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As the Air Force continues its study of a future Penetrating Counterair capability, the service is working to mature additional air dominance capabilities that it could field on the new platform or be fed onto other systems.
The service's fiscal year 2018 budget request called for $4.5 billion over the future years defense plan to fund Next-Generation Air Dominance research and development efforts. Some of that money supports an ongoing PCA analysis of alternatives, but Col. Tom Coglitore, who is leading the AOA, told Inside the Air Force this week the funding is also supporting key risk-reduction efforts to prepare the service to field and support any capability needs identified in the AOA. The AOA is slated to conclude in about a year.
Coglitore spoke at a July 10 Mitchell Institute event along with other members of the team that recommended the PCA study as part of an Air Dominance 2030 report the service published last year. He told ITAF following the event the parallel risk-reduction work is key to helping the service prepare to field PCA technologies in the late 2020s.
"There are things that we're going to need -- whether it's from PCA or other things," Coglitore said. "So we're pursuing that path right now. And then as the AOA finishes up, that will help us zero in on what the important attributes are and then what risks we need to burn down in order to enable that capability to be developed."
Coglitore would not highlight specific technologies the service is testing -- so far, those are all classified -- but said they include mostly "mission systems-related things" in the research and development realm. The FY-18 budget request calls for $294 million for NGAD next year and $507 million in FY-19. That request more than doubles to $1.3 billion in FY-20. The service attempted to reprogram $147 million to support the effort in FY-17, but Congress denied the request. Coglitore said those funds would have directly supported the risk-reduction work.
The Air Force has been laying a foundation for a new air-dominance platform for several years. Pentagon officials in 2011 approved a requirement for an F-22 follow-on -- once pegged as a sixth-generation fighter, then dubbed more broadly as Next-Generation Air Dominance. Last summer, as part of a renewed developmental planning and experimentation effort, the service conducted the Air Dominance 2030 study, which considered what technology gaps might preclude the service from maintaining air superiority against future threats.
That study helped the service refine its vision for NGAD, according to Brig Gen. Alex Grynkewich, who led the effort and spoke at the July 12 event. Rather than view NGAD as a single platform to replace the F-22 or F-35, he said, the service now thinks of it "more as a node in a network than as a fighter or a replacement."
"It's really not a replacement for those," Grynkewich said. "It's a distinct capability that I would argue provides a key node in that network to help find and fix. . . . That node in the network could be used for kinetic effects, it could be used for non-kinetic effects or any number of things."
Grynkewich noted that the NGAD moniker is a "legacy" term that pre-dates last year's study. While the service still uses the term to label the AOA and the risk-reduction work, PCA is the specific capability it is pursuing.
"We're wrestling ourselves with the nomenclature a little bit," he said.
Coglitore noted that it's important to view PCA as one piece of a family of capabilities and not to bill it as a fighter or particular type of platform.
"Those folks who say it's a fighter, they're looking at it in an old-school way versus how we have looked at it for several years now," he said.
The ongoing AOA is seeking to define the PCA trade space and along with considering what the sensors and mission systems might look like, it is also evaluating whether existing platforms may be able to host those capabilities or whether the service should build something new to host them, Coglitore said.
He told ITAF the Air Dominance 2030 study looked closely at the cost of restarting the F-22 line to potentially support PCA capabilities and confirmed that analysis is being considered as part of the AOA.
"In our one-year study, we looked at the cost of re-starting and the capabilities we could incorporate into a new or modernized F-22 or even an existing F-22 and all of those were taken into consideration," he said. "They will also be taken into consideration in the AOA as well. So we always -- in the analysis of alternatives, we always look at existing programs to see if they can meet our needs. If it does, then we'll have good, solid numbers for how much that will cost. If it doesn't, we'll look for other opportunities to provide that capability."
