. Armed Forces have had to adjust their financing plans. Additionally, the U.S. Air Force is in the process of modernizing its nuclear deterrence capabilities, an illustrative example being the work being done on the B-52H bombers.
Another relevant issue to consider is the requests for approval to retire 32 Block 20 F-22 aircraft, whose upgrade would require a significant budgetary effort that would further strain the U.S. Air Force’s finances. These plans were rejected by the U.S. Congress. Specifically, if this retirement were to proceed, the U.S. Air Force could redirect a significant sum of 2.5 billion dollars over five years. This is not a trivial matter compared to the estimated costs of 2.7 billion dollars in research and development for NGAD in fiscal year 2025, which are expected to increase over the years to approximately 8.8 billion dollars by 2029.
*Images used for illustrative purposes.
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