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AURORA, Colo.—The Air Force will field 200 Next-Generation Air Dominance aircraft and notionally 1,000 Collaborative Combat Aircraft, and will request funds in the fiscal 2024 budget to develop these new systems, Secretary Frank Kendall said in his keynote address at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 7.
The next generation of air dominance will include both the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter platform “and the introduction of uncrewed collaborative aircraft to provide affordable mass and dramatically increased cost effectiveness,” Kendall said.
The “notional” 1,000 CCA figure was derived from “an assumed two CCAs for 200 NGAD platforms, and an additional two for each of 300 F-35s,” Kendall said.
He cautioned that “this isn’t an inventory objective, but a planning assumption to use for analysis of things such as basic organizational structures, training and range requirements, and sustainment concepts.”
Exactly how many NGAD platforms the Air Force is planning to buy has been a closely-held figure, and even if it is “notional,” the 200 figure is revealing in that it is greater than the current inventory of F-22s which the NGAD will eventually succeed circa 2030.
Kendall has previously said as many as five CCAs could collaborate with each crewed fighter—performing missions in electronic warfare, suppression of enemy air defenses, air and ground protection, and communications—but he has also said the process of introducing them will be iterative.
He did not indicate why he specified 300 F-35s, as the Air Force inventory objective of 1,763 F-35s has not changed since the program’s inception.
Kendall did hint, however, that greater buys of F-35s will be coming in the fiscal 2024 budget request that goes to Congress in the next week or say, saying the service “will be acquiring aircraft currently in production at higher rates than previously planned,” though, in general, “our previously-initiated programs are continuing as intended.”
In the longer term, the 2024 budget includes “close to 20 new or significantly enhanced efforts.”
Kendall said his “greatest fear” is that Congress will not move out quickly to debate, authorize, and appropriate defense funds, which would stymie new starts and be “a gift to China … that we cannot afford.”
Quoting Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Kendall said “military failure can almost always be summarized in just two words: ‘Too late.’ Time is an asset that can never be recovered or replaced.” And while he expressed gratitude to the White House and Congress for supporting increased USAF spending in fiscal 2023, “especially in allowing nearly all requested divestitures of legacy systems,” he also warned the forthcoming budget request will include more “hard choices.”
Kendall Reveals New Details on Air Force Plans: 1,000 CCAs, 200 NGAD Fighters
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