Boeing F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD)

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ca.news.yahoo.com

Pentagon set to award US Air Force's next-generation fighter jet contract, sources say

The Pentagon is set to announce its decision on a next-generation fighter jet contract initially worth more than $20 billion as soon as Friday, despite earlier concerns about budget constraints and shifting priorities, sources briefed on the plan said. The Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD)...
ca.news.yahoo.com ca.news.yahoo.com
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon is set to announce its decision on a next-generation fighter jet contract initially worth more than $20 billion as soon as Friday, despite earlier concerns about budget constraints and shifting priorities, sources briefed on the plan said.
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On the subject of Boeing, i couldn’t help thinking of the LRS-B bidders jockeying to arrange new manufacturing plans to support their bids.

That is, at least if I recall correctly, the infrastructure was an attempt to cause a program victory, rather than a result of it.

I personally always kind of thought Boeing would win F/A-XX, and LM would win NGAD-high, but Boeing NGAD-medium. Seems to me like Boeing’s confidence last year might have related to the growing budget issues following FRA ‘23 and the Sentinel crisis, while rumored USAF leanings toward the Boeing NGAD may have been leanings toward a smaller size well before the review kicked off.

That is, I’m proposing that the RFP may have allowed a range of size and capability offerings, with LM bidding in the battlecruiser/battlestar range and Boeing bidding a comparatively more F/A-XX sized aircraft. But then, according to this theory, the idea of the USAF picking the smaller one grew to include curiosity about the small F-35 replacement, helping inspire the study, alongside other factors we’ve been over a million times.
 
books said:
On the subject of Boeing, i couldn’t help thinking of the LRS-B bidders jockeying to arrange new manufacturing plans to support their bids.

That is, at least if I recall correctly, the infrastructure was an attempt to cause a program victory, rather than a result of it.
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Are you referencing Boeings new facility at St Louis as a example?
books said:
I personally always kind of thought Boeing would win F/A-XX, and LM would win NGAD-high, but Boeing NGAD-medium. Seems to me like Boeing’s confidence last year might have related to the growing budget issues following FRA ‘23 and the Sentinel crisis, while rumored USAF leanings toward the Boeing NGAD may have been leanings toward a smaller size well before the review kicked off.

That is, I’m proposing that the RFP may have allowed a range of size and capability offerings, with LM bidding in the battlecruiser/battlestar range and Boeing bidding a comparatively more F/A-XX sized aircraft. But then, according to this theory, the idea of the USAF picking the smaller one grew to include curiosity about the small F-35 replacement, helping inspire the study, alongside other factors we’ve been over a million times.
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I'd be surprised if there was that much leniency in the requirements. I expect there would be some must meet specs that included ranges and range with specific payload. To award a vendor that didn't meet those specs based on a change of philosophy would result in an instant protest and likely GAO agreement.
 
Ozair said:
Are you referencing Boeings new facility at St Louis as a example?
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Yes, in reply to theories a page or two back that Boeing was building reactively after supposedly learning (or all but officially learning) that NGAD was theirs.

Ozair said:
I'd be surprised if there was that much leniency in the requirements. I expect there would be some must meet specs that included ranges and range with specific payload. To award a vendor that didn't meet those specs based on a change of philosophy would result in an instant protest and likely GAO agreement.
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I’m sure NGAD had minima written in stone, but I’m wondering if there was some flexibility in terms of price/performance nevertheless. Maybe I’m overly influenced by art & comparisons with other programs instead of being “confirmed facts only”, but it always seemed to me that Boeing leaned smaller, lower risk, closer to their F/A-XX art, closer to a competitor to F-35, etc.

In my defense, I’d point both to the ATF as allowing some different approaches, and JSF as having big technical differences too.
 
(paywalled)
WASHINGTON, March 20 (Reuters) - The Pentagon is set to announce its decision on a next-generation fighter jet contract initially worth more than $20 billion as soon as Friday, despite earlier concerns about budget constraints and shifting priorities, sources briefed on the plan said.
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Lockheed and Boeing are competing head to head for the winner-take-all engineering and manufacturing development phase contract worth more than $20 billion.
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Under President Donald Trump's administration, which took office in January, the program has moved forward after a period of uncertainty that cast doubt on the future of the next-generation fighter jet.
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Last year, the program faced potential delays or scaling back due to budget pressures and cost overruns in other Air Force programs. There were also discussions about reconsidering fundamental design elements or shifting resources to unmanned drone programs.
The anticipated announcement signals designs that were finalized last year will be chosen for NGAD.
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Boeing has suffered headwinds for both its commercial and defense businesses. A win would be a shot in the arm for its St. Louis, Missouri, fighter jet production businesses, while a loss would add to Boeing's woes.
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It would appear the speculation is over, and NGAD is a go. Exciting news.
 
