Defense News reports that Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said during an event at the Heritage Foundation that the service’s “secretive and highly classified Next Generation Air Dominance fighter program has started its crucial engineering and manufacturing development phase.” Kendall said that the service “began early experimental prototyping on NGAD in 2015, when he was the Pentagon’s top acquisition official. This was essentially an X-plane program, he said, designed to reduce risk and develop key technologies needed for the production program.” Kendall said that the technology has continued to progress and the “NGAD effort is now envisioned as a ‘family of systems’ incorporating several elements, including a handful of autonomous drone aircraft accompanying the manned aircraft in formation.” Kendall said, “The clock really didn’t start in 2015; it’s starting roughly now. … We think we’ll have capability by the end of the decade.”
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Tag: development phase
U.S. Army’s Future Long-Range Tiltrotor Shifts to Next Development Phase
Defense News reports, “The U.S. Army’s future long-range aircraft is moving out of technology development and into the critical engineering and manufacturing development phase, the service announced Friday. The Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft program, or FLRAA, is estimated to be worth approximately $70 billion across its lifespan, including foreign military sales, and is set to replace roughly 2,000 Black Hawk utility helicopters.”
Full Story (Defense News)