Between colossal costs, swarms of expendable drones, and budgetary constraints, the NGAD super fighter is under scrutiny. Can the US Air Force still justify it?
Summary
The US NGAD program was supposed to embody the sixth-generation super fighter tasked with replacing the F-22 with the NGAD and maintaining air superiority over China. On paper, this future US Air Force fighter promises extreme performance, advanced stealth, and networked operation with accompanying drones. In reality, its estimated cost of around $300 million per unit (approximately €280 million) and a research budget already running into tens of billions are raising serious doubts about the viability of the NGAD for the US Air Force.
At the same time, the US Air Force is investing heavily in Collaborative Combat Aircraft drones and expendable “loyal wingman” platforms. Demonstrators such as Anduril’s YFQ-44A and General Atomics’ YFQ-42A show that swarms of semi-autonomous drones can take on some of the riskiest missions at a significantly lower cost than a manned F-47 from the NGAD.
The debate is now head-on: should we continue to fund an ultra-sophisticated piloted aircraft that we will hesitate to engage in truly contested combat, or should we move more quickly towards a mixed fleet, where a few high-end manned aircraft pilot a mass of expendable drones? The NGAD is probably not “dead on arrival,” but it has already been overtaken by a doctrinal and budgetary shift that could drastically reduce its initial ambition.
The US NGAD program at the heart of an epoch-making change
Originally, the US NGAD program (Next Generation Air Dominance) was conceived as a “system of systems”: a highly advanced manned combat aircraft, accompanied by unmanned platforms and distributed sensors, to ensure air superiority in the most contested environments.
This future US Air Force fighter, now designated F-47 in US political communications, has been awarded to Boeing, with a development contract valued at approximately $20 billion through 2029. The objective is clear: to produce the future of the American super-fighter, capable of dominating the skies over the Pacific against Chinese air forces, while restoring Boeing to a central position in defense aeronautics.
Officially, the US Air Force continues to present the NGAD as the future fighter of the US Air Force and the backbone of future US air strategy. Documents submitted to Congress in 2025 confirm a request for $2.75 billion for NGAD R&D, compared to $557 million for CCA drones. The policy line therefore remains: we are indeed funding a new-generation manned aircraft, but from the outset it is being designed as the center of a drone ecosystem.
At the same time, the US Air Force has acknowledged that the initial clear and linear plan to replace the F-22 with the NGAD no longer really exists. The pause in the “combat jet” component of the program, followed by hesitations about the schedule, have shown that there is no longer a simple “after F-22, NGAD” trajectory.
The cost of the NGAD program in the face of financial constraints
The debate becomes controversial when we look at the cost of the NGAD program. Several sources converge on an estimate of around $300 million per aircraft, which is nearly double the cost of an F-35 and several times the price of a previous-generation fighter.
Added to this is a potential overall budget of hundreds of billions of dollars if we include development, production of around 200 aircraft, support, and the associated drone system. Analyses already suggest a total “over several decades” that could exceed $2 trillion if we combine NGAD, CCA, B-21, F-35, and strategic missiles.
In a context where the F-35 remains expensive per flight hour and the B-21 Raider is absorbing an increasing share of the budget, the viability of NGAD for the US Air Force is being questioned. The Pentagon must decide between:
- financing the sixth-generation super fighter;
- maintaining existing fleets (F-22, F-35, F-15EX);
- investing heavily in smart drones and missile defense.
An internal US Air Force review published at the end of 2024 confirmed the value of a sixth-generation manned fighter, but emphasized the need to strictly calibrate its costs and consider more distributed architectures. In other words, NGAD remains desirable, but not at any price or in any format.
The fundamental dilemma: a manned super fighter or swarms of drones?
Behind the question “Is the NGAD stillborn?” lies a much deeper doctrinal question. The United States has long relied on very expensive air superiority aircraft, such as the F-15 and then the F-22, accepting to buy few but very capable ones.
With the NGAD, this model has reached its limit. A $300 million aircraft raises a simple question: will we really deploy such a technological gem in a defensive bubble saturated with surface-to-air missiles, multi-band radars, and enemy fighters equipped with long-range missiles?
At the same time, the US Air Force is making rapid progress on the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program, which aims to deploy less expensive, semi-autonomous combat drones capable of accompanying a manned fighter, acting as scouts, saturating enemy defenses, or absorbing hits.
The gamble on expendable drones and loyal wingmen
Recent demonstrations clearly show this. In 2025, Anduril flew the YFQ-44A, a jet-powered drone designed as a “loyal wingman” to accompany manned aircraft as part of the CCA. A few months earlier, General Atomics flew the YFQ-42A with similar capabilities. These platforms are designed from the outset as “expendable” effectors, whose loss is acceptable in operation.
In this scenario, the manned fighter becomes the conductor of several drones. It remains valuable but is no longer exposed in the same way, leaving the drones to enter the most dangerous areas first, test defenses, and even carry out suicide attacks against highly protected systems.
