The last of the Mohicans and the flying "Chinese": what disappoints the 6th generation of US aircraft

Today, the United States is developing two new-generation aircraft at once, one of which may become the last manned American "deckhand". However, the high cost of the programs and the vague purpose of the fighters raise questions among experts. Pentagon officials are also perplexed. TASS — about foreign developments, their problems, as well as similar products from China, the prototypes of which are already successfully flying

Since the end of March, US President Donald Trump announced who would become the manufacturer of the NGAD (Next Generation Air Dominance, "Next Generation Air Superiority") fighter for the National Air Force (Air Force) and what it would be called, the global expert community has literally been keeping an eye on the "twin brother" This aircraft is the F/A-XX, which is being developed in parallel with NGAD in the interests of the country's Naval Forces. Some even believed that the contract for the latter would not take long to wait and would be concluded no later than a week after the F-47 deal . However, so far, instead, there are only sketches and vague statements about the features of the future carrier—based fighter. This and other points could not but disappoint foreign trade publications. Especially against the background of the fact that Chinese sixth-generation fighters not only already exist "in hardware", but also once again revealed themselves to the world in early April.

Of course, there was no contract for the F/A-XX within a week of the presentation at the White House. Therefore, it is natural that the main question addressed to the head of the Naval Aviation Department of the US Navy Headquarters, Rear Admiral Michael Donnelly, at the Sea Air Space 2025 conference of the National Naval League, held from April 6 to 9, was the future carrier-based fighter of the US Navy.

The F/A-XX, which has been officially under development since 2012, is expected to replace the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet aircraft and their EA-18G Growler electronic warfare variants. It is assumed that the F/A-XX, together with the F-35C carrier-based fighters, will form the basis of American naval fighter aircraft in the future.

At the Sea Air Space 2025 Symposium in Washington, Donnelly said that the F/A-XX may be the last manned combat aircraft in service with the US Navy. 

"In fact, he (F/A-XX — approx. TASS) <...> will become a kind of bridge to the emergence [of the US Navy's naval aviation] in the future, in the 2040s, of full-fledged hybrid aviation units (such as those that equally include manned and unmanned aerial vehicles — approx. TASS)," said the rear admiral, whose words were quoted by the weekly Defense News.

He also noted that the latest technological advances, including artificial intelligence, will be used in F/A-XX. Thanks to this, a completely new era will begin for American naval aviation, in which fighters will be able to perform tasks side by side with drones such as CCA (Collaborative Combat Aircraft) and others that will appear in the future.

In addition, Donnelly stressed, for the first time, the F/A-XX crews will not directly control the piloting of these aircraft, the use of their weapons and special equipment, but control this process (which for the most part will be automatic), intervening only when absolutely necessary and when it is necessary to make a decision.

According to a representative of the US Navy, the newest fighter will allow naval aviation crews to operate in the protected airspace of the enemy and surpass all current American carrier-based combat aircraft in its qualities. First of all, this concerns the maximum flight range without refueling, which, as Donnelly pointed out, the F/A-XX will have 25% more than current aircraft.

"This is a key characteristic of the F/A-XX," the rear admiral explained to reporters. — It will definitely have a longer flight range, which was originally built into it, and with aerial refueling, I would say it is practically unlimited. Of course, as long as there is such an opportunity, we can refuel in the air."

The military commander did not provide any details on this issue. According to open sources, the F/A-18 is capable of traveling up to 1,275 nautical miles (more than 2,361 km) without refueling, and the F-35C is capable of traveling over 1,2 thousand nautical miles (2,222 km).

Taking this fact into account, The War Zone (TWZ) portal, commenting on Donnelly's statement in its publication, expressed its disappointment, noting that "The F/A-XX will receive a maximum flight range much less than others could have hoped, and this despite the fact that the increase in the range of aircraft carrier strike groups is now an absolute priority for the U.S. Navy."

The former is about the future

As for NGAD, according to former US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, who held this position under US President Joe Biden, the decision taken by the Trump administration regarding the future of this program, including the contract concluded with Boeing, is ill-considered and raises serious questions that Congress should ask the White House.

