Air Force unveils vision for future with F-47 fighter and unmanned aircraft

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Hey folks, and welcome to another edition of Weapons and Warfare for Straight Arrow News

I'm your host, Ryan Robertson. Those stories and more are just ahead on this week's episode

but we're starting with an eye on the future. Specifically, the Air Force's vision for the F-47, the collaborative combat aircraft

and their roles in maintaining air dominance. It's the subject of this week's debrief

Look at any modern military success the United States has achieved since World War II, and a few themes emerge

One of the most prominent is air dominance. Created as its own branch of service in 1947, the Air Force played a significant role in America's defense for nearly eight decades

So what do the next 77 years look like? To begin to answer that question, the Air Force's Director of Force Design, Integration, and Wargaming, Major General Joe Kunkel, sat down to talk about the F-47, collaborative combat aircraft, and American air dominance in the 21st century

He says after more than three decades of focusing on the Middle East the Air Force is taking a very hard look at itself comparing it to the end of Vietnam and the start of the Cold War We looking at it going wow we probably not the right size we probably not the right shape for this fight that we might have to fight against a different peer adversary

And so this force design is taking a different look. It's just like in the past, we're taking

a look at the threat and we're looking at how the threat impacts us and we're designing to that

Part of that design is leaning heavily into developing the F-47. Born from the next-generation air dominance program, the Boeing-designed jet will be America's first sixth-generation air superiority fighter

But it's not without some controversy. Frank Kendall, the Secretary of the Air Force during the Biden administration, publicly questioned the effort

citing cost, the eventual addition of CCAs to the force, and untapped potential in the current F-35 fleet

That's not a view shared by General Kunkel. The F-47, the NGAD, before we called it the F-47, absolutely does matter and changes the character of the fight

I mean, it does. It doesn't change the character of the fight just for the Air Force, it changes it for the Joint Force

It allows us to get places, allows the joint force to get places where it otherwise couldn't

It allows us to move closer to the adversary. It allows us to counter the adversary in ways we can't

With an expected combat radius of more than 1,100 miles and a top speed around Mach 2

the F-47 is expected to enter service sometime before 2029. That's around the same time as the collaborative combat aircraft

also known as the CCA, is expected to fly into service as well

These unmanned machines are seen as one of the key next steps in the DOD efforts to modernize the nation defense What CCA does in the fight is twofold One it provides affordable mass

but the other thing it does is it complicates the picture for an adversary. And, you know, as an air-to-air guy

we all know that the easiest picture is this single axis, single azimuth, you know, picture of the fight

What's more complex and harder to fight is this multi-axis, dense threat environment

And with CCAs, we have the opportunity to do that. This past March, the Air Force narrowed the list of potential builders for the project down to two, General Atomics and Anderil

Ground testing for the initial prototypes, the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A started in May, with the first flights anticipated sometime this summer

The Air Force intends to reach a production decision for increment one of the program a little less than a year from now

Ultimately, General Kunkel sees the CCA as not only a force multiplier, but a force enhancer

CCA integration with F-47 makes the F-47 better. CCA integration with F-35, F-22, I would suggest potentially in the future of B-21, E-7, and maybe just CCA on its own

complicates the adversary picture, puts us in a better position where it makes the fight better

for all of us. While much of the Air Force's planning is focused on years down the road

Kunkel says they are paying attention to what's happening around the world right now

citing examples of current conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, acknowledging that bigger

may not be better when it comes to neutralizing threats If we shooting multi dollar missiles against multi dollar drones we in this cost imposition that doesn make sense for us And we been pursuing cheaper weapons in a mix of you know affordable mass for a

long time. But that just, it was one more example where it's like, hey, this affordable mass, there's

something to it. We need to figure out how to do it so we don't find ourselves on, you know, depleting weapons

when, frankly, we don't need to. One thing the Air Force is very aware of is the traditional thinking about what air superiority looks like and how that's likely to change as programs like the B-21, CCA, and F-47 come online

There's probably places where there's mutual air denial, where no one has air superiority, but we're denying the air domain to the adversary

And I think in some of these cases, that may be perfectly acceptable

Where we don't have this dominating presence all the time, we're not trying to take over a plot of air, but we're certainly trying to deny it from the adversary and deny its use

Now, is that air superiority? I don't know. I tend to think it is

But it may not be, you know, the traditional definition that we've had

General Kunkel went on to say that the way the Air Force builds its arsenal is changing

moving from a this fighter or this bomber mindset to one of this system or that system

A total integration of fighters, bombers, air refuelers, hypersonics, and unmanned aircraft, just to name a few

We are on the verge of something great. We've got the right people in place to develop the right capabilities

We've figured out what it takes to win, and we are aggressively pursuing those things