Dear Fellow Aero-Culture Vultures,
Air museum visitors have their favorite exhibits and relics. For me, USAF’s Wright-Patterson has the XB-70 Valkyrie, a sole surviving flying prototype strategic bomber (see my fan photos!). Other than its otherworldly weirdness, brute power (six F-16-equivalent engines!) and shear mass, I was never quite sure why this plane appealed to me. But this month’s apparent killing of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD)/fighter component was enlightening: The XB-70 was a remarkable aeronautical achievement, 60+ years ago, from which, for budget and/or technological reasons, we retreated; that might be case with NGAD today.
First, a bit of background on that killing. NGAD is likely a broader program (or requirement) than a mere fighter, but NGAD’s crewed fighter component was big and real. Four years ago this month, Air Force acquisition chief Will Roper revealed the existence of a full-scale prototype that had flown, and that “records have been broken.”
A record-setting fighter designed for Pacific theater operations, with a $300 million unit price (as also later revealed), was going to be big. Maybe not XB-70 big, and perhaps it was just an F-22 on steroids, or a born-again YF-23, but it’s big, and state-of-the-art. Maybe there was more than just one prototype! Yet this summer, USAF paused the program (a favorite aerospace program phrase; as I’m fond of saying, it’s hard to tell your kids that the vet had to pause the family dog). And at this month’s AFA Air, Space & Cyber conference, Secretary Frank Kendall said he wanted something that costs less than an F-35, or less than one-third the price of an NGAD fighter.
And now, a word from USAF spokesman Captain Obvious: “Something with that price tag is not NGAD. For less than $90 million, we might get just a high-end drone, or an improved F-35. So, our vaunted Sixth Gen superfighter might be in worse shape than that family dog.”
I’m sympathetic. The Air Force is trying to afford F-35, B-21, KC-46 (and NGAS), T-7, E-7 Wedgetail, MH-139, and the Sentinel ICBM. Most of these are just ramping up, with a flat topline budget environment and political headwinds from isolationist yahoos. Meanwhile, Sentinel cost overruns are getting quite serious, but nothing can be done. Think of Sentinel as a real estate program, a mandatory passthrough to sparsely populated red states. Strategic rationale or not, it’s going ahead, no matter how absurd the costs get.
In addition to those USAF budget horrors, there’s the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) factor. If you’re a CCA advocate, CCAs are small marsupials there to eat the Sixth Generation dinosaur eggs. They’re cheap to buy, cheap to operate, and don’t need onboard crew. With AI and other emerging capabilities, CCAs will be a game-changer, eliminating the need for a large, crewed superfighter (although one of NGAD’s key missions was as a CCA controller). CCA advocates also point to Russia’s war on Ukraine – one very clear lesson is that large numbers of small things seem to be a winning concept, at least for now.
If you’re a CCA-doubter, of course, the picture looks different: It might be many years, or even decades, before those emerging technologies enable CCAs to be game changers. Also, F-35s and other current tactical aircraft will have serious range and basing limits in the Western Pacific, and CCAs will have the same problem.
The XB-70 story isn’t too different from NGAD’s. Cost and budget issues played a role, as with NGAD. A terrible crash (unrelated to airworthiness) of one of the two prototypes sealed the program’s fate (presumably unlike with NGAD). Reliance on a troublesome new technology (boron-based zip fuel) created additional program risk (also probably not with NGAD). There were also concerns over new Soviet interceptors and SAMs rendering the XB-70 too vulnerable to do its mission (quite possibly the case with NGAD, given China’s air defense system improvements).
But the XB-70, very much like NGAD perhaps, was also the victim of technological disruption. While the first ICBMs were operational in the late 1950s, it was only in the mid 1960s that they were capable enough, and regarded as useful enough, to create a third leg of what became known as a triad of nuclear weapons delivery systems. Just as CCAs are possibly removing some of the funding and impetus for an NGAD fighter, the ICBM removed some of the funding and impetus for a new, path-breaking, ultimate strategic bomber.
The Big Question: is the NGAD fighter dead? Some think it’s being re-defined, perhaps as an even larger, longer-ranged aircraft, to cope with Western Pacific range challenges (and basing limitations). Some think it could go back to the Black world, to re-emerge as something even more impressive, perhaps when the USAF budget bow wave subsides. Others think that Secretary Kendall sincerely wants something less expensive, and that even if that price tag can’t get down to F-35 levels, it can perhaps get down to F-22 levels (around $170 million in today’s dollars).
But the base case, for me, is that this is what it seems: the future belongs to F-35, CCA, B-21 (perhaps in a CCA controller role) and some other capabilities. Perhaps the associated NGAP variable bypass engine program will be salvageable; perhaps not.
Either way, future generations may visit the Wright-Patt museum, see one or even two NGAD prototypes, and, like visitors today with the XB-70, wonder what the hell happened.
Yours, ‘Til I Join An Aero Museum’s Docent Corps,