Navy 6th Generation Fighter

[hornetfinn]

2,3, 4, 5: All of those can be obtained by having a different view of what a fighter is. At some point, it may be determined that greater stealth, payload and range matter more than speed and maneuverability which could lead to "fighters" being flying wings.

From WWII onward, the US has used the motto that you never use manpower when you could use firepower. Lately, an equivalent motto has been that you don't send an aircraft when you could send a missile; The missile is much lower risk while being faster than an aircraft. If you extrapolate from that, it may be more useful to have an aircraft which isn't that maneuverable and only goes high subsonic if it allows you to have much higher range, loiter time, payload and stealth and instead rely on missiles/drones/probes when you want something fast and maneuverable.

Could well be, but at least currently fighter speed and maneuverability are very important in avoiding missiles. While they are very difficult to avoid when they have a lot of energy, their ability to catch fast and maneuverable targets pretty quickly goes down when the missile speed and energy go down. Of course missiles with ramjet or pulsed rocket motors are better at keeping the speed and energy higher for the terminal phase. But even then the thrust time for the motor is limited. But there might well be some point where speed and maneuverability become significantly less relevant than today. Missiles might get just too good and stealth, EW, DEWs or miniature self defence munitions are the only good answer.

[wrightwing]

Based on what? I've seen no evidence that they can't physically expand the array.
The sizing of the current radar is driven mainly by cost.

Based upon the physical dimensions of the nose. We're talking about an F-35, not a TARDIS. There simply isn't room to stuff an APG-77/82 sized aperture in the F-35s nose.

So then the Navy should cancel MQ-25 right?

I didn't say that tankers weren't useful, but using your argument, we could just build aircraft with legacy Hornet ranges, and lots and lots of tankers. That's not nearly as beneficial as having aircraft with an unrefueled combat radius of >1000nm, so that you need less tankers, less assets to protect tankers, and the tankers can remain at a safer distance from IADS. It also makes a carrier Air wing less reliant on exquisite long range munitions to make up range deficits.

[marauder2048]

Based upon the physical dimensions of the nose. We're talking about an F-35, not a TARDIS. There simply isn't room to stuff an APG-77/82 sized aperture in the F-35s nose.

Translation: you have no actual evidence. Nor any evidence that a F-35 derivative would be SWAP-C limited.

So then the Navy should cancel MQ-25 right?

I didn't say that tankers weren't useful, but using your argument, we could just build aircraft with legacy Hornet ranges, and lots and lots of tankers.

Spot factor counts for a lot. So does carrier air wing size. To a first order approximation, as the distance
to target increases the only realistic way to maintain the sortie rate is with more aircraft.

It also makes a carrier Air wing less reliant on exquisite long range munitions to make up range deficits.

The Navy was talking about abdicating the penetrating role to the Air Force. So it's going to be standoff of some type.

[wrightwing]

Translation: you have no actual evidence. Nor any evidence that a F-35 derivative would be SWAP-C limited.

It's called deductive reasoning (i.e. you can't put 10lbs of sh*t, in a 5lb sack.)

Spot factor counts for a lot. So does carrier air wing size. To a first order approximation, as the distance
to target increases the only realistic way to maintain the sortie rate is with more aircraft.

Well, if we're talking about replacing the Super Hornet fleet, then the Air wing size shouldn't change significantly. It will just gain longer range aircraft, allowing it to stay further away from DF-21/26, and cruise missiles, while being less reliant upon tankers.

The Navy was talking about abdicating the penetrating role to the Air Force. So it's going to be standoff of some type.

Big difference between use, and rely upon.

[marauder2048]

It's called deductive reasoning (i.e. you can't put 10lbs of sh*t, in a 5lb sack.)

Given that they've never published how much slack they have in terms of volume and weight
you'll surely concede that's just guesswork right?

Well, if we're talking about replacing the Super Hornet fleet, then the Air wing size shouldn't change significantly. It will just gain longer range aircraft, allowing it to stay further away from DF-21/26, and cruise missiles, while being less reliant upon tankers.

No growth in CVW size means a collapse in sortie generation rate due to the extended ranges to target
since transit times will dominate. The only way around that would be to regularly supercruise at Mach 2 out and back.
That's probably not happening.

Big difference between use, and rely upon.

