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This Is Our First Look at the Air Force’s Secret New Fighter Jet
Here's everything we can see on the mysterious sixth-generation plane.

By [url=https://www.popularmechanics.com/author/14085/kyle-mizokami/]Kyle Mizokami
Apr 15, 2021


U.S. Air Force

• A U.S. Air Force report depicts the service’s secret new fighter jet.
  
• The Air Force has built and flown the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter, but hasn’t publicly revealed the mysterious aircraft.
  
• It’s unclear if the new concept art bears any resemblance to the actual aircraft.
  

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Last fall, the U.S. Air Force shockingly revealed it had designed, built, and tested a secret new fighter jet in the span of just one year. The mysterious fighter is part of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program, an Air Force project designed to supplement and eventually replace the F-22 Raptor.
✈ You love badass planes. So do we. Let’s nerd out over them together.
Beyond admitting the plane exists—and uses F1-style engineering—the Air Force has told us little else about its NGAD fighter. But the service might have just dropped its most concrete clue yet: intriguing concept art of a fighter aircraft being built under the NGAD program. Is it the secret new fighter jet?
The image above appears on page 55 (“Next Generation Air Dominance”) of the Air Force’s biennial report for acquisition, which it released last week. The aircraft depicted is a large, diamond-shaped fighter jet with large engine air intakes over the airplane’s wing, trailing to the left and right of the cockpit, where the intakes would be shielded from radar from below. The aircraft also features two engines, a bubble canopy cockpit, and two vertical stabilizers that can be retracted to fold flat into the wings.
Everything We Know About the Secret New Fighter Jet

It Uses F1-Style Engineering


It's Stuffed With Secret Tech


Lockheed Likely Built It

Here’s what the NGAD section of the report says:

Quote:“Designed to complement the F-35, F-22, joint, and partner forces in the Air Superiority role, Next Generation Air Dominance is an advanced aircraft program for development of penetrating counter air platforms with multi-domain awareness, agile resilient communications, and an integrated family of capabilities.”

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The image also hints at the capability to refit the aircraft with weapon and propulsion upgrades. The fighter is seen alongside three versions of air-to-air missiles, landing gear, and engines labeled V1, V2, and V3. Modern combat aircraft receive new weapons all the time, but refitting an existing aircraft with new engines is generally considered too complicated.
Badass.

Concept art of a future U.S. fighter jet shooting down incoming missiles with a laser weapon system.
U.S. Air Force
The Air Force developed the secret fighter jet with digital engineering technology designed to dramatically shorten the development time of new aircraft. Digital engineering involves the use of virtual modeling and simulation tools. NGAD’s ability to rapidly absorb new, complex upgrades may be partly due to digital engineering.

NGAD will complement the F-22 Raptor in the Air Force’s fighter inventory.
KARIM SAHIBGetty Images
So, is the image a viable NGAD design? Indeed, the aircraft looks like a fighter jet built for speed and all-around stealth. It’s hard to get a sense of the size, but it could well be bigger than the F-22.
The blended body and wing configuration would yield a large internal volume that could store fuel and weapons carried in internal weapons bays. The Air Force reportedly wants a fighter with the range to accompany bombers into deep penetration missions, just as the P-51D Mustang flew alongside the B-17G Flying Fortress in World War II. That requires a fighter with a large internal fuel supply.
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Could This Be the Air Force’s Next Fighter Jet?

The folding vertical stabilizers would increase stealth in the down position, but why have them at all? Keeping them around likely has some benefit versus deleting them, such as increased maneuverability or fuel efficiency.

Air Force depiction of the B-21 Raider bomber.
Northrop Grumman
The NGAD fighter wouldn’t work alone. In the concept art, two vertical lines emanate from the aircraft nose and are aimed upward, indicating connections to satellite and airborne communications nodes. That would allow the NGAD pilot to jack into a stream of data from nearby friendly forces, from Air Force airborne early warning aircraft to Navy destroyers, and obtain a picture of the battlefield without turning on his or her own radar and other sensor systems. That’s the “multi-domain awareness” to which the Air Force refers.
It’s impossible to know for sure if the NGAD image is representative of the real aircraft. It does seem like the image properly depicts the kind of plane and capabilities the Air Force has said it wants. Whatever the case, we’ll hopefully know what the new fighter jet looks like soon.

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If it's real, that's probably TMI. You just know there are hundreds of Chicom agents here in the US eager to be the first to deliver the informational goods now that they have a taste.

I did some security work for Lockheed. You had to have a Top Secret clearance just to work the front desk... and you know the Chicoms will find a way to steal the designs anyhow.It's what they do, once they get wind.

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I do not know anything about airplanes, fighter jets or aviation in general.

But this HAS to be back-engineering  

Is that the correct term? Humans did not make this alone. UFO crashed or was captured. Then it was put into pieces, trying to understand it... And then put it back up together. Look at that thing! It is not your everyday aircraft.

"Dominance".

It wasn't enough to have parity.

We had to have superiority.

But even that was weak tea compared to supremacy.

Now it is dominance.

Can they better that word?  Might have to change it because it sounds like a white power thing.