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books said:
Yes, in reply to theories a page or two back that Boeing was building reactively after supposedly learning (or all but officially learning) that NGAD was theirs.
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Boeing could easily have made a punt and felt the infrastructure investment solidified their bid but to be near certain that they were going to be selected would be misconduct on the part of the Govt.
books said:
I’m sure NGAD had minima written in stone, but I’m wondering if there was some flexibility in terms of price/performance nevertheless. Maybe I’m overly influenced by art & comparisons with other programs instead of being “confirmed facts only”, but it always seemed to me that Boeing leaned smaller, lower risk, closer to their F/A-XX art, closer to a competitor to F-35, etc.
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The preference for a smaller frame hasn't been around long. Again Boeing could have made a punt on smaller being cheaper and therefore more affordable but the messaging hasn't been one vendor is more expensive than the other, just that manned MGAD is going to be 300 mill etc.
books said:
In my defense, I’d point both to the ATF as allowing some different approaches, and JSF as having big technical differences too.
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While those designs went about it in different ways they still aimed to meet the spec.
 
Ozair said:
Not sure where that stat came from?

In 2022 the USAF average fighter fleet age was 28 years,

www.defensenews.com

US Air Force warns of aging fighters, poor purchasing efforts

Amid a high global demand for air power, as well as domestic hurdles in Congress and the White House, the service is racing to rebuild its fighter fleet.
www.defensenews.com www.defensenews.com

and the USN average fighter fleet age is much less given it now operates only SH.
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I believe Dave Deptula from Mitchell recently mentioned that 2/3 of the AF total fleet is at least 50 years old.

Regarding the NGAD award, I really hope they are choosing the best design by the company with the greatest chance to execute. If this is the last manned fighter then the industrial base should not be a concern because of the size of the buy - around 200 - and the fact that there are a number of companies competing with the three primes for CCAs - GA, Anduril, and Kratos.
 
B2Blain said:
I believe Dave Deptula from Mitchell recently mentioned that 2/3 of the AF total fleet is at least 50 years old.
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Yes total fleet, fighter fleet is still old but less so compared.
B2Blain said:
Regarding the NGAD award, I really hope they are choosing the best design by the company with the greatest chance to execute. If this is the last manned fighter then the industrial base should not be a concern because of the size of the buy - around 200 - and the fact that there are a number of companies competing with the three primes for CCAs - GA, Anduril, and Kratos.
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It won't be a fixed price contract that is for sure. It would be disappointing if Boeing recent issues hasn't been a factor in the selection and additionally that LM's issues with Blk 4 are considered. Perhaps they cancel each other out...
 
Ozair said:
Yes total fleet, fighter fleet is still old but less so compared.

It won't be a fixed price contract that is for sure. It would be disappointing if Boeing recent issues hasn't been a factor in the selection and additionally that LM's issues with Blk 4 are considered. Perhaps they cancel each other out...
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At one time JJ Gertler mentioned that Boeing was favored with a more advanced design than LM's evolutionary concept, whatever that means. It would seem a more ambitious design would be more difficult for Boeing to execute. My guess is that the artist concepts by the LM and Boeing are very close in appearance to what they are offering. That was the case with B-21 at a similar point in the program.

Regarding the ability to execute, you could argue that LM made lemonade out of lemons when the JPO required them to produce three different version from a base configuration. The B sucked a lot of development money out of the F-35's R&D budget and resulted in other parts of the program being delayed. But then again, the Block 4 mess is due to something else. Does LM deserve a lot of the blame? The ambitiousness of the upgrade? The inability of the AF to test is an issue. But software development is also an issue. I believe LT. Gen Clinton Hinote mentioned that NGAD software R&D would be the long pole in the tent. Will open architecture help? Does NG's experience with the B-21's mission systems point to a better way to design software?

Is Boeing's corporate leadership issues, dysfunction, and problems with the KC-46, the T-7 trainer, and the new Air Force One a bigger concern than LM's executing on Block 4. I really don't know. Does the involvement of Skunk Works, perhaps adding to LM's credibility with its hypersonic ISR program increase the chances of an NGAD award? I find it interesting that supposedly LM was not selected to continue on F/A-XX because the Navy thought what it proposed was too advanced for what it wanted. But who knows. We will see...
 
Any chance or at least I hope we get now some more information and maybe even about the demonstrator(s)?

quellish said:
Voodoo 2 was the Boeing NGAD/FA-XX demonstrator.
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Any more info on it maybe even on its configuration?
 