This raises a stark question: does it still make sense to invest hundreds of millions in an aircraft that we would hesitate to risk, when a swarm of more modest drones can overwhelm defenses at a lower overall cost? This is precisely where the possible abandonment of the NGAD, or at least the temptation to reduce it to a limited number of units surrounded by a growing fleet of unmanned effectors, comes into focus.
Replacing the F-22 and the evolution of air superiority aircraft
The NGAD was originally intended to replace the F-22 with the NGAD in a relatively linear fashion, with operational handover scheduled for the 2030s. Today, things are less clear. The US Air Force is still investing billions in upgrading the F-22, which it describes as a “bridge” to the future NGAD system.
This extension of the aircraft’s life shows that the evolution of air superiority aircraft no longer follows the simple logic of “new generation = mechanical replacement of the previous one.” The F-22 remains highly capable, especially with improvements to its sensors, data links, and weapons.
At the same time, the F-35 is evolving towards “pilot optional” standards, with the prospect of partially or fully autonomous flights, in direct link with combat drones. Here again, we are seeing a shift towards a model in which the manned aircraft is no longer the sole vector of superiority, but a central part of a network of heterogeneous platforms.
In this context, the sixth-generation NGAD super fighter finds itself caught between a rock and a hard place: indispensable for advancing stealth, range, connectivity, and electronic warfare, but potentially oversized if tomorrow’s conflicts rely more on the mass of drones than on the scarcity of a handful of exceptional aircraft.
Future US air strategy between political symbolism and real constraints
The decision to name the F-47 after the 47th US president and to award the contract to Boeing is not insignificant. The NGAD is also a political signal: reaffirming American technological leadership, supporting domestic industry, and showcasing the future of the American super fighter as a symbol of power in the face of Beijing.
But the future US air strategy cannot be reduced to a symbol. It must take into account:
- the trajectory of debt and interest rates weighing on the federal budget;
- the parallel increase in the costs of the F-35, the B-21 Raider, and the Sentinel missile;
- the speed with which China, but also private American players, are innovating in the field of drones and autonomy.
If the US Air Force insists on a mass-produced NGAD, it risks ending up with a very limited number of aircraft that are difficult to replace and politically difficult to lose in combat. Conversely, if it switches too quickly to “all drones,” it runs the risk of not having, in time, a manned platform capable of imposing its will in the most complex scenarios.
The current debate, sometimes caricatured as “super-fighters versus swarms of expendable drones,” therefore masks a more nuanced reality: it is a question of finding the right balance between a few ultra-capable manned platforms and a mass of simpler, more consumable unmanned systems.
A likely shift towards a more limited NGAD that is more integrated with drones
The signs point to an intermediate scenario. On the one hand, the US Air Force continues to fund the development of the adaptive engine and certain NGAD technology building blocks, even increasing the budget allocated to this sector. On the other hand, it is accelerating its work on CCAs and increasing the number of combat drone demonstrations.
NGAD as the core of a distributed system
In this model, the US NGAD program is not abandoned, but reduced: rather than a large fleet, the US Air Force could settle for a core of very high-level F-47s, surrounded by hundreds or even thousands of effector drones.
Such a scheme would better address the objections raised by the cost of the NGAD program and the political fear of “losing” a $300 million aircraft in a risky engagement. The manned fighter would become a flying command post, a sensor, and a coordinator, rather than a “lone wolf” tasked with single-handedly penetrating enemy defenses.
From this perspective, the real question may no longer be “Is NGAD dead on arrival?” but rather: to what extent will the initial concept have to be streamlined, digitized, and distributed to remain compatible with a world where mass, redundancy, and rapid regeneration capacity are as important as unit performance?
The US Air Force has a decisive role to play here. If it manages to intelligently combine a few sixth-generation super fighters with a galaxy of expendable drones, it will stay one step ahead. If it locks itself into a program that is too costly and too rigid, it risks seeing the viability of NGAD for US aviation called into question by budgetary realities… and by the brutality of the high-intensity wars that the program is supposed to prepare for.
Sources
– CRS/Congress report on NGAD and CCAs, 2025.
– Analyses by The War Zone and Asia Times on estimated costs ($300 million per aircraft) and budgetary trade-offs.
– Articles by Le Monde, The Aviationist, and The Washington Post on the awarding of the F-47 to Boeing as part of the NGAD program.
– Articles by Defense News, Euro-SD, and Breaking Defense on internal reviews by the US Air Force and the future of the sixth-generation manned fighter.
– Statements and analyses on the F-22, its role as a “bridge” to NGAD, and prospects for replacement.
– Information from Reuters and other sources on the CCA, YFQ-44A, and YFQ-42A programs and developments toward loyal wingman drones.
War Wings Daily is an independant magazine.