US F/A-XX and F-X & NGAD - 6th Gen Aircraft News Thread

[Aval]

Technically we don't know for certain F-47 will not have vertical stabilizers yet.

I did find this F/A-XX concept art floating around the internet a while ago. As we know, Boeing has lots of concept art for the F/A-XX programme which logically could carry over to their NGAD proposals as well. There's also the possibility they'll merge NGAD and F/A-XX to save costs, which means we'll see one fighter design (or at most an F-35 style variant-split) for America's 6th-gen lineup.



The underbelly intakes are reminiscent of the original J-20 concept outlined in Dr Song's paper. Funny how similar it may be to the F-47... an aircraft unveiled nearly 3 decades later.

I, for one, welcome the J-20's (possible) new lease of life as a "6th-gen minus" fighter. Poetic justice for all accusations it has suffered these past years.

 

[sevrent]

I did find this F/A-XX concept art floating around the internet a while ago. As we know, Boeing has lots of concept art for the F/A-XX programme which logically could carry over to their NGAD proposals as well. There's also the possibility they'll merge NGAD and F/A-XX to save costs, which means we'll see one fighter design (or at most an F-35 style variant-split) for America's 6th-gen lineup.

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The underbelly intakes are reminiscent of the original J-20 concept outlined in Dr Song's paper. Funny how similar it may be to the F-47... an aircraft unveiled nearly 3 decades later.

I think the idea of a NGAD/FA-XX being akin to F-35A to F-35C is very unlikely. The Navy has explicitly said they want FA-XX to be a strike aircraft and that air dominance is not the biggest priority. They also dont care that much for adaptive engines.

 

[Hyper]

Well, ML algorithms specialize in classification. Given a data input, after processing, they will assign a probability and degree of confidence to each of the categories, the highest of which will become the answer. I would therefore say, ML algorithms will be better at knowing what it is rather than tracking it.

If we take your example, we can have one algo to processes and separate input noise to check whether there is a valid radar signature. This signature can be upscaled, then be used to predict the target based on.

Predicting future paths (depending on region) will be the hardest imo.

Overall, I think the biggest obstacle will be in gathering training data. They will need to find a way to make a model with an approximately accurate signature, then catch radar signatures at different approaches, distances/altitudes , even weather if that applies. Depending on the radar types/sensors there might be data format differences etc. So will need transforming and cleaning. I think these will be the hardest actually.

This is why I am pessimistic on AI enabled warfighters. It's completely reliant on synthetic data as real world data is impossible to get.

 

[Aval]

I think the idea of a NGAD/FA-XX being akin to F-35A to F-35C is very unlikely. The Navy has explicitly said they want FA-XX to be a strike aircraft and that air dominance is not the biggest priority. They also dont care that much for adaptive engines.

It depends on priorities higher than the Navy, namely the US government's total military budget.

From what we can infer, the Trump administration and USAF rejected LockMart's much more expensive J-36-analogue NGAD for Boeing's smaller design. Its not unreasonable to suspect this was due to cost concerns. If that was the case, then having two separate 6th-gen programmes would also be an inefficient expenditure and could get axed.

Boeing is still in the running for the F/A-XX and to cut down on R&D they may not make it that different from the F-47, resulting in an F-35A/F-35C situation rather than a J-36/J-50 situation. Military requests are always secondary to political considerations such as cost, otherwise they would have continued to produce and upgrade F-22s rather than go with the jack-of-all-trades F-35 JSF programme.

Of course, its all speculation at this point. We can only wait and see.

 

[sevrent]

It depends on priorities higher than the Navy, namely the US government's total military budget.

From what we can infer, the Trump administration and USAF rejected LockMart's much more expensive J-36-analogue NGAD for Boeing's smaller design. Its not unreasonable to suspect this was due to cost concerns. If that was the case, then having two separate 6th-gen programmes would also be an inefficient expenditure and could get axed.

Boeing is still in the running for the F/A-XX and to cut down on R&D they may not make it that different from the F-47, resulting in an F-35A/F-35C situation rather than a J-36/J-50 situation. Military requests are always secondary to political considerations such as cost, otherwise they would have continued to produce and upgrade F-22s rather than go with the jack-of-all-trades F-35 JSF programme.

Of course, its all speculation at this point. We can only wait and see.

Where is this idea of Lockmart's proposal being more exquisite than Boeing's coming from? The only information we have is that Boeing's proposal was more ''fresh'' and revolutionary while Lockmart's was more conservative and was an evolution. That could mean a lot of different things but we knew that USAF preferred Boeing since 2023

 

[Maikeru]

Bill Sweetman article on F47 Convict:

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Should be noted that Bill hates Trump and 'Smegbreath' almost as much as he hates the F-35.

Edit: How much does Bill hate the F-35? Here's a direct quote:

"Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering plane; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee."

 

[Hyper]

It depends on priorities higher than the Navy, namely the US government's total military budget.

From what we can infer, the Trump administration and USAF rejected LockMart's much more expensive J-36-analogue NGAD for Boeing's smaller design. Its not unreasonable to suspect this was due to cost concerns. If that was the case, then having two separate 6th-gen programmes would also be an inefficient expenditure and could get axed.

Boeing is still in the running for the F/A-XX and to cut down on R&D they may not make it that different from the F-47, resulting in an F-35A/F-35C situation rather than a J-36/J-50 situation. Military requests are always secondary to political considerations such as cost, otherwise they would have continued to produce and upgrade F-22s rather than go with the jack-of-all-trades F-35 JSF programme.

Of course, its all speculation at this point. We can only wait and see.

Again to be honest F-47 can be cheaper without compromising on performance if it has a tighter supply chain. F-35 spread out it's production over two continents and f-22 orders were cancelled by a lot.
F-35 supply chains were a chaos. If Boeing makes everything within a few states then it's not difficult to keep costs under control.

 

[Gloire_bb]

Again to be honest F-47 can be cheaper without compromising on performance if it has a tighter supply chain.

Or you can compromise on some size/performance, win on other, get significantly more airframes using more advanced concept for the same amount of money, and get overall stronger, more resilient force...

 

[siegecrossbow]

If we apply the J-20 = Mig-1.44 knockoff logic from back in 2011 can we now conclude that GCAP = J-20 with no canards and F-47 = J-20 with no vertical slabs?

 

[wuguanhui]

Where to shop...

Do you want the Poundland J-20 or Dollar Tree J-20?