The House’s fiscal 2025 defense authorization bill, H.R. 8070, contains $3 billion for U.S. Air Force Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD)–a $300 million decrease due to an unspecified “program delay.”
The Air Force’s fiscal 2025 budget boosted funding for NGAD by $980 million over last year’s request (Defense Daily, March 12). The fiscal 2025 service ask is $2.7 billion in research and development for the NGAD sixth generation manned fighter and $557 million for Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), the uncrewed autonomous drones that are to accompany manned NGAD. Those numbers represent an $816 million jump for the manned NGAD and a $165 million increase for CCA from last year’s request.
The House passed the $883.7 billion H.R. 8070 on June 14 on a vote of 217 to 199 (Defense Daily, June 14).
The Air Force has said it will pick a company to build the NGAD manned fighter this year, but the program is in flux, as the service decides whether it can afford manned NGAD in light of other needs, including resolving a cost overrun on the Northrop Grumman [NOC] LGM-35A Sentinel next generation ICBM program–an increase that the Air Force has said came from unforeseen military construction costs for new missile silos and wiring.
Air Force funding for fiscal 2026 is “very, very thin across the board,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin told an Air and Space Forces Association Warfighters in Action forum on June 13. “What are the things we are taking bets on? I think one of the big bets we’re taking is on human-machine teaming. I think that’s a safe bet. Now, if we say we’re going to have a platform, and it just does one thing and it solely focuses on that and we can’t pivot off of that, then we’re failing…I don’t want a set of Collaborative Combat Aircraft that’s going to last for 25 or 30 years because what comes with that? Well, now if it’s going to last 25 or 30 years, then it’s got to do everything but make me toast in the morning. If it’s got to do that, it’s going to be expensive. If it’s going to be expensive, then we can only buy a few of them.”
Northrop Grumman said last summer that it had bowed out of the manned NGAD competition (Defense Daily, July 27, 2023).
The Air Force’s $816 million add for manned NGAD in fiscal 2025 is for “continuing development on tests of the vehicle and mission systems and capabilities–not much we can talk about in an unclassified setting, but continued growth there in NGAD,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael Greiner, the service’s deputy assistant secretary for budget, said in March.
Concerns about the way ahead for NGAD helped spur the recommended retention of the Air Force’s 32 Block 20, non combat-coded F-22 Raptors by Lockheed Martin [LMT] in the Senate Armed Services Committee’s fiscal 2025 defense authorization bill.
The Air Force has estimated it would cost at least $3.3 billion to upgrade the 32 Block 20s over 15 years to Block 30/35s, but the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said that the service has not documented how it would fill training and testing gaps from the divestment of the Block 20s. The Air Force uses two of the latter for testing.
“The contractor estimated upgrades would cost at least $3.3 billion and take approximately 15 years to complete but did not provide supporting data,” the GAO said in a new report on the F-22. “The Air Force determined this information was sufficient for its purposes. Without better evidence about the potential effects of either divesting or upgrading F-22 Block 20 aircraft, Congress may be impeded from making a well-informed decision on the merits of the Air Force’s proposal.”