If you can't penetrate and you need to service aimpoints with 1000 pound weapons the cheapest standoff
is some JASSM derivative. That's not cheap and leaving aside the fact that the majority of the Navy's carriers were built around munitions no larger than JSOW. So if you can get by with the < 500 lbs warhead in JSOW-ER that's still
$500k per aimpoint.

Might as well just use CLEAVER at that point.

For hypersonics, HAWC looks to be about the largest hypersonic that could be reasonably accommodated on a CVN
and maybe only the Ford class. If that's what you mean by exquisite.

[loke]

In August 2020, USNI News reported that the Navy had “initiated work to develop its first new carrier-based fighter in almost 20 years.” While the F-35C Lightning II will still be in production for many years, the Navy needs to have another fighter ready to replace the bulk of the F/A-18E/F/G Super Hornets and Growlers by the mid-2030s. This new program will design that aircraft. While this is an important development, it will be to the Navy’s detriment if the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program yields a manned fighter.

Designing a next-generation manned aircraft will be a critical mistake. Every year remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs) replace more and more manned aviation platforms, and artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming ever increasingly capable. By the mid-2030s, when the NGAD platform is expected to begin production, it will be obsolete on arrival if it is a manned platform. In order to make sure the Navy maintains a qualitative and technical edge in aviation, it needs to invest in an unmanned-capable aircraft today. Recent advances and long-term trends in automation and computing make it clear that such an investment is not only prudent but necessary to maintain capability overmatch and avoid falling behind.

An autonomous, next-generation combat aircraft for the Navy faces several criticisms. Some concerns are valid while others are not. Critics can rightly point out that AI is not ready yet. While this is certainly true, it likely will be ready enough by the mid-2030s when the NGAD is reaching production. 15 years ago, engineers were proud of building a computer that could beat Gary Kasparov at chess. Today, AIs have mastered ever more complex real-time games and aerial dogfighting. One can only expect AI will make a similar if not greater leap in the next 15 years. We need to be future-proofing future combat aircraft. So the question should not be, “Is AI ready now?” but, “Will AI be ready in 15 years when NGAD is entering production?”

https://cimsec.org/the-future-is-unmann ... e-a-pilot/

One issue is of course that the F-35 currently does not have the range to support an unnmanned long-range NGAD. 1000 miles range has been mentioned as a minimum by the USN.

[Corsair1963]

Navy’s Plans Call For New Drones To Shoot, Spy, Jam

"I can clearly -- in my mind -- envision a way to say ‘fly a defensive combat spread, shoot on this target,’ and I will squeeze the trigger or I will enable that unmanned platform to shoot the designated target," Rear Adm. Gregory Harris says.

WASHINGTON: The Navy now aims to have 60% of its carrier air wing comprise unmanned aircraft as it replaces F-18s.

The Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) effort, a joint effort between the Navy and Air Force, is still in its early stages, but the admiral in charge of the Navy’s air wing said today he would like to see a 60/40 mix of unmanned to manned aircraft to replace the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and electronic attack EA-18G Growlers.

“In the next probably two to three years, we’ll have a better idea whether replacement for the F-18 E and F will be manned or unmanned,” Rear Adm. Gregory Harris, director of the Navy’s Air Warfare Division, said at a Navy League event this morning. The service will initially try for a 40/60 unmanned to manned aircraft mix, leading to the 60/40 ratio as time goes on.

Harris’ comments support an estimate recently floated by Vice Adm. James Kilby, head of the Navy’s warfighting requirements and capabilities office, who told the House Armed Services Committee earlier this month he thinks the Navy “could get upwards of 40 percent of the aircraft in an air wing that are unmanned and then transition beyond that.”

Last year, the Navy said it would close out the Super Hornet production line after 2021 to instead fund the Navy’s NGAD program, a move which puts some pressure on the service to get their plans in order.

“We truly see NGAD as more than just a single aircraft,” Harris said. “We believe that as manned/unmanned teaming comes online, we will integrate those aspects” into a more refined acquisition plan.

“As we look at it right now, the Next-Gen Air Dominance is a family of systems, which has as its centerpiece the F/A-XX – which may or may not be manned – platform. It’s the fixed-wing portion of the Next-Gen Air Dominance family of systems.”

