{"id":84463,"date":"2025-01-13T19:35:35","date_gmt":"2025-01-13T19:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/airforcetimes\/uncategorized\/2025\/01\/13\/kendall-floats-f-35-successor-casts-2050-vision-for-air-force\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T01:17:02","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T01:17:02","slug":"kendall-floats-f-35-successor-casts-2050-vision-for-air-force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/airforcetimes\/news\/your-air-force\/2025\/01\/13\/kendall-floats-f-35-successor-casts-2050-vision-for-air-force\/","title":{"rendered":"Kendall floats F-35 successor, casts 2050 vision for Air Force"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Air Force under a Trump administration could choose to pursue a more advanced successor to the F-35 instead of the costly Next Generation Air Dominance platform<\/a> to maintain air superiority, outgoing <\/b>Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kendall suggested alternative paths for the Air Force\u2019s future combat fleet at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event at the think tank\u2019s Washington headquarters, in which he outlined a report on where the department needs to be in the next 25 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Authored by Kendall, the report, titled <\/b>\u201cThe Department of the Air Force in 2050,\u201d amounts to a sort of valedictory in the waning days of his leadership of the department \u2014 and a warning of the threats it could face in decades to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe [Air Force and Space Force] missions don\u2019t fundamentally change [by then], but both services need to go through a transformation\u201d by 2050, Kendall said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Air Force will need to procure and maintain the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile and B-21 Raider stealth bomber as the core of its portion of the nation\u2019s nuclear triad, Kendall said. It must also accelerate its shift to standoff capabilities that can be launched outside an enemy\u2019s territory, as well as mature survivable stand-in capabilities such as Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, drone wingmen known as collaborative combat aircraft<\/a>, or CCA, and a next-generation refueling tanker<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kendall\u2019s report largely calls for continuing the Space Force\u2019s current mission \u2014 just at a larger scale and with new architectures and tactics. It predicts growth in the number of satellites in orbit and in the size of the force that will operate them. While today, there are 10,000 guardians in the Space Force, he suggested that by 2050, there will be \u201cmultiples of this number.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

China will likely remain the \u201cpacing challenge\u201d for the U.S. and its allies, Kendall said. He predicted China will continue to develop militarily and be able to challenge the U.S. and its allies not only in the Indo-Pacific region but worldwide. Russia will also remain hostile and a \u201cserious threat,\u201d he said, but its economic weaknesses could hinder its military ambitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But many \u201cwildcards\u201d exist that make it hard to predict 25 years in the future, Kendall said, such as unforeseen technological advances, a potential nuclear exchange between nations or a Chinese attack on Taiwan. And the department needs to make several decisions to prepare for the possibility of a very different future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Options on NGAD<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

One of the most pressing concerns for the Air Force \u2014 which will ultimately be up to the incoming Trump administration<\/a> to decide \u2014 is how to modernize its fighter force to keep control of the skies in a future war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For years, the service has planned to create NGAD as a family of systems with an advanced sixth-generation platform flying alongside CCAs to replace the F-22 Raptor, which was designed three decades ago to specialize in air superiority. The service originally planned to award an NGAD contract in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Kendall said Monday the service would have needed more than $20 billion added to its budget for research and development for NGAD. The potential cost of the platform turned out to be prohibitively expensive, about three times that of the F-35, which would have only allowed the Air Force to buy a small fleet of NGAD fighters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kendall put NGAD on hold<\/a> while the service reconsidered its options and consulted with multiple airpower experts<\/a>, but felt it was best to let the next administration make the final decision on how to proceed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Air Force felt there was \u201cvalue\u201d in going ahead with NGAD, Kendall said \u2014 but without a budget increase, the service needed to pay for other priorities first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Air Force and Space Force “need to go through a transformation” by 2050, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, shown here in February 2024, said in his last week leading the department. (Eric Dietrich\/U.S. Air Force)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There are alternatives to an F-22 replacement like NGAD, Kendall said, such as another aircraft that would be an F-35 successor. That successor could, like the F-35, be a multirole aircraft that would be designed for controlling CCAs, he said \u2014 and could be \u201cmuch less expensive\u201d than NGAD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another alternative could be to further boost the Air Force\u2019s long-range strike capability, Kendall said. Those capabilities could include long-range cruise missiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s something we could do in any event,\u201d Kendall said. \u201cIt\u2019s relatively inexpensive, and probably makes some sense to do more that way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kendall expressed hesitancy toward suggestions from some \u2014 including Trump adviser Elon Musk<\/a> \u2014 that the Air Force should abandon efforts to build another post-F-35 crewed fighter and instead focus on drones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re quite there yet,\u201d Kendall said. \u201cI think that could be considered.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But a shift away from an Air Force with pilots would require a major cultural shift, Kendall said \u2014 one for which he\u2019s not sure the service is ready.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe culture and history and the legacy of the Air Force, which I have been steeped in \u2026 for my whole life, really, is about the role of the pilot,\u201d Kendall said. \u201cLetting go, to some degree, of that, is an incredibly difficult emotional thing for people to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Space Force grows up<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Although Kendall\u2019s report doesn\u2019t predict major changes to the Space Force\u2019s mission, it does call for growth and a sense of urgency in response to aggression in the domain from China and Russia<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The document points to a \u201crevolution\u201d in space technology over the last decade that has changed the cost equation for accessing and operating in the space environment, and Kendall said he expects that to continue to <\/b>shape global reliance on the domain over the next 25 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\t