Posted on 08/01/2024 5:08:27 AM PDT by Fish Speaker
DAYTON, Ohio — After months of hinting at a disruption in the program, the US Air Force has formally decided to “pause” its effort to field a new stealth fighter, according to Secretary Frank Kendall.
“We’re taking a pause there,” Kendall said today at the Life Cycle Industry Days conference here. “With the platform itself, we’re taking a pause. With the rest of the elements of the air dominance family of systems, we’re moving forward as fast as we can.”
Kendall did not precisely specify how long the service’s plans to field the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter may be pushed out, casting the pause as consistent with previous comments on taking a “hard look” at the jet’s design. But he did share that officials are “tak[ing] a few months right now to figure out whether we’ve got the right design and make sure we’re on the right course.”
And though the service’s seeming cold feet have prompted some to fear an outright cancellation, Kendall batted down those concerns. “I’m absolutely confident we’re still going to do a sixth-generation crewed aircraft,” he said.
Even a slight pause could be unwelcome news to aerospace giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the primes believed to be competing for the lucrative NGAD contract. A separate effort involving manufacturers GE Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney is also underway to develop the fighter’s engine, though Kendall did not discuss any delays with the parallel engine program.
(Excerpt) Read more at breakingdefense.com ...
We better field as many weapon systems and pilots as we can...hard rain coming.
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/04/pentagon-delays-f-35-retrofits-amid-upgrade-woes/
Weapon system acquisition is very screwed up. Everything is behind schedule, over budget, fails to meet technical requirements and difficult to sustain.
It’s been going downhill for at least 30 years. At this point it’s a joke. Basically a money transfer system from taxpayers to defense contractors. It’s not about the needs of the military. It’s about the money. And the money flows.
This is the telling thing in this article.It would take a lifetime to explain how life-cycle management has created a juggernaut of bureaucracy that is geared up to keep doing the same things over and over again at massive expense and massive lack of responsiveness to capabilities needed for the actual rapidly evolving threats we face.
it's an Olympic slothful overweight Goliath in drag facing a thousand Davids with slingshots, IEDs, drone ISR and what not. It's ULA vs SPACEX. NGAD is likely unaffordable, certainly overpriced, will take too long, and deliver the wrong capabilities for the modern battlefield.
That window of opportunity is closing very rapidly.
And was designed by a bureaucracy inside the DC Beltway with little consideration for strategic and tactical realities or hat real warfighters really need. oh and pushed by lobbyists lubricating the deals with money, bimbos and booz.
The deep state bureaucracy wasn’t going to drag itself through that window anyway.
the upcoming battle field will be dominated by autonomous drones.
production wise, they’re about as complicated as making motorcycles.
how many motorcycles do you think china can pump out in a year? 1m? 5m? 10m?
compare that to the US.
now you understand the situation.
100-200 fighters each with 5 ‘drones’ won’t stand up well against that threat.
It’s dead, Jim.
“I’m absolutely confident we’re still going to do a sixth-generation crewed aircraft”
CREWED.
I bet that’s the rub. Some probably think it shouldn’t be.
Space Force. Combat aircraft and aircraft carriers are obsolete.
Aren’t there any Col. John Boyd types left around these days, or have they all been pushed out by the fat defense contractors, their obscenely rich lobbyists, the bloated Pentagon bureaucracy, and the DEI Generals?
Not to worry, at least we’ll have our advanced pronouns in place.
Not to worry, at least we’ll have our advanced pronouns in place.
The most worrisome report I have seen in decades emerged last week.
Chinese scientists apparently have found a counter for stealth.
The details did not look absurd to me. Something about heterodyning highly frequency agile signals within a radar pulse and processing returns to emphasize whatever frequency bounces best. That’s not new, but the heterodyning is. Faster processing would permit it.
What matters is that the defense contractors are raking in the big bucks.
When a country leaves its southern border open to alien invaders it is obvious that the entire concept of national defense is a sick joke.
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