New Us Military Aircraft - Little is known about the jet, but the Air Force has just dropped a massive clue: concept art of a fighter jet being built under the NGAD program. The image appears in USAF's recently released biennial report for acquisition.
Read the full report here. Last September, USAF's top acquisition official, Will Roper, told Defense News: “We've already built and flown a full-scale flight demonstrator in the real world, and we broke records in doing it.
New Us Military Aircraft
We are ready to go and build the next-generation aircraft in a way that has never happened before." The B-21 Raider is named in honor of the Doolittle Raid of World War II. Talking about the historic mission, Northrop said that 80 airmen, led by Lieutenant Colonel James "Jimmy" Doolittle, and 16 B-25 Mitchell medium bombers changed the course of the Second World War through their mission.
The report says of the program: "Next Generation Air Dominance is a family of capabilities that enable Air Superiority in the most challenging operational environments by enforcing the development pillars of digital engineering, agile software development, and open architectures.
By executing shorter technology development cycles, the program matures technology and reduces risk through prototyping and operational experimentation. The F-15 Eagle is an exceptional fighter aircraft, having never been shot down in air-to-air combat, but the average age of the F-15C/D fleet is almost 40 years old.
About 75% of the fleet is flying past its service life, and 10% of the fighters are grounded because of various structural issues, the Air Force said. The company is promoting the latest iteration of the military aircraft as a "digital bomber", capable of using agile technology and cloud computing for faster and more flexible communication.
Northrop said the six Raiders are in various stages of final assembly and testing. Although the Air Force prefers the fifth-generation F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters, the Pentagon determined that the fourth-generation F-15EX fighters were a much more cost-effective option for quickly modernizing the F-15 fleet to maintain capacity.
The Air Force is buying both platforms as replacements for older fighters. "With its large weapons capacity, digital backbone, and open architecture, the F-15EX will be a key element of our tactical fighter fleet and complement 5th-generation assets," he said, adding that "it's capable of carrying hypersonic weapons, giving
it a niche role in future near-peer conflicts." It also has an increased payload capacity, with the ability to carry up to 30,000 pounds of air-to-air missiles and air-to-ground munitions. While the F-15 is touted as an air superiority fighter, the military has regularly used this aircraft for ground-attack missions in post-9/11 conflicts.
The Boeing fighter made its first flight on February 2 with a test pilot, Matt Giese, in the cockpit. The aircraft took off from Lambert International Airport in St. Louis and flew for 90 minutes, Boeing said.
"The program uses a non-traditional acquisition approach to avoid traditional monolithic program schedules and exorbitant life-cycle sustainment costs. This strategy, called the Digital Century Series approach, creates a realistic business case for the industry to adopt commercial best practices for key design activities – before a part is even manufactured.”
Update: This post has been updated to clarify that no F-15 Eagle has been shot down in air-to-air combat. "Undefeated in aerial combat, the F-15 Eagle epitomized air superiority," an Air Force general said at Wednesday's rollout.
Two F-15EX fighter aircraft are being delivered this year. The remaining six jets in the first lot are set to be delivered in 2023. Delivery of aircraft in lots two and three are scheduled for fiscal 2024 and 2025.
The Air Force put in its first F-15EX order last July, ordering eight jets. The service says it plans to obtain at least 144 of these fighters to replace the aging fleet of C- and D-variant F-15s.
"Designed to complement the F-35, F-22, joint, and partner forces in the Air Superiority role, Next Generation Air Dominance is an advanced aircraft program for development of penetrating counter air platforms with multi-domain awareness, agile resilient communications,
and an integrated family of capabilities.
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