The NEW Super F-22 Replacement is Coming

air force chief of staff general charles q brown jr began his tenure as the services top officer with an order and a warning accelerate change or lose one year later brown sees a modicum of progress and a tightening timeline to achieve that imperative airmen and commanders must break from the status quo as must lawmakers on capitol hill who've been unwilling to let the air force retire older aircraft i think fiscal year 2023 is the year if we as a department and as an air force don't make a big shift in 2023 then i'm concerned brown said in an interview that's the time we've got to make a shift the air force faces mounting bills for a host of new aircraft kc-46 tankers f-35a and f-15ex fighters t7a trainers the b-21 bomber the next generation air dominance ngad aircraft and an all-new nuclear ballistic missile all at once brown needs bill payers and he and the others are looking to jettison aircraft that are costly to maintain and that deliver less than optimum utility lawmakers however are hesitant you hear the discussion brown says eyes darting between his interviewers china's a pacing threat our adversaries are moving at a pace and we've got to make sure we're moving as well that's why i wrote accelerate change or lose that's why i'm doing all this engagement because if you don't fully appreciate what the future is going to look like or what the future threat is or where our adversaries are going it's hard to make that shift you don't want to wait until you have a crisis moment to go god i wish we'd done something roadblocks to change the air force has muddled its message over the years laying out a priority and then changing its tune though there can be wisdom in changing one's mind the lack of a clear consistent and coherent message raises doubts among those who can't keep up with the changes last summer for example the air force sought a modest cut to the a-10 fleet then backtracked on some basing announcements after lawmakers moved to block the plan during the markup of the 2022 defense bill the reason we announced things and then pull it back is all these things are interconnected brown said once you make one decision it impacts the others what we're trying to lay out is actually we do have a plan it's not just a hodgepodge of looking at different bases and the like you've got to step back from this and look at it a little bit more strategically about how we look to the future the a-10s are a good example the air force wanted to cut one operational squadron at davis-monthan air base in arizona and another in the indiana air national guard indiana would get an f-16 unit positioning airmen there to shift to f-35s as they come online davis-monthan meanwhile would get a-10s and hh-60s from nellis air force base nevada and create centers of excellence for close air support and search and rescue which would in turn open space at nellis for newer aircraft but if those a-10 stay as expected all those moves are on hold bringing on new systems it's not only the platform but it's the airman brown said the airmen that i have operating and maintaining this capability are the same airmen that i have operating and maintaining these other capabilities in the future i've got to make a transition and so if they're all tied up in this area and we have things coming off the production line i've still got to train those airmen it's not a flip of a switch brown said he seizes every opportunity to engage with lawmakers blowing up his schedule to be on hand for visits or meetings and has made due effort to engage with capitol hill and express that failing to give up some aircraft now will present undue risk later in these discussions brown city lays out one how the air force plans its future force and two here's what the air force cannot do if it isn't funded i don't want to lay out a hollow force right i'm not going to give up he said you hear rumors but it's not over until it's over with the national defense authorization act i want to continue on with our plan will we have to adjust i'm sure we will have to adjust but i want to do it in collaboration with our key stakeholders future fighter fleet made waves in may when he disclosed his four plus one plan to narrow the fighter fleet from seven to five platforms notably dropping the f-22 raptor from the lineup too many aircraft each with its own logistics tail infrastructure and personnel is unsustainable for an air force desperately trying to modernize brown ticked off his long-term vision f-35a f-15ex f-16 or its eventual replacement and the next generation air dominance platform plus a smaller fleet of re-winged and upgraded a-10s the f-22 will be replaced by ngad in the 2030 time frame he said it may still have life left in it but it's among our most expensive fleets to operate he committed to continue to modernize those jets for now but added what we want to do is get something that across the board is our sustainment to be able to operate at a reasonable rate the secret of ngad will then be able to directly fill the f-22's air superiority role after the raptor's siren song but not on a one-for-one basis just how many ngad's the air force wants is undetermined i don't want to come out and say here's what the number is he said things might change but i want to have a range of things that we can look at to go okay here's roughly where we need to be the air force has a total of 186 raptors plans indicate thus far that ngad might yield a rolling series of disparate aircraft but no more than 100 or so each additionally brown said the average age of the fighter fleet is 29 years old and growing with the f-22 becoming one of the older aircraft by 2030 as f-35s and f-15exes come online new systems such as ngad developed with open architecture and agile software can also be upgraded much faster using software updates as opposed to more hardware driven upgrades for f-22 systems all these changes flow out of detailed analysis and wargaming in which the air force took tough losses against a high-end adversary that's what's driving the need for rapid change we've had strategy in the past where we wanted to be but i don't know that it's to the level of depth and analysis and wargaming that we've been doing for the past couple years brown said and so i feel pretty good about what we've laid out as a future air force design that we've put some good thought into it the budget discussion is driven by costs and impacts to individual bases in many cases and brown studies worried these concerns aren't taking into account enough of what the rest of the world is doing you've got to do it through the lens of the threat realize we look at things from a budget but you've also got to look at the threat what's the threat doing and i don't know that we do that as much as we probably should he said we could slow down but you've got to take a look at what the adversary is doing are they speeding up and is our slowing down in some cases is it going to compete is it going to deter and will it win [Music] you

Channel: US Military News

Views: 583,621

Keywords: NGAD, ngad fighter, 5th generation, fighter jet, f-35, f-35 lightning, 6th generation jet fighter, first 6th generation jet fighter, secret jet fighter, new jet fighter, future fighter jet, future plane, air force chief of staff, charles q brown, sixth gen fighter, future fighter plane, F-22 Replacement

Id: -zyIQHvRyIM

Length: 8min 16sec (496 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 02 2022