America's Air Force Secretly Designed, Built, and Flew a Brand-New Fighter Jet (popularmechanics.com) 167
"The U.S. Air Force revealed this week that it has secretly designed, built, and tested a new prototype fighter jet," reports Popular Mechanics:
According to Defense News, the Air Force developed the new fighter in about a year — a staggeringly short amount of time by modern standards. The Air Force first developed a virtual version of the jet, and then proceeded to build and fly a full-sized prototype, complete with mission systems... It took the Air Force just one year to get to the point with the "Next Generation Air Dominance" (NGAD) fighter that it reached in 10 years with the F-35.
The Air Force designed the NGAD to ensure the service's "air dominance" in future conflicts versus the fighters of potential adversaries. The new fighter, then, is almost certainly optimized for air-to-air combat. It's a safe bet the fighter uses off-the-shelf avionics, engines, and weapons borrowed from other aircraft, such as the F-35 and F/A-18E/F...
If the Air Force and industry can design a new fighter in one year, it could come up with all sorts of cool new planes. This could encourage the development of more exotic, riskier designs that contractors would not otherwise want to devote a full decade to develop. The ability to fail — or succeed — faster will drive innovation in the world of fighter jets in ways not seen for a half century or more.
"We are ready to go and build the next-generation aircraft in a way that has never happened before," says Will Roper, the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, in an interview with Defense News: Should the Air Force move to buy NGAD in the near term, it will be adding a challenger to the F-35 and F-15EX programs, potentially putting those programs at risk. And because the advanced manufacturing techniques that are critical for building NGAD were pioneered by the commercial sector, the program could open the door for new prime contractors for the aircraft to emerge — and perhaps give SpaceX founder Elon Musk a shot at designing an F-35 competitor.
"I have to imagine there will be a lot of engineers — maybe famous ones with well-known household names with billions of dollars to invest — that will decide starting the world's greatest aircraft company to build the world's greatest aircraft with the Air Force is exactly the kind of inspiring thing they want to do as a hobby or even a main gig," Roper said.
The Air Force designed the NGAD to ensure the service's "air dominance" in future conflicts versus the fighters of potential adversaries. The new fighter, then, is almost certainly optimized for air-to-air combat. It's a safe bet the fighter uses off-the-shelf avionics, engines, and weapons borrowed from other aircraft, such as the F-35 and F/A-18E/F...
If the Air Force and industry can design a new fighter in one year, it could come up with all sorts of cool new planes. This could encourage the development of more exotic, riskier designs that contractors would not otherwise want to devote a full decade to develop. The ability to fail — or succeed — faster will drive innovation in the world of fighter jets in ways not seen for a half century or more.
"We are ready to go and build the next-generation aircraft in a way that has never happened before," says Will Roper, the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, in an interview with Defense News: Should the Air Force move to buy NGAD in the near term, it will be adding a challenger to the F-35 and F-15EX programs, potentially putting those programs at risk. And because the advanced manufacturing techniques that are critical for building NGAD were pioneered by the commercial sector, the program could open the door for new prime contractors for the aircraft to emerge — and perhaps give SpaceX founder Elon Musk a shot at designing an F-35 competitor.
"I have to imagine there will be a lot of engineers — maybe famous ones with well-known household names with billions of dollars to invest — that will decide starting the world's greatest aircraft company to build the world's greatest aircraft with the Air Force is exactly the kind of inspiring thing they want to do as a hobby or even a main gig," Roper said.
To build the world's greatest close air support - (Score:2)
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there appears to be problem with this air craft.
somebody forgot the tail rudder.
i would not want to be the one to have to explain this to the general in charge of this project
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If you follow the story links, the image in the Popular Mechanics article is concept art released by the the Air Force Research Lab in 2018 showing a potential next-generation fighter concept, or F-X. (credit: Air Force Research Laboratory). The actual fighter that the Air Force built may look completely different
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somebody forgot the tail rudder.
Since no pictures or anything describing it have been released the real question here is how you know if it is a rudderless design or not?
