As outgoing secretary of the Air Force in the Biden administration, I had the opportunity to make that decision but I chose to defer it until after the presidential election. Why? At first glance, the decision to ensure the U.S. Air Force has the most capable manned fighter in the world doesn’t seem to be a tough call.

But Congress needs to look beyond the obvious appeal of this advanced aircraft and ask the Trump administration some hard questions: Is this the right airplane for our defense strategy? Is it affordable? Does it displace higher priorities? I deferred the NGAD decision because I didn’t have those answers before I left the Department of the Air Force — and it’s unclear whether the Trump administration has them now.

I started the NGAD program in 2015, when I was under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and Logistics. At the time, I launched the Aerospace Innovation Initiative, or AII, to build experimental prototypes, known as X-planes, that would develop and test high-risk and high-payoff technologies for the next generation of fighters after the F-35, while also supporting competition and maintaining cutting-edge aircraft design teams in the defense industrial base. This program successfully produced the technologies that are the basis for the designs that competed to become the F-47.

Following AII’s success, the Air Force moved on to developing more detailed tactical designs with all the features and subsystems required to support the Air Force’s chosen mission. When I returned to the Pentagon as Secretary of the Air Force in 2021, I found that the Air Force had decided to pursue a follow-on to the F-22, a fighter designed for manned Penetrating Counter Air, or PCA, missions. Such missions involve flying deep into enemy airspace and fighting against robust, state-of-the-art defenses. The PCA emphasis brought with it significant costs — tens of billions for development and hundreds of millions per aircraft for production. These expenses limit the potential aircraft inventory to small numbers. We currently have fewer than 200 F-22s. These airplanes are precious, and we can’t tolerate high losses in this fleet.

We don’t know what conflicts or warfighting scenarios will drive the Trump administration’s defense investments. PCA designs are based on the need to take the air superiority fight deep into heavily defended enemy territory, but we have to ask: Is this a sound planning scenario for nuclear powers like China or Russia? If the Trump administration’s strategy emphasizes homeland security and defensive scenarios, wouldn’t a lower cost design more focused on Defensive Counter-Air, or DCA, make more sense? Would a multirole next-generation design, like the F-35, make more sense? Would an aircraft designed to work with uncrewed tactical aircraft, like the Air Force uncrewed collaborative combat aircraft, make more sense? The decision to buy the F-47 needs to be the right choice for the future — this is the only new crewed fighter aircraft the Air Force will likely pursue for a long time.

Just before I left office, I authored a report for Congress on the Department of the Air Force that the U.S. would need in 2050. I discussed the strategic environment we could expect at that time and what the Air Force and Space Force would need to do to prepare. I predicted a transition to reliance on uncrewed aircraft that would most likely be controlled by crewed aircraft designed for that purpose, providing superior capabilities and putting fewer pilots at risk. The F-47 will be able to control uncrewed aircraft, but it isn’t optimized for that function. Congress needs to ensure that the Trump administration has considered the relationship between the F-47, the Trump defense strategy and the overall future of the Air Force.

Moreover, whether the F-47 will fit into the Trump administration’s 2026 budget and future years program remains an open question. When the Air Force created its first draft 2026 budget and five-year program in 2024, we concluded we couldn’t afford NGAD no matter how capable and relevant it was. Congress needs to ask what has changed since then.

Over the next five years, the F-47 program will require tens of billions of dollars in additional funding. At this point, with all the other demands on the Air Force budget, including recapitalizing two legs of the nuclear triad, it’s unclear whether this administration — or the next — will be able to continue this program. Congress should demand to see the affordability analysis the Trump administration should have completed before awarding the contract.

Congress should also consider whether the Trump administration’s future year defense plan and budget will prioritize higher priority investments than the F-47. When I left the Pentagon, the Department of the Air Force had a list of unfunded strategic priorities that were higher priority than NGAD. At the top of the list were counter-space weapons and airbase defense. Neither of these is a direct Air Force responsibility, but both are critical to the success of the entire Joint Force. China is well on its way to fielding robust space-based targeting systems that threaten all of our land- and sea-based forces. We must acquire counter-space systems at scale or China will be able to target all of our assets at sea and on the ground with impunity and in real time. China also has an ever-expanding arsenal of sophisticated weapons ready to strike our airbases in the Pacific. Those bases are limited in numbers, not well defended and each is subject to attack by literally hundreds of missiles of all types. Our new F-47s — and all of our forward-based aircraft — will never get off the ground if we don’t address these threats through substantial budget increases.

