The US Air Force’s US$20 billion next-gen fighter jet question

Speaking at the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies on Monday, Kendall said the next US administration must decide whether to complete the design of the Next Generation Air Dominance

(NGAD) platform as a replacement for the decades-old F-22 Raptor

, and go into production.

If it did press on, the US would need to add more than US$20 billion to the project’s budget just to cover research and development.

But he said another option to building an F-22 replacement was to create a F-35 successor that could manage uncrewed collaborative combat aircraft. The US could also put more reliance on long-range missile strikes, which was “relatively inexpensive”.

“But there are other priorities that we really need to fund first, so this decision ultimately depends upon [whether there] is enough money in the budget to buy all the other things we need, and is NGAD the right thing to buy,” he said.

Kendall – who will leave his post on Sunday after four years in the position – added that the air force might only be able to afford a small part of NGAD, even if they decided to go ahead with it.