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A combination of new and old. Using the best of the old stuff that works and combining with the new stuff that actually works and why because the F35 Flying Pig is utter shite. I have an even better idea a new design of jet motor, specifically to push the aircraft to be the best of both worlds the attack helicopter and supersonic to get it where it needs to be. Hypersonic drones will hunt down and ram enemy aircraft, using elements of that jet engine, those drones for best high speed manoeuvrability need tw
If they can do that. (Score:3)
Maybe they should also consider trying to make a replacement for the A-10. Keep the GAU-8, but look at where the A-10 has shortcomings instead and try to improve those areas.
Re:If they can do that. (Score:4, Insightful)
About the only real improvement the A10 needs is more loiter time, which could probably be achieved with more efficient engines rather than a complete redesign.
The great thing that the A10 has going for it is that it is cheap to operate. A new replacement will be more expensive.
Or, perhaps a pilotless version. Take the pilot out of the equation and operating costs are also much lower.
Re:If they can do that. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's actually the problem. Drones do most CAS taks better, except getting human eyes on target. They have more loiter time, you can have more of them in the sky for less money so you have more cumulative firepower, and this firepower can be spread across the target airspace rather than be focused in a single aircraft.
The problem is that human above the situation is still king of decision making, and it's the decision making that is king in warfare. Drones with their limited fields of view of onboard cameras have problems matching person simply looking out of the forward-facing bubble canopy of the kind used on A-10 and Su-25.
And then, there's a lot to be said about being the large, very visible and very loud close air support aircraft in demoralizing the enemy and improving friendly troop morale.
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I'm no military expert, but I have a suspicion there are solutions to that much easier than hauling a vulnerable human being around.
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I'm no military expert, but I have a suspicion there are solutions to that much easier than hauling a vulnerable human being around.
Light only goes 186 miles per millisecond, so the latency of drones is an unavoidable fact of physics. Having pilots located in the combat region can keep latency down to workable levels, but US-based pilots are always going to have too much round-trip signal delay to manually trigger a gun.
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Humans are significantly less vulnerable to most forms of sensor jamming than modern sensors.
Or are you talking about physical vulnerability to fire? Because modern drones are far more vulnerable to ground fire than A-10 and Su-25 pilot position.
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Drones with their limited fields of view of onboard cameras have problems matching person simply looking out of the forward-facing bubble canopy of the kind used on A-10 and Su-25.
And humans have problems spotting ant sized people 2 miles away in the dark.
Re:If they can do that. (Score:4, Funny)
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If we're going to war with ant sized people we probably should just use a can of Raid.
It works on people-sized people, too. You just need a bigger can.
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Drones do not have limited fields of view -- they have multiple cameras, including IR.
But it will be a while yet before artificial intelligence can really challenge human intelligence.
And radio links are subject to jamming.
Still, I reckon that the days of human combat pilots are numbered.
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Days of human combat pilots are definitely not numbered for the following reasons:
- Communications and control can be jammed and will be jammed.
- Sensors will face countermeasures
- In dogfighting the human body is not the limiting factor - the aerodynamics and energy are. Sustained turn performance is limited by the aerodynamics, wing loading trade-off between speed and turn rate, as well as engine power. An aircraft turning bleeds of huge amounts of energy, and the engine needs to
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While what you say is true for an extended engagement, a pilotless aircraft's ability to turn harder gives it an option that piloted aircraft don't have. Yes, it will give up more energy the harder it turns, but the point is that when it's advantageous to make that choice, it can, unlike if there's a human on board. In a 1:1 dogfight, being able to turn harder can get the aircraft in position for a kill shot, after which it won't matter that it's going to take a lot of time to recover velocity.
This assume
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>Drones do not have limited fields of view -- they have multiple cameras, including IR.
Weight of having such cameras with sufficient resolution and matching optics would make such drones exceedingly overweight, expensive to build and to maintain and prone to malfunctions. Which is why we don't do it outside a handful LALE drones even today.
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Typo: supposed to say "HALE drones".
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The cameras on my phone have better vision than my old eyes and only weigh a few grams.
It is indeed amazing just how light weight and powerful they are. A dozen such cameras with various lenses is perfectly practical on even a small drone.
