USAF opens bidding to build NGAD

[moonstone_laura]

From 'Defense One':

The U.S. Air Force has formally launched a competition to build its new fighter jet, the Pentagon’s first in two decades, with the winner to be selected next year.

The acquisition strategy for the Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, aircraft “incorporates lessons learned from recent Air Force acquisition programs and will leverage open architecture standards,” the Air Force said in a statement released Thursday [18th May]. “This approach will enable the government to maximize competition throughout the life cycle, provide a larger, more responsive industry base, and drastically reduce maintenance and sustainment costs.”

This solicitation release “formally begins the source selection process” for NGAD, said the statement, which offered almost no details about the “engineering and manufacturing development contract” except that its winner is to be picked in 2024.

The actual solicitation sent to companies is classified “to protect operational and technological advantages,” the service said.

The Air Force, which disclosed in 2020 that it flew an NGAD prototype that broke “a lot of records in the doing,” has revealed little else about the program.

The NGAD fighter is to replace the F-22 Raptor, a fifth-generation stealth fighter that is considered one the best air-to-air combat jets ever built. The F-22 can fly at supersonic speeds without using an afterburner and has thrust-vectoring engines giving it more maneuverability than prior-generation jets.

NGAD is supposed to be the U.S. military’s first sixth-generation fighter. The U.S. Navy has a similar program by the same name that’s working to build a sixth-generation fighter, which it calls F/A-XX.

Full Story:

https://www.defenseone.com/business/202 ... es/386540/

[moonstone_laura]

From 'The Drive/The War Zone':

Three Demonstrators Now Part Of Next Gen Air Dominance Fighter Program: Report

The competition to provide the U.S. Air Force with its Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, stealth sixth-generation crewed tactical jet is reportedly down to two prime contractors or teams of contractors. A final decision on what is now assumed to be a winner-takes-all competition is expected sometime next year and, perhaps most intriguingly, there are said to be no fewer than three NGAD demonstrators now in existence. These latest revelations come from a recent podcast from the Defense & Aerospace Report.

https://twitter.com/AirPowerNEW1/status ... 8044362752

The Defense & Aerospace Report, citing unnamed “sources involved in the [NGAD] program,” concludes that the existence of three NGAD demonstrators indicates that, at one point, three prime contractors or teams were involved and that this has since been whittled down to two. The podcast also states that the likely candidates were Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman — as the established heavyweights in terms of U.S. combat aircraft manufacturers, these three were always expected to be at the center of the competition.

Full Story:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/n ... ors-report

[Ravendriver2008]

And Combined Test Force at Edwards for this has stood up

https://www.edwards.af.mil/News/Article ... n-testing/

Cheers