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Bounce said:
ca.news.yahoo.com

Pentagon set to award US Air Force's next-generation fighter jet contract, sources say

The Pentagon is set to announce its decision on a next-generation fighter jet contract initially worth more than $20 billion as soon as Friday, despite earlier concerns about budget constraints and shifting priorities, sources briefed on the plan said. The Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD)...
ca.news.yahoo.com ca.news.yahoo.com
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As long as they don’t pick this.

View: https://youtu.be/Mk0Iw2dF8sY?si=sUo6zaVtS7bWhxS7
 
Predictions, if this presser is in fact an NGAD award:
  • Boeing wins the contract. Boeing exec is there and talks a big game about how NGAD will make America be First, etc.
  • SpaceX is touted as a key enabler of NGAD with "more details about a SpaceX contract coming soon"
  • Tariffs will be important for NGAD, for, uh, reasons
  • Somebody/something else will pay for NGAD
  • Rather than keeping things secret as long as possible, Trump will display genuine renders because that's good television
  • Trump will reveal something he's not supposed to, for example "they talk a lot about the lasers, and they said the lasers were canceled, that's what they said.... I told them, I said we'll see about that, maybe we oughta do lasers, and they said yes sir we'll do our best wink smirk"
 
Not only Trump, but Hegseth was quoted by AP saying that the ultimate decision fall down to Trump and First adviser Musk...
Musk that should be seen more and more as a bizarre blend b/w V. Braun and Kissinger.
[/FunnyPolitics]

More seriously, notice that the day before unveiling NGAD, the Trump administration was confirming its intended pivot with Russia (see my earlier post on the subject).
 
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joshjosh said:
  • Rather than keeping things secret as long as possible, Trump will display genuine renders because that's good television
  • Trump will reveal something he's not supposed to, for example "they talk a lot about the lasers, and they said the lasers were canceled, that's what they said.... I told them, I said we'll see about that, maybe we oughta do lasers, and they said yes sir we'll do our best wink smirk"
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Why would this be bad? And why would his speech not be cleared and vetted throughout beforehand?

I'd rather Trump gives us a taste of "self healing architecture".

And, given Trump's age I doubt he would remember anything if he would stray from the plot tbh.
 
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Deino said:
Any chance or at least I hope we get now some more information and maybe even about the demonstrator(s)?
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I hope they release a grainy picture (at least) of one of the demonstrators. That should allow OSINT experts to reconstruct the entire program and estimate performance parameters. We can even have someone here do a comparison to SU-57, J-20 etc and show how it is 20-40% less capable. ;)
 
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bring_it_on said:
I hope they release a grainy picture (at least) of one of the demonstrators. That should allow OSINT experts to reconstruct the entire program and estimate performance parameters. We can even have someone here do a comparison to SU-57, J-20 etc and show how it is 20-40% less capable.
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actually based on the rumor that there will be an NGAD announcement today, I can already give you the analysis:
  • F-22 air-to-air: 1.07
  • J-20 air-to-air: 1.22
  • Su-57 air-to-air: 1.31
  • NGAD ait-to-air: 0.96
you know it's legit because there are numbers
 
Ozair said:
Boeing could easily have made a punt and felt the infrastructure investment solidified their bid but to be near certain that they were going to be selected would be misconduct on the part of the Govt.
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Well, last year there was this rumor that Boeing was expecting to win. With the same speculations recurring now, under similar conditions, I think it’s worth contemplating the possibility that there’s a basis for them.

That said, I’m not saying they’re true, or in fact hoping for them. I’ve always preferred the LM Battlestar from the LMXT art, in fact. I also like that NG design shown in triplicate in flight in that one commercial.

Ozair said:
The preference for a smaller frame hasn't been around long. Again Boeing could have made a punt on smaller being cheaper and therefore more affordable but the messaging hasn't been one vendor is more expensive than the other, just that manned MGAD is going to be 300 mill etc.
Click to expand...
I think NGAD history does include interest in a smaller, cheaper aircraft prior to last year, namely during the Digital Century Series era. While some people have supposed that this only applied to UAVs, I think Roper’s actual goals were a lot more sweeping and zealous than that, and really did involve a vision of short production runs of lots of different sizes and designs of crewed fighters.

Also, I would very much think that any team looking at F/A-XX would as a matter of course be wanting to apply as much of the same design work to NGAD, and vice versa. Not the same platform, but say, using the same broad brush CFD and wind tunnel datasets, the same general design concepts, etc, as springboards for more detailed design work. I don’t mean to the extreme of a common body concept either, but more like when NG was talking scaling their X-47B — a stretch here, a smoosh there, etc. I think Boeing has been putting in extreme effort on F/A-XX for a long time, especially more than Lockheed M, and may generally be better positioned on a smaller-than-battlecruiser NGAD due in part to synergies and efficiencies between their F/A-XX and NGAD. Boeing art for various 6th gens seems to have a consistent vibe too.

