Designing new combat aircraft: the need for speed?

Douglas Barrie

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Trying to re-cast the combat aircraft development model by adopting a consumer approach, Will Roper, United States Air Force Assistant Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, has suggested a strategy of more rapid acquisition of smaller batches of shorter-lifespan combat aircraft.

The development of advanced combat aircraft has become a hugely time-consuming and costly undertaking. United States Air Force (USAF) Assistant Secretary for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Will Roper has raised the question of whether, when it comes to the arithmetic of manufacturing a new generation of combat aircraft, 35 into five will go.

Roper wants to see if the over-two-decade, multi-billion-dollar development model of the current Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fighter, to be followed by decades of production, can be re-cast more along the lines of the original Lockheed Skunk Works approach which led to the U-2, or of the rapid development of the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk. He told leading defence-aerospace industry journal Aviation Week & Space Technology it was ‘time to try something new…and see if we can create a new way to build airplanes for us’.

The test item for this notion is the USAF’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD; also known as F/A-XX) project. NGAD is aimed at identifying a successor capability to the F-22 Raptor. Roper has crafted a five-year window of opportunity to explore an alternative design path.

The drawbacks of the present development approach – including, particularly, that it can lock an air force in to one supplier for decades – are beyond debate. The question that Roper’s strategy poses is whether or not that approach may remain the ‘least-worst’ option for the US.

Disposable commodity

Roper’s advocacy for a more consumerist approach to combat-aircraft development and acquisition – buying more quickly and disposing more rapidly – is one means of addressing a problem the US will otherwise face with NGAD. The Department of Defense wants to keep at least two companies in the business of designing and building multi-role fighter aircraft. Were Lockheed Martin’s F-35 development model to be adopted for NGAD, and were Lockheed Martin to put forward the best proposal, then sustaining Boeing as a fighter house – with no fighter programmes for a likely 20 years or so once its current production of the F-15 Eagle and F/A-18 Super Hornet ends – would seem remote at best.

One option might be that the manufacturer which loses out on the NGAD contract could be gifted any future US Navy combat-aircraft project. But this defeats a central purpose of keeping two combat-aircraft manufacturers: that of sustaining competition.

More rapid acquisition of smaller batches of short-lifespan combat aircraft, as suggested by Roper, would allow the US Department of Defense to support two or more advanced tactical combat-aircraft manufacturers. Losing one competition would not, unlike the current model, risk missing out on the manufacture of a generation of combat aircraft, with a production gap that could run into decades. Instead the next competitive purchase would likely occur well within a decade. And this is an issue not confined solely to the aerospace industry. In the land and maritime sectors there are also concerns over how to sustain the drumbeat of development and manufacturing.

The model floated by Roper, however, also raises a question about support and sustainability costs. The faster acquisition and disposal cycle would appear to militate against the advantages of fleet commonality and the through-life cost savings that should accrue.

Questions remain

However achievable such an approach may or may not be, what might it mean for the F-35 should it transpire that a commodity approach to NGAD is deliverable and worth pursuing? Production of the F-35 is presently due to run into the 2040s but, were the USAF to adopt NGAD designs in parallel which met its needs, could this begin to undermine the Lightning II procurement plan?

A further question is how a compressed acquisition cycle with lower procurement numbers might impact the export market. The F-35’s predecessor, the Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcon, enjoyed great export sales success, due in no small part to the longevity of continuous production. The NGAD is, of course, notionally meant to identify a successor to the F-22, which has not been exported, and as such this might be less of a consideration. From industrial and foreign policy perspectives, however, the ability to maintain a considerable export presence remains attractive.

The argument that the present approach to the combat-aircraft development and acquisition cycle is flawed would find few opponents. But in a sector marked by both service and industrial conservatism, it remains questionable whether a radical approach focusing on smaller batches of designs more rapidly acquired and retired will find purchase.