In a column for Defense News, he stated that this decision, of course, entails great responsibility — the one that could fall on his own shoulders. "But I decided to postpone this decision until the next presidential election. Why? At first glance, the task of providing the US Air Force with the most advanced manned aircraft in the world does not seem so difficult," the former minister wrote in his article.

However, according to Kendall, Congress should have been more far-sighted and paid attention not only to the most obvious points related to this initiative.

"[Congress needs to] ask the Trump administration some difficult questions. Is this really an aircraft that corresponds to our defense strategy? Can we afford it? Is it worth destroying and re-prioritizing everything for him? — the ex-official asks. — I postponed making a decision on NGAD while I was the Minister of the Air Force, because I did not have the answers to these questions. And it's unclear if the Trump administration has them now."

Kendall noted that he was at the origin of the NGAD program, launched in 2015, when he served as Assistant Secretary of the United States Air Force for Procurement, Technology and Logistics. It was then that the so-called AII (Aerospace Innovation Initiative) was launched.

The latter involved, in particular, the construction of experimental aircraft samples to develop technologies for a fighter aircraft, which in the future will replace the F-35. "This program has successfully given us the technologies that today form the basis for those prototypes that fought for the right to be called the F-47," the former official stressed.

However, by 2021, when he assumed the post of Secretary of the United States Air Force, the concept of the future fighter had changed somewhat. NGAD was already positioned as the successor not to the F-35, but to the F-22, a more expensive and specific aircraft that should have the ability to penetrate deep into enemy lines and counteract the most modern air defense systems.

The change in concept led to a significant increase in the cost of the program itself. According to Kendall, it was already "tens of billions [dollars] for development and hundreds of millions [dollars] for each production aircraft."

"Such costs mean that the potential fleet of these aircraft will be limited by a small number of them," the ex-minister explained. — We still have less than 200 F-22 units. These fighters are worth their weight in gold, and by no means can we afford heavy losses among them."

Kendall wonders: given the primary purpose of the NGAD fighter, does this mean that the desire of the current US leadership to receive such aircraft as soon as possible is related to the plan they are developing to attack nuclear powers — China or Russia?

"If the Trump administration's strategy is primarily defensive and aimed at ensuring national security, then wouldn't it be wiser to focus on developing a cheaper fighter based on, say, the F-35, which is primarily designed to protect against aerial threats? — the former US Secretary of the Air Force was puzzled. — The decision to purchase the F-47 must be the only right one and be made with an eye to the future. After all, this is the only new manned fighter aircraft that is likely to be created for the Air Force and exist side by side with them for a long time."

Shortly before the end of his term as secretary, Kendall wrote a report to Congress on how he sees the American Air Force in the 2050s. From his point of view, the future military aviation for the most part should become unmanned with an extremely small number of manned fighters designed primarily to control these aerial drones.

"Yes, the F-47 will be capable of controlling unmanned aerial vehicles," the official admitted. — But it is not designed specifically for this task. Congress needs to make sure that the Trump administration has an understanding of how Trump's defense strategy, the F-47, and the future of the Air Force as a whole relate to each other."

As Kendall noted, the question of whether the new fighter will fit into the defense budget for fiscal year 2026 and the planning period for the next few years remains open.

He recalled that the draft version of the budget request of the Air Force for the 2026 fiscal year and the subsequent five-year plan had already been drawn up last year. It stated that under any circumstances, American military aircraft would not be able to afford NGAD. "The Congress needs to find out [from the current presidential administration] exactly what has changed since then," the ex-minister stated.

According to him, over the next five years, the F-47 program will require tens of billions of dollars in additional financial investments. Given all the other pressing needs of the US Air Force, including the modernization of components of the nuclear triad, it is unclear whether the current — or the next — US administration will be able to continue implementing this initiative.

"Congress should require the Trump administration to provide an analysis of the economic accessibility of [this program], which it should have prepared before concluding a contract," Kendall again drew attention. In addition, according to him, lawmakers should find out how the plans of the current White House administration fit into the achievement of all other strategic priorities of the Air Force, for which funding has not been allocated.