A major part of the effort will involve Boeing’s MQ-25 Stingray refueling drone, which is separate from the NGAD effort, but will work alongside those aircraft. The Navy has been slowly shepherding the Stingray along through its design and development process. The USS Carl Vinson — the first carrier to be modernized to fly the F-35 for the Navy — has also been modified to allow it to operate the MQ-25.

In addition to refueling fighters, the Stingray is likely to serve as an extra sensing node in the sky, pushing data back and forth between crewed and autonomous surface vessels and giving the Navy and Marine Corps a new intelligence gathering asset. As a tanker, it will also extend the range of the Navy’s carrier-based aircraft by hundreds of miles.

Some of the work on the Vinson involved establishing an Unmanned Aviation Warfare Center on the ship, along with new network infrastructure and command and control equipment.

Harris suggested that the unmanned portion of the future air wing could be anything from an air-to-air platform that can conduct electronic warfare missions to an advanced early warning platform to replace the E-2D surveillance aircraft at some point in the future.

“Having an unmanned platform out there as an adjunct missile carrier, I see as not a step too far, too soon,” Harris said. “An unmanned system with missiles I can clearly — in my mind — envision a way to say ‘fly a defensive combat spread, shoot on this target,’ and I will squeeze the trigger or I will enable that unmanned platform to shoot the designated target. That doesn’t stretch beyond my realm of imagination.”

Navy CNO Adm. Mike Gilday has said he wants the next-generation carrier fighter in service in the 2030s, but the decisions that will need to be made first, as the Navy slowly begins integrating F-35s onto the flight decks of its aging carrier fleet, point to years of development before any large-scale marriage between manned and unmanned aircraft can operate together at sea.

https://breakingdefense.com/2021/03/nav ... 2ewAiVLwjM

[inst]

There might be room; from AESAs I've seen, they're typically about 75-80% of the radome they fit in. You'd need significant technological advances in cooling for it to work, however.

[zero-one]

Variable geometry could be back in vogue, this time its the vertical stabs.

More at the jump.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.popula ... ncept-art/

[hornetfinn]

I have to say that the design looks a lot like what I proposed elsewhere, something like 60,000 lb empty weight light bomber with air-to-air capabilities. For example it has rather small nose, so it restricts the size of radar antenna a lot. Aerodynamics looks closer to A-12 and other ATA proposals, although this likely has a lot more power and is more maneuverable. It could definitely have a lot of gas, a big internal weapons carriage and long range. I do wonder how it fits between F-35 and B-21. Another option would be just buying and operating more B-21s which will definitely have significantly superior payload and range.

[zero-one]

If this is infact how the 6th gen would look like, whats our educated guess on it?

The article says the vertical tail can deploy if maneuverability is needed but I don't know it looks.... I'm not an aero engineer but from what I remember, these flying wing designs don't maneuver well.

Is it gona be an F-35B? Which is okay but not really impressive.

[madrat]

How big of nose do you need when you arrange directional antenna around the entire airframe? Any future design is literally a miniature "Rivet Joint".

[hornetfinn]

How big of nose do you need when you arrange directional antenna around the entire airframe? Any future design is literally a miniature "Rivet Joint".

For ESM and EW antennas that's definitely true. I expect any future design be blistering with all kinds of such antennas. However it'd not work that well with radar system which work best with single uniform and large antenna. That antenna also needs to have nothing in front of it, so a large nose has been the preferred place for it. That was just one point and I think that the whole design looks more like a bomber design than a fighter design. For example it could have similar air-to-ground oriented radar like AN/APQ-181 in B-2 bombers. It could have air-to-air modes, but be best for air-to-ground operations.

[mixelflick]

And yet, it's going to have to fit and operate from a carrier...

Biggest fast jet flying from carriers in our lifetime has been what, the R/A-5C? Seems to me it has to be somewhere in that size range, perhaps even a little bigger. That brings us to what, 100,000lbs? If we assume 2 up-rated F-135 derivatives putting out 50,000lbs of thrust each...

The design work Lockheed did to get 18,000lbs of fuel + into the F-35A/C is one of its (if not the) most impressive engineering feats on the jet. They're going to cram every inch of NGAD with fuel too, and I can only imagine how much that'll be on an airframe that size. I'm guessing 25,000 to 40,000lbs of internal fuel, a phenomenal amount..

[zero-one]

I imagine that with electronically steered arrey, you can pretty much shape a radar antena however you want it to be. Theoretically, the entire fuselage can be just one big antenna Underneath.