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Not a problem. The fighter-mafia part of the AF has no interest in the next war and have no use for NGAD. An A2A platform with the legs to get from Guam is a co

• dralley 2y ago
  As far as I can tell (as someone completely outside the military / related industry, but with interest in the topic), opposition to NGAD isn't coming from the "fighter mafia" but from people who think that A) we don't have the luxury of waiting that long to start deploying new equipment like e.g. directed energy weapons, or B) that the nature of air combat is going to change so radically in the next 10-20 years that NGAD might end up obsolete much earlier than we expect. Or both. The fighter mafia were dismissive of the new and shiny, this is kind of the opposite. Like, they want the new and shiny, but they want it so badly that they don't want to wait around for the perfect system that seamlessly integrates dozens of new and shiny systems (and is constantly delayed with massive budget overruns when any single one of them has issues). I get the impression they want to just strap a bunch of shit onto the B-21 or some unmanned platform and refine the technology a bit before they spend (tens, hundreds of) billions of dollars on development and procurement of a brand new fighter that tries to integrate it all, while at the same time dealing with a bunch of other projects that are behind schedule and overbudget. But I could be missing something.