Congress must demand that the Trump administration provide a national defense strategy with the 2026 budget and explain how the F-47 supports that strategy. The administration also needs to show the F-47 is affordable and that it hasn’t come at the expense of higher priority needs. Congress must ensure that the Trump administration provides the needed support for the F-47 decision. Until then, the jury is still out on whether the F-47 contract should have been awarded.

Frank Kendall served as the Secretary of the Air Force during the Biden administration.

The glide body was developed jointly between the two services. The Army plans to integrate its version of the system, the Long Range Hypersonic Weapon, into a mobile ground platform. The Navy will integrate its version, dubbed Conventional Prompt Strike, into a ship-launched capability.

“This test builds on several flight tests in which the Common Hypersonic Glide Body achieved hypersonic speed at target distances and demonstrates that we can put this capability in the hands of the warfighter,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said in a Pentagon statement.

The launch took place at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The Defense Department did not offer further details about the event, which represents the glide body’s second successful all-up round test this year.

Hypersonic systems can fly and maneuver at five times the speed of sound — and the Pentagon has been trying to field them for decades. The Army had planned to make a LRHW fielding decision by the end of fiscal 2023, but delayed that milestone after several aborted tests last year. The service now plans to make a fielding decision next year.

Doug Bush, the Army’s acquisition executive, told reporters this earlier this year that the all-up round test is critical to making sure the system is “safe and effective” and ready to field.

The Navy, meanwhile, plans to start fielding Conventional Prompt Strike on its Zumwalt-class destroyer in FY25 and its Virginia-class submarine in FY29.

Leidos is the prime contractor for the Common Hypersonic Glide Body, and Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for both LRHW and the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike program.

All of the services are facing difficulties with recruiting, due to factors that include fewer Americans being eligible to serve, the low civilian unemployment and more thorough medical screenings, according to service leaders.

To counter the downtrend, the service needs to look beyond its coastal hubs to find potential recruits who may not be as familiar with the Navy but can meet eligibility requirements, including more thorough medical screenings, Vice Adm. John Mustin, the chief of the Navy Reserve, said Wednesday at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space conference here.

“As we began to look into the forensics of why was recruiting so challenging this year, relative to prior years, part of what I realized, too, is it’s not enough for us to scream in the echo chamber of the people who are already invested in our service,” Mustin said. “We’ve got to reach folks who are not aware of what the Navy is, and why the Navy is a great alternative to whatever they’re doing now.”

“We, as a bicoastal maritime nation, have a long history with the Navy. That message doesn’t get out necessarily to the breadbasket of America,” Mustin said. “We don’t have a problem messaging to fleet concentration areas like Norfolk or San Diego — it’s tougher if we’re talking about Sioux Falls, South Dakota, or Nebraska.”

Mustin’s comments come as the Navy is seeking to increase its enlisted end strength. In its FY24 budget request last month, the department asked Congress to approve an active naval force of 347,000 enlisted sailors and officers — up from the estimated 341,736 sailors serving this fiscal year.

The Navy hit its active duty enlisted recruitment goals for FY22, but doing so required it to drain its Delayed Entry Program pool to its lowest levels in 40 years. The program allows recruits to join the Navy prior to their shipping date.

The service failed to reach accession targets for active duty officers, as well as Navy Reserve officers and enlisted personnel, in FY22.

Recent efforts aimed at improving recruitment include offering future sailors or veterans who re-up right now the opportunity to combine the maximum enlistment bonus with a maximum student loan repayment for a total of $115,000 — if they ship out before June. The Navy first introduced the policy last year and extended it to FY23.

Marine Commandant Gen. David Berger, speaking at a panel at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space in National Harbor, Maryland, stressed the importance of collaborating with other countries.

“Sometimes we get in our own way, by over-classifying, over-compartmentalizing,” he said. “And yet we say our strategy is underpinned by allies and partners. You can’t have it both ways.”