The Air Force sent Congress a classified report last month on the cost and feasibility of restarting the line, which stopped production in 2012. In an unclassified summary, the service said it estimates it would cost about $50 billion to buy an additional 194 F-22s at about $206 million to $216 million per jet. That total includes $9.9 billion for non-recurring start-up costs.
https://insidedefense.com/daily-news/air-force-conducting-ngad-risk-reduction-support-pca-analysis
The service's fiscal year 2018 budget request called for $4.5 billion over the future years defense plan to fund Next-Generation Air Dominance research and development efforts. Some of that money supports an ongoing PCA analysis of alternatives, but Col. Tom Coglitore, who is leading the AOA, told Inside the Air Force this week the funding is also supporting key risk-reduction efforts to prepare the service to field and support any capability needs identified in the AOA. The AOA is slated to conclude in about a year.
Coglitore spoke at a July 10 Mitchell Institute event along with other members of the team that recommended the PCA study as part of an Air Dominance 2030 report the service published last year. He told ITAF following the event the parallel risk-reduction work is key to helping the service prepare to field PCA technologies in the late 2020s.
"There are things that we're going to need -- whether it's from PCA or other things," Coglitore said. "So we're pursuing that path right now. And then as the AOA finishes up, that will help us zero in on what the important attributes are and then what risks we need to burn down in order to enable that capability to be developed."
Coglitore would not highlight specific technologies the service is testing -- so far, those are all classified -- but said they include mostly "mission systems-related things" in the research and development realm. The FY-18 budget request calls for $294 million for NGAD next year and $507 million in FY-19. That request more than doubles to $1.3 billion in FY-20. The service attempted to reprogram $147 million to support the effort in FY-17, but Congress denied the request. Coglitore said those funds would have directly supported the risk-reduction work.
The Air Force has been laying a foundation for a new air-dominance platform for several years. Pentagon officials in 2011 approved a requirement for an F-22 follow-on -- once pegged as a sixth-generation fighter, then dubbed more broadly as Next-Generation Air Dominance. Last summer, as part of a renewed developmental planning and experimentation effort, the service conducted the Air Dominance 2030 study, which considered what technology gaps might preclude the service from maintaining air superiority against future threats.
That study helped the service refine its vision for NGAD, according to Brig Gen. Alex Grynkewich, who led the effort and spoke at the July 12 event. Rather than view NGAD as a single platform to replace the F-22 or F-35, he said, the service now thinks of it "more as a node in a network than as a fighter or a replacement."
"It's really not a replacement for those," Grynkewich said. "It's a distinct capability that I would argue provides a key node in that network to help find and fix. . . . That node in the network could be used for kinetic effects, it could be used for non-kinetic effects or any number of things."
Grynkewich noted that the NGAD moniker is a "legacy" term that pre-dates last year's study. While the service still uses the term to label the AOA and the risk-reduction work, PCA is the specific capability it is pursuing.
"We're wrestling ourselves with the nomenclature a little bit," he said.
Coglitore noted that it's important to view PCA as one piece of a family of capabilities and not to bill it as a fighter or particular type of platform.
"Those folks who say it's a fighter, they're looking at it in an old-school way versus how we have looked at it for several years now," he said.
The ongoing AOA is seeking to define the PCA trade space and along with considering what the sensors and mission systems might look like, it is also evaluating whether existing platforms may be able to host those capabilities or whether the service should build something new to host them, Coglitore said.
He told ITAF the Air Dominance 2030 study looked closely at the cost of restarting the F-22 line to potentially support PCA capabilities and confirmed that analysis is being considered as part of the AOA.
"In our one-year study, we looked at the cost of re-starting and the capabilities we could incorporate into a new or modernized F-22 or even an existing F-22 and all of those were taken into consideration," he said. "They will also be taken into consideration in the AOA as well. So we always -- in the analysis of alternatives, we always look at existing programs to see if they can meet our needs. If it does, then we'll have good, solid numbers for how much that will cost. If it doesn't, we'll look for other opportunities to provide that capability."
The Air Force sent Congress a classified report last month on the cost and feasibility of restarting the line, which stopped production in 2012. In an unclassified summary, the service said it estimates it would cost about $50 billion to buy an additional 194 F-22s at about $206 million to $216 million per jet. That total includes $9.9 billion for non-recurring start-up costs.
https://insidedefense.com/daily-news/air-force-conducting-ngad-risk-reduction-support-pca-analysis