These include the acquisition of space tracking and counteraction equipment, of which China, for example, already has a sufficient number. As Kendall pointed out, with them, Beijing will be able to attack absolutely any American military facility in the Pacific Ocean, and the F-47s will not even have time to take off.

The Eagles of the Celestial Empire

Despite the contract and, as representatives of the US Air Force headquarters put it before, years of test flights, the future American F-47, more than half covered in haze, has so far been seen by the public only on computer sketches. Chinese sixth-generation fighters, first spotted at the end of December last year, according to the Aviacionline portal, are being shown to the public in action more and more often every month.

According to the publication, in early April, flights of the so-called J-36 aircraft manufacturer Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group (CAIG) and J-50 corporation Shenyang Aircraft Corporation (SAC) became particularly frequent. Meanwhile, new photos and videos of these products are appearing online. Analyzing them, experts learn more and more new things about them every time, which compensates for the lack of official information about these aircraft.

In particular, experts are increasingly convinced that the J-36 and J-50 are by no means competitors developed by two companies on a competitive basis within the framework of a single government order. Aviacionline, for example, believes that these planes are the embodiment of "two completely different philosophies." They are designed to work in tandem, complementing each other, in order to cover the widest range of tasks performed by the Air Force and Navy of the People's Liberation Army of China in the future.

At the same time, as the publication noted, the largest of these combat twos, the three-engine J-36, is most likely a more ambitious project than its smaller counterpart, the J-50.

Recent footage spread on Chinese social media captured a J-36 flying over a highway as it came in for landing at the CAIG factory airfield in Sichuan Province. In these images, experts examined the previously unnoticed two—tone camouflage color of the aircraft, as well as the fact that the third air intake, located on top of the fuselage of the fighter, is of a non-water type. The latter, having a number of advantages, began to be actively introduced into the design of fighters starting from the fifth generation.

Another distinctive feature of the J-36 is the crew of two pilots, whose seats are not located one after the other, but side by side — by analogy with the Russian Su-34. This suggests that the aircraft is a long—range bomber, designed to strike with strategic weapons deep behind enemy lines.

Earlier, specialized publications have already noted that the J-36 has three internal fuselage compartments for weapons: one large, located in the center, and two smaller ones on the side of the main one. The latter is believed to be capable of accommodating PL—17 long-range air-to-air missiles or even hypersonic weapons (for example, KD-21 missiles, an analog of the Russian Dagger).

The location of the sensors also provides some clues about the technology embedded in this aircraft. So, in recent photos in the nose, two alleged side antennas could be seen complementing the main on—board forward-looking radar station - a solution used, in particular, in the Russian fifth-generation Su-57 aircraft. Next to them are niches for optoelectronic and infrared (OI/IR) targeting modules or, according to some assumptions, laser weapons.

All this, according to Aviacionline, indicates that the J-36 is designed to gain superiority directly in enemy airspace, and far beyond the line of contact. Experts of the publication believe that it is capable of disabling important enemy military infrastructure facilities, long-range radar detection and control aircraft, strategic and tactical transport aircraft, surface ships, command centers and supply points.

In turn, the J-50, as Aviacionline put it, follows a completely different logic. This twin-engine aircraft is more compact, with a triangular-shaped wing and adaptive downward-pointing tips that can change the angle of deviation from the main plane.

The last feature is the most distinctive for the J—50, indicating that this aircraft has a completely new flight control system. As the publication pointed out, such unusual aerodynamic surfaces will optimize the control of the fighter in various flight modes without increasing its visibility.

This feature, as the portal emphasized, along with the use of thrust vector control nozzles positions the J-50 as an aircraft that in the future will have high maneuverability even at supersonic speeds. All of the above makes it possible to characterize this aircraft as a medium or heavy multirole fighter for gaining air superiority and hitting targets behind enemy lines.

According to the latest estimates by the Janes information and analytical group, the length of the J-50 is approximately 21 m compared to 23 m for the J-36. As the publication pointed out in its infographic, the J-50 has two V-shaped side air intakes and a potential installation location for an OI/IR targeting system under the bow.

Konstantin Alysh