By
Ben Russo
July 30, 2024
What will the world be like in the year 2075? Come on, it is only 50 years from now. There are not many variables to think about. Technology doesn’t move that fast, right?
Wrong.
There is no way to accurately predict what the world will look like in five decades. However, the Pentagon thinks it has an answer: it still expects to be relying on the F-35, and only the F-35, a jet first proposed during the 1990s, right on into (and beyond) 2085.
Defense News reports, without irony: “In the new report to lawmakers, GAO said the Defense Department now plans to fly the F-35 through 2088, 11 years longer than services most recently anticipated.”
The Government Accountability Office notes that the lifetime cost of the F-35 will increase, surpassing $2 trillion, if it remains in service for that long. In a perfect example of circular reasoning, the Pentagon intends to stay with the F-35 because it costs so much, even though it costs so much (in part) because the Pentagon intends to stay with it for so long. Oddly, as the cost goes up, the usefulness of the jet goes down.
GAO adds that the “Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps project they will fly the F-35 aircraft less than originally estimated on an annual basis.”
Of course, the cost isn’t even the biggest problem with this approach. We live in a world governed by Moore’s law, which indicates that technology tends to double every 18 months. There is no way that a plane designed in the early 2000s could keep up with that pace. The F-35 is risking obsolescence today, let alone a half-century from now. The DoD has continuously misjudged how fast the Chinese would be able to update and expand their military defensive and power projection capabilities. Why should we expect that the DoD will do any better in the future with counter military programs if they continue down the same planning cycle pathway?
So, what is the answer? The Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program.
NGAD fuels innovation in the military space. “The technologies involved in NGAD are being developed to provide air dominance,” as the
U.S. Naval Institute explains. “Part of the program’s goal is to determine how to achieve that end, independent of traditional ideas.”
The key is to keep the program open-ended. Rather than dictate what the outcome should be, NGAD
encourages experimentation. “NGAD could take the form of a single aircraft and/or a number of complementary systems—manned, unmanned, optionally manned, cyber, electronic—forms that would not resemble the traditional ‘fighter.’”
Some are trying to delay the NGAD approach, hoping that slowing down innovation will benefit the problematic F-35 program. Our peer adversaries, though, will harness artificial intelligence and utilize deep data lakes in ways that we cannot foresee. Their OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act) will operate more efficiently and effectively than ours, “leapfrogging” over our technologies and out-stripping our ability to react in a timely manner.
The Chinese are counting on the United States entrenched bureaucratic and capitalistic mindset in defense program development. According to the
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), China has identified a “historic opportunity” for national security leapfrog technologies; essentially what is behind technologically can be skipped developmentally and adopt the next generation. Meanwhile, the US will proceed as normal and continue to remain behind schedule, under perform, and over budget.
The F-35 is “a fighter jet that exhibits everything from structural cracks to cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Twenty years in development — and it still can’t shoot straight and is
rarely ready to fly when it is needed,” commentator
Dan Grazier wrote in The Hill a few years ago. “Billions of dollars in, and with
nearly 900 documented design flaws — many potentially fatal and with no fix in the works — and the
federal government cannot seem to break free of this budget albatross.”
The best way to leapfrog the incremental and delayed updates of the F-35 would be to encourage innovation through NGAD. The DoD needs to embrace with open arms a wider network of the US’s industrial brainpower and bring innovation to bear faster than ever before. They need to adopt open architecture platforms to encourage continuous competition in future upgrades rather than remain mired in forever contracts that will increase costs at the detriment of the taxpayer. Stop with the status quo of acquisitions and political “priorities”.
Instead of continuously trying to play catch-up with the F-35’s perceived advancement plans, let’s find ways to soar past it, and keep several technological generations ahead of potential enemies in Russia and China. That’s the way to an unmatched military future.
Ben Russo is Retired Lt Col. and Former strategic and operational planner within PACOM, EUCOM, and Air Mobility Command.
theaviationist.com
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