More Details on Pentagon's Plans for Sixth Generation Fighter Development

Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall unveiled part of his strategy for procuring a next-generation fighter for the Air Force and Navy in congressional testimony last week.

The core of the strategy, Kendall told members of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), is called the Aerospace Innovation Initiative.

"What it will be is a program that will be initially led by [the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency]. But it will involve the Navy and the Air Force as well," Kendall said. "The intent is to develop prototypes for the next generation of air dominance platforms, X-plane programs, if you will."

The initiative will also include work on a next-generation engine, Kendall said, adding that more details about the plan will appear in the fiscal 2016 budget request being unveiled this week.

Whereas the F-35 joint strike fighter was billed as one plane that can fit the needs of the Air Force, Navy and Marines, the next-generation fighter will instead be two planes that share common parts.

The Navy and Air Force have offices looking at a next-generation fighter that would replace the Navy's F/A-18s and the Air Force's F-22s, respectively. An Air Force official told Defense News in September that he hopes to have Milestone A acquisition activity started in fiscal 2018.

The 6th generation initiative will be a "fairly large-scale" program, and one that Kendall said was designed with the industrial base in mind.

"The only reason the department's doing that is to preserve the design teams that can do this next-generation of capability in that area, because once those design teams go away, we've lost them and it's very hard to get them back," Kendall said in response to a question by HASC Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas.

"In very specialized areas, like you mentioned electronic warfare, that's a very special skill set and you can't develop somebody who is an expert at that overnight; it takes time," Kendall continued. "And you get that expertise by working on programs, by developing new cutting-edge things."

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