Partnerships are less formal relationships than alliances and don’t involve a treaty, according to a Defense Department definition.

Berger said that top leaders within the DoD have worked to adjust classification policies to make it easier for services to train alongside other nations.

At a separate panel Monday at the Sea-Air-Space conference, the one-star general in charge of strategy and plans for the service’s plans, policies and operations department raised a similar point about classification.

“We want to have the greatest combination of naval power that the world has ever seen,” Brig. Gen. Simon Doran said. “And the way we need to do that is we need to work to the greatest extent possible to reduce the classification of as much information so that we can share more with our allies and partners.”

The over-classification problem isn’t new, nor is it unique to the Marine Corps.

The Project On Government Oversight found in 2019 that the Pentagon — long inclined toward secrecy — increased its withholding of documents from journalists during the Trump Administration. The Project on Government Oversight, an independent watchdog, termed that tendency a “war on transparency.”

The Marine leaders’ comments echo what the deputy chief of U.S. Space Command said in January.

Lt. Gen. John Shaw said over-classification had recently prevented the command from sharing information with U.S. partners, as C4ISRNET reported

In 2020, nine four-star regional commanders wrote an internal memo asking intelligence agencies to declassify more information about “pernicious conduct” by China and Russia so the United States could sway support of American allies against them, Politico reported.

The amphibious combat vehicle can transport Marines from ship to shore or shore to shore and then maneuver on land thanks to its wheels. The first shipment of the main variant, the personnel carrier, arrived at the fleet in November 2020, as Marine Corps Times previously reported.

BAE Systems already has delivered more than 190 personnel carrier variants to the Corps, Mark Brinkman, program manager for design and development of the vehicle for the defense company, told reporters Monday during a briefing at the Sea-Air-Space conference in National Harbor, Maryland.

The company expects to hit the 200 milestone by the end of April, he said during the briefing, which took place inside a vehicle on the exhibition floor.

BAE Systems is developing and producing three more variants of the vehicle that are intended for assault amphibian battalions, according to Brinkman.

Brinkman said a command and control variant, outfitted with six workstations and computers, is slated for delivery in late fall.

There also is a variant with a 30 mm medium-caliber cannon in the works. The design work on the variant is complete, and BAE Systems plans to send three production representative test vehicles to the Marine Corps in early 2024, according to Brinkman.

A recovery variant is about a year behind the schedule of the cannon variant, with three of those vehicles scheduled to be sent to the Corps for testing in early 2025, Brinkman said. That variant is meant to offer field maintenance, recovery and repair capabilities, according to the BAE Systems website.

BAE Systems also is competing in the Marine advanced reconnaissance vehicle program to provide a vehicle equipped with command, control, communications, computer and unmanned aerial system (C4/UAS) capabilities.

The other two vendors, Textron and General Dynamics Land Systems, have submitted prototypes designed specifically for the program. But BAE Systems has added a C4/UAS system onto its existing amphibious combat vehicle.

The Marine Corps launched testing of the competing prototypes in early January, Marine Corps Times previously reported.

Brinkman said BAE Systems recently demonstrated its reconnaissance-focused variant for senior Marine Corps leadership.

“I enjoyed all the positive feedback and positive body language,” he said.

BAE Systems also is researching a potential logistics variant of the vehicle, Brinkman said.

The amphibious combat vehicle is the replacement for the amphibious assault vehicle, which had been in service since the early 1970s and in 2020 was involved in a high-profile sinking that killed eight Marines and one sailor.

Another challenge for the Marine Corps in fielding the amphibious combat vehicle has been the multiple rollovers that occurred during training in the surf last year. Berger attributed those mishaps largely to inadequate training of vehicle operators.

The Marine commandant, Gen. David Berger, told senators March 28 that the Corps had encountered “a few notable challenges” with the amphibious combat vehicle, including mechanical issues with the shock absorbers and central tire inflation system.

Berger noted that the Marine Corps was working with BAE Systems to resolve them.

When asked Monday about a timeline for fixing the mechanical issues, Brinkman said, “What I can say is BAE is committed to providing quality and safe vehicles to the Marine Corps. And we work with our partners every day to try to solve any questions they may have and support them in any way we can.”