It is the intelligence that is the key. How much of that can be programed as an AI is unclear, but more and more over time is the answer.
Pilots are incredibly expensive to train. And then they retire. They require hundreds of kilos of support material (oxygen, ejector
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>The cameras on my phone have better vision than my old eyes and only weigh a few grams.
And that's why you'll never be a combat pilot. The difference between your eyes and that camera is far less than a difference between a typical drone sensor package and trained eyes of a combat pilot.
>Pilots are incredibly expensive to train.
And are required for drone operations just as they are required for flying the manned aircraft.
>They require hundreds of kilos of support material (oxygen, ejector seat, big
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>The cameras on my phone have better vision than my old eyes and only weigh a few grams.
And that's why you'll never be a combat pilot. The difference between your eyes and that camera is far less than a difference between a typical drone sensor package and trained eyes of a combat pilot.
In many ways cameras are better than human vision, they can see in the dark, they can see heat sources, they can see objects in much better detail at a distance, etc. However, it's not the vision part that makes a trained pilot better, it's the fact that the human brain is much better at pattern matching, especially when objects are partially obscured.
Re: If they can do that. (Score:2)
Mhh. No. The drone thing is Trafalgar battle all along. Few, more expensive supposedly smarter units will fail completely against hordes of smart drones and planes needing no human. Remember we donâ(TM)t like to die, but machines donâ(TM)t care, and train one and you trained a billion. Itâ(TM)s not just what these can do, but that current systems are not designed to deal with many smaller threats. What would we do if a cheap drone class with some exotic power source could be made. Imagine 4 m
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By jamming the navigational signal. This isn't even new or interesting and widely understood and accepted as one of the primary weakness of drones. Lack of any kind of situational awareness that humans possess. Even the best modern ML AI is utterly hopeless here, much less a "pre-programmed targeting system" which is utterly helpless in absence of relevant signalling. See how Iran captured RQ-170 as an excellent example.
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The main problem is accidentally doing war crimes because of the limitations of the drone's cameras and the detachment from the battlefield and the innocents being blown up that the operators feel.
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Enemy tanks suddenly exploding for no apparent reason is probably great for morale.
In some countries' militaries having tanks suddenly explode in flames is just another day at work [smh.com.au].
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Tanks don't "explode in flames" in that story, they simply catch fire. That means crew has plenty of time to evacuate safely rather than get killed in their vehicle.
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Except that it's not. There's a reason why militaries do not use silencers on firearms in combat (outside stealthy special operations, and often not even then). Silent weapon doesn't have suppressive element to it, which means that while you get a few more enemies killed as they charge you, they're going to actually get into your positions and win that engagement, instead of getting stuck lying in the dirt because suppressing element forced them there.
This is an element we learned all the way back during th
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>Not really true, the problem is that drones have long loiter time because they forego munitions, the A10 has more munitions but a shorter loiter time.
This is technically true for some drones, and most certainly not true universally. A-10 is very old technology, and could most certainly be iterated on to build a similar but far more efficient aircraft.
Most armed drones are significantly more efficient in their ability to haul weight per cost. Especially when you consider that most sorties for CAS do not
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That's what people initially thought. "This doesn't look like a difficult problem to solve".
We are now in a "almost two decades later" realm. It remains a major problem. Turns out that making something that can match in quality several billion years of natural selection takes significantly longer than a couple of decades, because it requires more than just picking the low hanging fruit of "cameras are easy, satellite transmission is easy, focusing is easy, wide field of view is easy".
And then you try to com
Re:If they can do that. (Score:5, Informative)
About the only real improvement the A10 needs is more loiter time, which could probably be achieved with more efficient engines rather than a complete redesign.
The great thing that the A10 has going for it is that it is cheap to operate. A new replacement will be more expensive.
New engines would probably be the main driver of increased operating cost, so a retrofit actually may not be that attractive. To be more efficient, a jet engine generally has to use higher temperatures in the power turbine, which requires more advanced materials. Running at higher temperatures closer to the material limit is another way to improve efficiency, but then you have to disassemble the machine and inspect more often. There are other tricks you can pull with the thermodynamic cycle but these generally add additional auxiliary equipment and cost.
