USAF/US NAVY 6th Generation Fighter Programs - F/A-XX, F-X, NGAD, PCA, ASFS news

I mean based off of this metric from another study, what is the goal here? I know this isn't NGAD specific, but it definitely represents a thought process on layout.
 

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Flyaway said:
Personally I wouldn’t trust Boeing to build a paper plane right at the moment. It’s baffling to me that elements of the federal government keep awarding them these big money projects considering their recent track record.
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You opinion is Lockheed si still the big winner ?
 
Don't know about that sferrin, the USAF have not made the official anouncement yet about the winner of the NGAD program so who knows who is going to win it.
 
Josh_TN said:
Lockmart is not exactly knocking the F-35 out of the park right now either.
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Wish there was some way these primes could have a shake up. Whatever people’s personal opinions of Space X it at least has shaken up the launcher market if nothing else.
 
sferrin said:
This configuration, that has been talked about for pages, does not say "NGAD" to me. Looks more F-16-ish in size. I would think it something more like this one:

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NGAD may not be a chunky boi. The idea that it’s going to be large is an assumption.
 
Isn'
Flyaway said:
Personally I wouldn’t trust Boeing to build a paper plane right at the moment. It’s baffling to me that elements of the federal government keep awarding them these big money projects considering their recent track record.
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Isnt Boeing Military doing alot better than Boeing Commercial? I thought the T-7A issues were all with the ejection seat which isnt even Boeing, and F/A-18E/F and F-15EX havent had issues recently.
 
quellish said:
NGAD may not be a chunky boi. The idea that it’s going to be large is an assumption.
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Just considering the focus (as I recall) is the Pacific and the need for more range than an F-22 and (probably) more missiles. I'm thinking 85k-95k full load and maybe 80' in length. Also wondering if that's why NGAD and FA/XX are completely separate programs.
 
Seems more likely than not it would have a large range requirement, IMO.
 
sferrin said:
Also wondering if that's why NGAD and FA/XX are completely separate programs.
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I think it is more because of the completely different requirements the USN has for carrier launch and recovery. But total length/size may also be part of it. Minimally it has to fit on an aircraft elevator.
 
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Josh_TN said:
I think it is more because of the completely different requires the USN has for carrier launch and recovery. But total length/size may also be part of it. Minimally it has to fit on an aircraft elevator.
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An elephant in the room of facts!
 
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the F35 Charlie that another 450 nmi.of range wouldn't cure .
Welcome to the Pacific ocean and or theatre of operations.
 
quellish said:
NGAD may not be a chunky boi. The idea that it’s going to be large is an assumption.
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Pacific ranges suggest a 2000-3000nmi range. Flight times associated with that range suggest fairly large weapons loads, on the order of 2x what an F15C/D or F22 carries (Functionally, what a fully loaded F15EX carries: ~8x-12x AMRAAMs and 4x AIM9Xs).

And I thought you were the one that had said the concepts you'd seen were Flanker sized or bigger?



sferrin said:
Also wondering if that's why NGAD and FA/XX are completely separate programs.
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USN has launch and landing weight limits that the USAF doesn't, IIRC ~88k MTOW is the catapult launch limit for the steam cats and ~55k is the landing weight limit for the Nimitz arresting gear. Also, the USN's airfields can move closer to the fighting than the USAF airfields, so they don't need quite as much fuel volume.
 
jsport said:
Assuming one can move Carriers very close at all in the contemporary context needs real scrutiny. We are not talking Houti rebels in Red Sea.
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No one is retiring the carriers, therefore something needs to launch off them. Just because they might not be the most practical choice for the westpac does not mean they do not have huge value everywhere else in the world.
 
