04.06.2022, 09:34
Zitat:Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance ‘Fighter’ Program Enters New Stage [...]https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ai...-new-stage
The Air Force's Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program — which includes a new manned fighter-like platform, associated collaborative drones, weapons, sensors, and communications architecture — has started its engineering, manufacturing, and development (EMD) program, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall announced Wednesday. The goal, he said, is to turn NGAD into a real capability before 2030. [...]
The Air Force had previously worked on “an experimental prototype” of the aircraft, said Kendall. “So we basically had an X-plane program, which was designed to reduce the risk in some of the key technologies that we would need for a production program.” [...]
The Presidential Fiscal Year 2023 defense budget request includes $1.7 billion for the NGAD program. Last month, according to Breaking Defense, Kendall told lawmakers that the NGAD manned platform would cost “multiple hundreds of millions of dollars” per plane as it would be the centerpiece of the NGAD ecosystem.
It is unclear if a prime contractor has been picked to develop the manned portion of the program or an even larger segment of it. At the same time, it isn't perfectly clear if there would be a single prime contractor on any one platform in the NGAD program as this is something the USAF is trying to migrate away from, at least to a degree. NGAD is not a fighter program in the traditional sense, either, so it is hard to project the current status of it, including winners and losers in terms of contractors. Of course, Lockheed, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman are all possible candidates regardless of how the EMD stage is configured and some decisions would have likely been made as to who will do what in order to begin EMD.
Schneemann