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So I suspect it's not the temperature limitations of the engine that are the primary concern, it's the ability to resist mechanical stress. [wikipedia.org]
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I would actually consider to improve the pilot protection with stronger and lighter armor. A lighter plane with some improved aerodynamics and more efficient engines will improve the loiter time.
One of the problems that the A-10 has is also that some parts are becoming a bit aged. But I'm not calling for inventing entirely new parts, just look at what can be obtained "off the shelf" from other planes.
And re-use as much as possible from the current A-10 that's good, I'd consider it to be more of a new genera
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How useful is that really, though? (Real question). Overall the pilot is a tiny part of the target. Yes, if he or she is wounded, things are bad. But it seems to me that the much larger airplane which he or she is relying on to keep flying and not be on fire, is the most vulnerable part of the equation. Going down in a ball of flames will kill you just as effectively as a 50BMG round.
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About the only real improvement the A10 needs is more loiter time
The issue with the A-10 is survivability, especially in "great power competition" (against Russia and/or China) in an environment where the SAM [wikipedia.org] and fighter [wikipedia.org] threats are extremely deadly.
The F-35 is inadequate as a replacement for a variety of reasons, but minor improvements in engines, armor etc. do not even begin to address the real issue. The military needs to plan for the next war, not the previous one.
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That's true, but the types of wars the US is fighting are not the "great power competition".
The F35 will have poor survivability as soon as China or Russia can reliably detect and track it with RADAR. The Air Force has put all its eggs in a single basket: stealth.
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Don't they only send in the A-10s after air superiority (or whatever the term is for when you can fly anything you want without getting shot down) has been achieved anyway?
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No air force, neither the USAF, the Russians or the Chinese, is going to send in ground attack aircraft over the front line without first establishing local air superiority at minimum (and preferably air supremacy). And that includes extensive SEAD.
The vulnerability of the A-10 to air defenses is a red herring. No plane except dedicated air superiority fighters and SEAD attack aircraft are expected to operate in the teeth of extensive active air defenses. Not even the F-35 is expected to do that, it's expe
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A flying drone GAU-8 would be a pretty awesome weapon, but I suspect the US Air Force has realized that a drone with some Hellfires works just as well. Sure bullets are cheaper, but the bigger your budget, the less you care about such things.
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The best thing would be to do small tweaks to incorporate more modern avionics, engines and manufacturing techniques. The platform itself is fine, however, it has a major limitation - it can only work in an environment with air superiority. The A-10 cannot really defend itself.
Being honest, the task and role of the A-10 have to be pondered over again.
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That describes the wars the US has been fighting since 2001.
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That describes the wars the US has been fighting since 2001.
Does it describe the wars the US wants to be fighting from 2021?
Re: If they can do that. (Score:2)
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But the GAU-8 is basically the A-10
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You can probably design a car in a week using free cad software and sticking off the shelf components into it.
Skunkworks (Score:4, Interesting)
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Just a hunch, this one is fair sight more complicated than the U-2.
Re:Skunkworks (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but computers are a bit faster than a room full of slide rules too... Really is cool that things like the U2 and SR71 were made back then, and the SR71 is still amazing by today's standards.
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That was before Skunkworks became a rent seeking model always delaying results to seek more rent.
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True, but remember it was mainly long wings attached to an F-104 Starfighter.
Where did you get that piece of misinformation? (Score:5, Informative)
The U2 wasn't done in 90 days: https://sites.google.com/a/cen... [google.com]
The two years it took is impressive from a modern day standpoint but it didn't happen.
Maybe you're thinking of the P-80 which took 143 days (just shy of five months)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Just out of curiosity, where did you get the idea it took 90 days? I've never seen that referenced anywhere.
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Not secret long... (Score:4, Funny)
"Almost every detail about the aircraft itself will remain a mystery due to the classification of the Next Generation Air Dominance program..."
Don't worry. President blabs-a-lot will find it an irresistible topic to brag about.
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If we're interested in the specifics of this plane, we can just wait and see what China's next fighter looks like in two or three years.