Josh_TN said:
No one is retiring the carriers, therefore something needs to launch off them. Just because they might not be the most practical choice for the westpac does not mean they do not have huge value everywhere else in the world.
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A moving airbase will always have immense value, no matter the threat presented to it. Precision guided weapons have existed ever since the Second World War; and even if they've evolved, so did the counter-weapons. Currently Hypersonics and advanced ASBMs have a significant edge, but that might not always be the norm. I reckon they will always retain the threat and cause the USN to park the fleet and "escort" (LHAs) carriers outside of the 1st IC, but as time goes on, we might develop better missiles against them.
 
sferrin said:
The war in Ukraine would suggest that is not the case.
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To be fair, such weapons hardly seem to be decisive in that conflict. The Pacific however might differ, as the PRC can field far more weapons than Russia. And in a few years the USAF likely fields far less expensive missiles in large numbers as well. Also in the context of ships it remains to be seen how effective these weapons are: on the one hand, a single hit would knock out most ships. On the other hand, Ships and their SAM batteries are colocated, so the defenses of the target basically always have a favorable engagement geometry.
 
sferrin said:
Thought they said Boeing already won it?
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Combined response:
La-Fuente Technologies said:
Wait, who is saying that Boeing won? I haven't seen anything about that yet, and as what FighterJock said, no official announcement has been made by the USAF as of late
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No, we're saying that Boeing has a lot of political advantages going into this contest.
LockMart is eyeballs deep in F-35 production.​
N-G is eyeballs deep in B-21 work, if they're even still bidding (I think they dropped out, going to focus on USN FAXX).​
Boeing has less than 100 F-15EX and however many Super Bugs left to build, nothing long-term. Lines closing in 2025-2026 kinds of timeframes.​

So it's to the DOD's interests to throw the NGAD to Boeing, so that we have 3 companies making manned fighters. But Boeing also has a lot to prove right now, that they can deliver a good plane of a brand new design on time on budget.
 
I wish that Boeing would get all the nonsense sorted out with their commercial side of things.
 
That passed me by unfortunately do you have the link to the video? It will be very interesting for Boeing if it has indeed won the NGAD competition, where would they build the NGAD?
 
La-Fuente Technologies said:
Wait, who is saying that Boeing won? I haven't seen anything about that yet, and as what FighterJock said, no official announcement has been made by the USAF as of late
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No one did. It's just was stated by Vago Muradian a while ago that Boeing is preferred over LM for more advanced design.
 
IF it is true that Boeing offered a higher tech approach than LM, one reason for it might be that LM decided to repackage the systems and software from its TR 3 and Block 4 aircraft into its new, presumably much larger airframe.

I figure it's much more likely that LM will propose F-35 commonality in these areas than that Boeing would, since LM already has such extensive familiarity with them, and not just as individual system designs, but a lot of experience in actually integrating them together, finding synergies and deconflicting, and in terms of other areas like quirks of installing them on production lines, keeping them maintained, nice tricks in mission planning, etc. In many cases it even had a hand in picking the subcontractors and designs, too, albeit quite a while ago.

I'm not saying that they would necessarily be the *exactly* the same systems in an utterly untouched, utterly identical way. Rather, in this scenario, they'd be "right sized" for the new platform but otherwise essentially without innovation, or with innovation limited to whatever could be conveniently spun off from the already existing near term F-35 upgrade path. So maybe a larger radar with more T/R modules and greater (Tomcat-esque?) power to drive it when tactically appropriate, but with F-35 commonality at the level of individual T/R modules, back end systems architecture commonality, software commonality, etc. And the same, mutatis mutandis, for the other systems like the BAE electronic warfare system, EODAS, EOTS, flight control system, cockpit, helmet, etc etc.

Call it the "argument from incumbency" or something: the existing provider of the most suitable off-the-shelf product will have a structural tendency to prefer offering reuses and evolutions of that product whenever reasonably possible, while providers with older/humbler offerings will have a relatively stronger tendency to prefer a clean sheet approach. And likewise for the existing systems integrators of those items.
 
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books said:
IF it is true that Boeing offered a higher tech approach than LM, one reason for it might be that LM decided to repackage the systems and software from its TR 3 and Block 4 aircraft into its new, presumably much larger airframe.
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That wouldn't surprise me at all...
 
So what will happen to Lockheed now that Boeing is the preferred bidder? Concentrate on the Black World? That is the only thing that will keep the Skunk Works going. Then of course there is always the SR-72 which either exists or dosn't according to some of the sites that I have read online.
 

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