Cheers

@"Finspiracy" 

An interesting comment attributed to a British soldier charged with recovery of advanced technology from Nazi Germany in 1945 -- 

Quote:We won in the nick of time.

Been lots of speculation that the Germans were up to interesting things right up to when Soviet soldiers kicked in the door of Hitler's bunker.  And that such knowledge was seized by the USA, the UK, and the Soviets.

Cheers

(04-27-2021, 09:55 AM)F2d5thCav Wrote: @"Finspiracy" 

An interesting comment attributed to a British soldier charged with recovery of advanced technology from Nazi Germany in 1945 -- 

Quote:We won in the nick of time.

Been lots of speculation that the Germans were up to interesting things right up to when Soviet soldiers kicked in the door of Hitler's bunker.  And that such knowledge was seized by the USA, the UK, and the Soviets.

Cheers

That is not only speculation. It is a fact. It is 2021 now, and German engineering work is still one of the best in the world, if not THE best. And a large part of that is due to WW2, they were designing all kinds of stuff, day and night. They were serious about it.

(04-27-2021, 09:53 AM)F2d5thCav Wrote: "Dominance".

It wasn't enough to have parity.

We had to have superiority.

But even that was weak tea compared to supremacy.

Now it is dominance.

Can they better that word?  Might have to change it because it sounds like a white power thing.



Cheers

" The Eradicator " !

@"Finspiracy" 

>It is 2021 now, and German engineering work is still one of the best in the world, if not THE best.

They're good at some things, like automobiles and precision machines.  They make good cuckoo clocks, too (but not watches -- that belong to the Swiss).

But they missed the boat on atomic weapons, and perhaps more critically, programmable computers.  Took them FOREVER to leave their four-ring binders behind and transition to modern information systems.  They still badly lag in computer hardware and software, I am aware of only one large German firm that does database work and is among the leaders in the field.

Cheers

@"727Sky" 


"Air Eradication"

I like that.  NOTHING else flies.  Sounds like the logical end to that naming system.

Cheers

(04-27-2021, 05:41 PM)F2d5thCav Wrote: @"Finspiracy" 

>It is 2021 now, and German engineering work is still one of the best in the world, if not THE best.

They're good at some things, like automobiles and precision machines.  They make good cuckoo clocks, too (but not watches -- that belong to the Swiss).

But they missed the boat on atomic weapons, and perhaps more critically, programmable computers.  Took them FOREVER to leave their four-ring binders behind and transition to modern information systems.  They still badly lag in computer hardware and software, I am aware of only one large German firm that does database work and is among the leaders in the field.

Cheers

one thing about german engineering, they tend to over engineer things. i use to repair electrical equipment. we also did mechanical repairs. they would put way to many relays, overloads, contactors, switches, and other things in some circuts. then there was this one brand of pneumatic and rotary hammers, that had so many different size shims to space out the cylinder that ran through a housing that had a support boss that if you put the the shims in the wrong place it wouldn't work. the overall length was the same but if you put a shim that was a 1000th thicker or smaller in the wrong position, the wouldn't hit or turn right.  

when their stuff is working, it's fine equipment or what ever it is. when it breaks it's a pain in the ass to work on.

(04-27-2021, 07:24 PM)hounddoghowlie Wrote:

(04-27-2021, 05:41 PM)F2d5thCav Wrote: @"Finspiracy" 

>It is 2021 now, and German engineering work is still one of the best in the world, if not THE best.

They're good at some things, like automobiles and precision machines.  They make good cuckoo clocks, too (but not watches -- that belong to the Swiss).

But they missed the boat on atomic weapons, and perhaps more critically, programmable computers.  Took them FOREVER to leave their four-ring binders behind and transition to modern information systems.  They still badly lag in computer hardware and software, I am aware of only one large German firm that does database work and is among the leaders in the field.

Cheers

one thing about german engineering, they tend to over engineer things. i use to repair electrical equipment. we also did mechanical repairs. they would put way to many relays, overloads, contactors, switches, and other things in some circuts. then there was this one brand of pneumatic and rotary hammers, that had so many different size shims to space out the cylinder that ran through a housing that had a support boss that if you put the the shims in the wrong place it wouldn't work. the overall length was the same but if you put a shim that was a 1000th thicker or smaller in the wrong position, the wouldn't hit or turn right.  

when their stuff is working, it's fine equipment or what ever it is. when it breaks it's a pain in the ass to work on.

Tell me about it!

I was manager for a while of the print department for a company that made plastic bottles and silk-screened the labels onto them. My department revolved around a Kamann silk screen printing machine. The only reason they hired me was due to my electronics background, because I could deal with the relays and switches and logic circuits to keep that damned thing running. The power and switching panel was as big as the doggone machine was, and packed full of intricate little doodads. The timing on the machine was perfect, but it took 45 minutes for me to set it up before every run and get the timing adjusted to the bottle size. It could be finicky... but once it was set, it ticked along like a clock. I could print 1500 to 2000 bottles an hour on it, and keep the packers that worked for me busy. They liked the set up time as well - I had to herd them out of the break room when it was time to rock and roll!


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