The Air Force Research Laboratory released the video below in 2018 , which shows various notional advanced capabilities, including a manned sixth-generation fighter jet and loyal wingman drones, which could be in service in the 2030 timeframe.

“If we were to characterize it [NGAD] as a fighter, we would be… thinking too narrowly about what kind of airplane we need in a highly contested environment,” U.S. Air Force Major General Scott Pleus, who is currently Director of Air and Cyber Operations for Pacific Air Forces, recently told Air Force Magazine . “A B-21 [Raider stealth bomber] that also has air-to-air capabilities” and can “work with the family of systems to defend itself, utilizing stealth – maybe that’s where the sixth-generation airplane comes from.”

The U.S. Air Force is still working to iron out just what it thinks air-to-air combat will look like a decade from now and what types of aircraft it will need to come out on top in any future fight. As part of its ongoing Next Generation Air Dominance program, or NGAD, the service is exploring a wide array of manned , unmanned , and pilot-optional concepts , as well as advanced associated technologies, including increased network connectivity and autonomous capabilities . At the same time, however, it has steadily moved away from plans for a once much-touted sixth-generation fighter jet.

It’s not clear if he literally meant an aircraft as large as a B-21 Raider, or the B-21 Raider itself, acting as a manned component of the Air Force’s future air-to-air combat ecosystem or if he was simply referring to repackaging the stealth bomber’s state-of-the-art features and capabilities in something like a very stealthy unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV). However, The War Zone has pored over the available information about the B-21 on a number of occasions and explored how the bomber itself could serve in multiple roles, including in an air-to-air capacity. A tailless, stealthy, comparatively long-range tactical jet that many had labeled a sixth-generation fighter had been the focus of the Air Force's plans for dominating the air-to-air realm through the middle of the century up until recently. The fiscal realities of producing such an aircraft that would require a long development period would have made it very unlikely to materialize even before the USAF shifted its focus on the matter. If anything, a heavily upgraded “F-35E” variant of the Joint Strike Fighter is far more likely to serve in the role of a future manned tactical fighter for the USAF based on fiscal constraints alone. Case in point, in December 2018, the Congressional Budget Office released an assessment that the Air Force's previously proposed Penetrating Counter Air aircraft could have an average unit cost of around $300 million, even with a relatively large order of more than 400 aircraft. This was more than three times the price the service was paying at the time for new F-35As. The unit costs of all three Joint Strike Fighter variants have since decreased further. This further reinforces the pipe dream that is developing and producing a 'sixth generation' fighter, at least in a traditional sense. Regardless, the Air Force is still very much working out what it wants from NGAD, which traces its immediate roots back to at least 2015 with the start of an “F-X Development Plan.” The next year, the service published a study titled “Air Superiority 2030 Flight Plan,” which initially to a program called Penetration Counter Air (PCA) that, in turn, has evolved into the current effort.

USAF A briefing slide from 2015 with a timeline for an "F-X Development Plan" at the bottom, showing an expectation that the aircraft would hit "Milestone B," or engineering and manufacturing development phase, by the end of 2022.

The Air Force had planned to complete additional studies to determine its future air superiority requirements by mid-2018, but this ended up being pushed back to the middle of this year, according to a backgrounder from the Congressional Research Service. This would have brought it in line with parallel U.S. Navy efforts, which had also evolved from a future fighter jet concept, known as F/A-XX, and was sometimes confusingly also referred to as NGAD. In this same time frame, the language surrounding the Air Force's NGAD project has steadily moved away from talking about actually developing a new fighter jet. In April 2018, senior Air Force leaders told Congress they had recognized there was "no 'silver bullet' solution" when it came to developing a new air combat platform.

Lockheed Martin Concept art from Lockheed Martin of a notional tailless stealthy sixth-generation fighter jet engaging a threat with a directed energy weapon.

Northrop Grumman Another sixth-generation stealth fighter concept, again including a directed energy weapon, from Northrop Grumman.

The Air Force's latest budget request for 2020 Fiscal Year budget asks for more than $1 billion to conduct additional studies into both aircraft and weapon systems under NGAD. “The 2030+ Air Dominance candidate concepts consist of operational analyses, threat studies and technology candidate assessments and prototyping to identify operational concepts and technologies that improve persistence, survivability, lethality, connectivity, interoperability and affordability in 2030 and beyond,” the service’s budget documents say in outlining the plans for the upcoming fiscal cycle. You can read the complete relevant sections from the Fiscal Year 2020 budget request below:

DOD

DOD