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Maybe they stole it from China. Would explain the rapid development process.
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Sure. But reality and what he thinks is reality and blabs about are not often one and the same. Remember, this is the guy who thinks and bragged that the F-35 turns invisible... LITERALLY invisible, as if it were Wonder Woman's invisible jet or a Romulan ship with its cloaking device engaged... while in flight and combat.
Sunk cost of F35? (Score:2)
Please, tell me that the US has finally discarded that pork barrel "swiss army knife exchangeable blades" design of the F35, the one that wears out its tires on every landing. No one else would buy them, and they didn't function properly for _any_ US military department or foreign ally.
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At last check, they had to be replaced after _every landing_ and cost $1500/each. Have you seen any evidence that the planned "redesign" helped at all?
Apples to Oranges 10 years vs 1 year dev time (Score:4, Interesting)
The X-35, an early technology demonstrator, first flew in 2000, four years after Lockheed Martin signed the contract to build it. It might be better, however to compare this new mystery jet to the first actual F-35 fighter, which flew in 2006.
This is a bullshit comparison. Building a prototype is relatively easy. How long ago did the Air Force award a contract to first prototype flying? That's the real test. There is a huge difference between cranking out a one-off prototype and having a factory churning out dozens of planes at a time.
They cite Elon Musk in this article who is rather famous for saying that anyone can build a prototype, it's manufacturing that's the real challenge.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The result of few stakeholders (Score:5, Interesting)
The primary role is also apparently limited to air superiority. So no need to care about ground strike capabilities either. If true, this means that USAF is taking China's rise very seriously and stopping pretending that their primary role in future war will be hitting a second tier country with military that is a generation or two behind them meaning a hopelessly outdated opposing air force.
Something that plagued early 2000s procurement in US military across all branches, as they were focused on "counter terrorist wars".
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There have been quite a few aircraft in the past (the F-15 Eagle comes to mind) that were originally intended to be air-to-air only with no air-to-ground capabilities at all but were then changed later in the development to have air-to-ground as well.
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"Changed" is an understatement. F-15E is a significant redesign of the airframe. Which is why F-15Cs are in wide use for the actual air to air role today, and F-15E is largely limited to ground strike missions.
That sounds exceptionally unlikely (Score:2)
In that time, they probably cannot even do the requirements. Fake news to cheer for President Dumb?
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So basically, you're so blinded by TDS that any bit of actual evidence in favor of the current Administration's efforts at deregulation and procurement speed-ups must be discarded to comply with your pre-conceived ideas?
No need to check what actually happened, you already have your mind made up, right?
I don't know how long this project will take... (Score:2)
"I don't know how long this project will take, but you asking me how long it will take will undoubtedly increase the time", or something like that. I used to say this all the time when I was working.
I briefly interned at a defense contractor when I was younger. A significant part of the job was making timelines. I didn't actually get to make the precious timelines myself. I tended the shredder and watched them do it. Such soul-sucking work. This was back in the 80s, and the timeline master would somet
Yeah, good luck with that (Score:2)
'"I have to imagine there will be a lot of engineers — maybe famous ones with well-known household names with billions of dollars to invest — that will decide starting the world's greatest aircraft company to build the world's greatest aircraft with the Air Force is exactly the kind of inspiring thing they want to do as a hobby or even a main gig," Roper said.'
So there's the kicker - what they're really hoping to do is pull one or more of the new space entrepreneurs - somebody like Elon Musk - i
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I think the pitch is to do it like Commercial Crew Transport contracts with NASA. "We want 7 astronauts to the ISS safely. Go." This sounds like they want to do short term contracts for disposable aircraft that are made in relatively small batches.
I still don't think SpaceX would do it but removing the largest bureaucracy in the free world from the equation is what the effort appears to be aiming for.
duh (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no reason to think the next generation after the F-35(and F-22, since this is apparently an air superiority plane according to the article), wouldn't do the same thing and realize the same benefits, and the article rightly speculates that this is actually the case.
