The US Air Force’s US$20 billion next-gen fighter jet question

The Pentagon must make a decision about its F-22 Raptor programme and how to keep up with China, outgoing air force chief says

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The United States must decide whether to replace its decades-old F-22 Raptor with a new fighter, a top Pentagon official says. Photo: EPA-EFE

Hayley Wongin BeijingandEnoch Wongin Hong Kong

Published: 6:00am, 18 Jan 2025Updated: 2:44pm, 18 Jan 2025

Outgoing US Air Force secretary Frank Kendall has outlined two alternatives to building a new, hugely expensive next-generation stealth fighter platform to keep up with China in the race for air superiority.

Speaking at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies on Monday, Kendall said the next US administration must decide whether to complete the design of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) platform as a replacement for the decades-old F-22 Raptor, and go into production.

If it did press on, the US would need to add more than US$20 billion to the project’s budget just to cover research and development.

But he said another option to building an F-22 replacement was to create a F-35 successor that could manage uncrewed collaborative combat aircraft. The US could also put more reliance on long-range missile strikes, which was “relatively inexpensive”.

“But there are other priorities that we really need to fund first, so this decision ultimately depends upon [whether there] is enough money in the budget to buy all the other things we need, and is NGAD the right thing to buy,” he said.

Kendall – who will leave his post on Sunday after four years in the position – added that the air force might only be able to afford a small part of NGAD, even if they decided to go ahead with it.