The U.S. Air Force’s fiscal 2025 budget boosts funding for Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) by $980 million over last year’s request.
For fiscal 2025, the service budgets $2.7 billion in research and development for the NGAD sixth generation manned fighter and $557 million for Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), the uncrewed autonomous drones that are to deploy from the manned NGAD. Those numbers represent an $816 million jump for the NGAD and a $165 million increase for CCA from last year’s request.
The three top price tags in the Air Force’s fiscal 2025 research and development request are $3.7 billion for the Northrop Grumman [NOC] LGM-35A Sentinel next generation ICBM, the $3.3 billion for NGAD/CCA, and about $2.7 billion for the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider bomber. The three efforts account for 25 percent–$9.6 billion–of the service’s $37.7 billion R&D ask in fiscal 2025.
The Air Force’s $816 million add for manned NGAD in fiscal 2025 is for “continuing development on tests of the vehicle and mission systems and capabilities–not much we can talk about in an unclassified setting, but continued growth there in NGAD,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael Greiner, the service’s deputy assistant secretary for budget, told reporters on March 8.
The Air Force is to pick a company to build the NGAD manned fighter this year. Northrop Grumman said last summer that it had bowed out of the competition (Defense Daily, July 27, 2023).
The Air Force has contracted with teams–led by Anduril, Boeing [BA], General Atomics, Lockheed Martin [LMT], and Northrop Grumman–for concept definition and preliminary design of CCA Increment 1 (Defense Daily, Jan. 24).
This spring or summer, the Air Force may narrow the field of five contractor teams. In addition, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has said that the Air Force is to award contracts in fiscal 2025 for concept definition and preliminary design of CCA Increment 2, which may include “international partners.”
Kendall has posited a buy of 1,000 CCAs to deploy from and aid Lockheed Martin F-35As and NGAD manned fighters, but some top service officials are suggesting the need for a significantly higher number of CCAs. The service wants autonomous CCAs for air-to-air missions initially and then for other possible areas, such as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and jamming.