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I think that this plane may actually be a collection of lessons learned and technologies developed for F22 and F35. Once they were developed they are basically off the shelf now, and we also have experience integrating them.
Whooda thunk that... (Score:5, Insightful)
... that taking the other services out of the equation would result in shorter design times and lower costs. When the Pentagon keeps going back to military contractors with endlessly updated wish lists for an armament that fits every possible need for every branch of the military it prolongs the procurement process with endless design changes and change requests and then wonders why the damn thing doesn't work the way it was hoped it would. And the weapon is likely obsolete before it's even widely deployed.
The Air Force came up with something that fits their needs. Kudos to them. We should expect, though, that they'll have a ton of criticism leveled at them and the process because a.) the plane can't land on aircraft carriers, b.) it doesn't transfer quite enough of the taxpayers' money to military contractors, and (directly related to "b") c.) doesn't allow enough Senators to make the claim that they've brought jobs to their states.
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Yeah. Basically they did the F4 all over again with the F35. But, eventually, the F4 worked. It took a war to get the kinks out...
I'm thinking Northrop Grumman (Score:2)
Lockheed already has the F-35. Boeing are a bunch of fuck ups. I'm thinking that leaves Northrop Grumman.
I have to wonder, though, (Score:2)
How much of the concept-to-prototype speed was due to new manufacturing techniques, and how much was due to side-stepping all the bureaucracy?
Wait a minute here... (Score:2)
... is this why the F-35 is so far over budget? Because they were designing two fighter jets?
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One aircraft for all three would be cheaper of course.
And better. Instead they each ended up with one that wasn't quite right for their use case.
Just like you'd expect.
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I dunno, the F-35B turned out pretty damn good, for what it is. It's easily the best V/STOL fighter ever made. That's probably because the USMC requirements wound up driving the design of the whole program. Even if the Air Force and Navy come up with better toys, the F-35B sits in a special place where it does stuff no other fighter can do. The navies of the UK, Spain, Italy, Japan need it too. Arguably Australia, South Korea, and Brazil soon. It would probably even be a good sell to India for their STOBAR
The things you can do with a 3D printer! (Score:2)
It is a Technology DEMONSTRATOR Not a Fighter (Score:3)
This is definitely a new air vehicle, but it is not a combat vehicle, it is what is called a technology demonstrator. Exactly what is being demonstrated is unclear, the only information we have about it is this is from this Defense News [defensenews.com] article (which we get filtered through Popular Mechanics with no value added, I guess to monetize for the owner of /.).
Other than the fact that is exists, was flown, was built in a year, and is connected to a next gen fighter program, and is a technology demonstrator, we know nothing about this - not a single characteristic of the vehicle.
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Lack of a pilot maybe. I would not be shocked if they took at F35 or 22, automated it, and are demonstrating that oh yes, you CAN build a drone that fires missiles that aren't hellfires.
And it cost??? (Score:2)
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We need some way of making things transparent to the American people, but hide it from Congress. You don't want them sticking their fingers into the pie before you've baked it.
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OK, so we tell them not to 3D print it in Perspex!
Different missions (Score:2)
F35 refund (Score:2)
Where does my country apply for a refund for this 2 decade long disaster?
design by committee (Score:2)
F-35 took 10 years and was over budget because too many cooks spoil the broth.
BULLSHIT comes to mind (Score:2)
not a big task.. (Score:2)
Well, this shouldn't be a big task, as the development of the F-35 is one of the biggest clusterfucks ever. The F-35 is just one piece of crap and looks more like the tank that was in Eddie Murphy's "Best Defence" (except that tank worked in the end, the F-35 doesn't).
I even think the people responsible for the F-35 should be charged with fraud as the plane has gone way WAAAAY over budget..
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Since Kennedy now infamously said, "We choose to go to the moon...", there has been a slow, but steady, determined and steadily growing adjustment of public perception to normalize the idea that it is OK for tax dollars to
HoneyPot? (Score:2)
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You forgot to include China, arab states, pakistan, etc...
Re: Who exactly are they going to fight ? (Score:2)
I bet this flying penis will look great at airshows. Of course being kept roped off and on a pedistal so the public can view it at a distance.