So, my conjecture is that Boeing’s NGAD is closer in size to the F-22 and F/A-XX, while LM’s is larger. Could be that laser or HPM miniaturization is a key to that too.

Ozair said:
While those designs went about it in different ways they still aimed to meet the spec.
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Yeah, but that could easily be written as a set of minima, then, say, 10 points for each extra 100 NM on internal fuel, 10 points for each $1000 CPFH reduction, 10 points for each incremental MMH/FH reduction, etc.

It needs to a yield an impartial answer, but it needn’t be restricted to meeting minima and then lowest price.
 
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joshjosh said:
actually based on the rumor that there will be an NGAD announcement today, I can already give you the analysis:
  • F-22 air-to-air: 1.07
  • J-20 air-to-air: 1.22
  • Su-57 air-to-air: 1.31
  • NGAD ait-to-air: 0.96
you know it's legit because there are numbers
Click to expand...

I call that the D-coefficient because that’s how drunk you need to be to believe those numbers.
 
sferrin said:
That's great and all but it's going to take time to change the culture.
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Sure. But looking at this from a different angle, Boeing has been involved with the NGAD/F/AXX/DARPA effort for what the last decade? And they've made investments to support future advanced programs. Their performance during that phase, their ability to further scale investments, and their actual proposal might paint a different picture of where the DOD sees them on these future programs. Perhaps more accurately than past misses that were a results made by decisions made years ago and in some cases by people who are no longer at Boeing (through which they are very much digging out of at a very hefty cost). Clearly the company, on the defense side, has made investments and desires to be involved and do well in future advanced aero work.
 
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books said:
Well, last year there was this rumor that Boeing was expecting to win. With the same speculations recurring now, under similar conditions, I think it’s worth contemplating the possibility that there’s a basis for them.

That said, I’m not saying they’re true, or in fact hoping for them. I’ve always preferred the LM Battlestar from the LMXT art, in fact. I also like that NG design shown in triplicate in flight in that one commercial.


I think NGAD history does include interest in a smaller, cheaper aircraft prior to last year, namely during the Digital Century Series era. While some people have supposed that this only applied to UAVs, I think Roper’s actual goals were a lot more sweeping and zealous than that, and really did involve a vision of short production runs of lots of different sizes and designs of crewed fighters.

Also, I would very much think that any team looking at F/A-XX would as a matter of course be wanting to apply as much of the same design work to NGAD, and vice versa. Not the same platform, but say, using the same broad brush CFD and wind tunnel datasets, the same general design concepts, etc, as springboards for more detailed design work. I don’t mean to the extreme of a common body concept either, but more like when NG was talking scaling their X-47B — a stretch here, a smoosh there, etc. I think Boeing has been putting in extreme effort on F/A-XX for a long time, especially more than Lockheed M, and may generally be better positioned on a smaller-than-battlecruiser NGAD due in part to synergies and efficiencies between their F/A-XX and NGAD. Boeing art for various 6th gens seems to have a consistent vibe too.

So, my conjecture is that Boeing’s NGAD is closer in size to the F-22 and F/A-XX, while LM’s is larger. Could be that laser or HPM miniaturization is a key to that too.



Yeah, but that could easily be written as a set of minima, then, say, 10 points for each extra 100 NM on internal fuel, 10 points for each $1000 CPFH reduction, 10 points for each incremental MMH/FH reduction, etc.

It needs to a yield an impartial answer, but it needn’t be restricted to meeting minima and then lowest price.
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Range and payload requirement is going to drive size. And an F-22 won't cut it.
 
Hopefully we get to see some picture(s). It will be interesting to see if it resembles any of the artist impressions released over the years, or looks completely different.
 

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sferrin said:
Range and payload requirement is going to drive size. And an F-22 won't cut it.
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I do think Boeing’s NGAD may be closer to the F-22 than to the Battlestar idea, and within that large design envelope, lean toward cost control, higher sortie rates from shorter-than-Battlestar distances, and lower maintenance. I would also expect Boeing to be a bit less interested in high-end VLO and speed than LM.

To be clear though, I’m talking about the comparison between bigger and smaller approaches to the full scale 2014-2017, 2021-2023 classic NGAD approach, not at all about the small Allvin style. By comparison to the “2024 F-35 replacing drone controller,” I am still saying I think the Boeing NGAD will be a large, long range airplane.

I’m not cheerleading for these ideas, by the way. I lean toward the large battlecruiser style approach. But preferences shouldn’t shape expectations, info should, and I think the available signs point toward Boeing being smaller than LM.
 

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