The “E-XX” would replace the Navy’s fleet of 16 E-6B Mercury aircraft, which carry out a mission the Navy refers to as TACAMO, for “Take Charge and Move Out,” that allows the president, the secretary of Defense and other national leaders to communicate with and control forces such as nuclear missile-armed submarines.

The E-6B fleet is aging and must be modernized, the Navy said in fiscal 2024 budget documents released last month.

Jane Bishop, Northrop’s vice president and general manager for global surveillance, said Monday that the team working on the E-XX pitch has knowledge and experience on weapon system integration and battle management command and control, and will also include Crescent Systems Inc. and Long Wave Inc. Bishop spoke a briefing for reporters at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space conference in National Harbor, Maryland.

Raytheon would provide integrated communications systems for the E-XX, and supports the current TACAMO program.

It remains unclear what other companies might compete for the Navy’s E-XX program.

The Navy decided to use the Lockheed Martin C-130J-30 Super Hercules, a version of the C-130 with 15 feet added to the fuselage, as the platform for its TACAMO aircraft, said Henry Cyr, Northrop Grumman’s director for multi-domain command and control capture programs.

The stretched C-130 will be the right size for for the mission and will fly better than the E-6, he said.

The Navy wants the E-XX to use Collins Aerospace’s very low frequency radio system. The budget request calls for $213.7 million for TACAMO modernization, which would pay for three test aircraft. Cyr said the Navy will likely buy nine more planes in total and plans to award a contract for the E-XX in the first quarter of fiscal 2025.

Northrop officials expect the Navy to release its requirements for the aircraft in the coming months.

The Navy wants a quick transition, so the E-XX likely won’t bring significantly new technologies to the table, aside from more advanced radios and computing systems. The goal, Cyr said, is to take already-existing technologies and field them in a new air frame as soon as possible.

“This is not intended to be a new technology demonstration,” he said. “It is intended to take existing capability that can be fielded in the near term.”

TACAMO is a “can’t-fail” mission, too important to endanger by experimenting with something unproven, Cyr said.

“The nuclear command and control communication business, it is more important to do 100% of the time correctly than to maybe take a little bit of risk on developing new technology,” he said.

The F-35 program was set up with a “just in time” supply chain, where parts arrive right before they’re needed and little inventory is stockpiled, Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt, the program executive officer, said during a panel discussion at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space conference being held this week in National Harbor, Maryland.

In the private sector, Schmidt said, that kind of efficient supply chain works well for keeping costs low. But in a future war involving highly contested environments, it could lead to disaster, he said.

“When you have that [just-in-time] mentality, a hiccup in the supply chain, whether it be a strike … or a quality issue, becomes your single point of failure,” Schmidt said. “We need to look at, what does ‘right’ look like in the future, to give us more resilience in a combat environment.”

Bridget Lauderdale, vice president and general manager of the F-35 program for the aircraft’s main manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, said the company has focused more on trying to forecast the demand cycle, so it can better predict when it will need parts.

“A lot of those materials take lead time to prepare, even when you do have funding and even when you have repair capacity,” Lauderdale said.

To create the resilient supply chain necessary to fly the F-35 in the future, Lauderdale said, the military services and the defense industry are going to need to work more closely together.

The F-35 enterprise’s sustainment network is “enormous,” Schmidt said, encompassing airplanes operating from 27 bases and 10 ships. Nine nations fly the F-35 operationally, and there are 17 countries in all taking part in the program.

Schmidt said the international nature of the F-35 program will provide opportunities for the U.S. and other partner nations to work together and more efficiently maintain their jets.

“In a few years, we’re going to be flying between 500 and 600 F-35s in Europe, and less than 100 of those are going to be U.S.” fighters, Schmidt said. “What a huge opportunity that is to leverage each other’s logistics and maintenance environments.”

At the same time, he said, the F-35 program needs to work on ensuring it can get the right parts and other materials to the right places, so those maintenance hubs can do the necessary work on the planes.

‘Huge win’

Schmidt acknowledged that the program was “a little bit late” in standing up depots to handle the sustainment capacity the F-35 will need, adding that as the Pentagon was negotiating with Lockheed on lots 15-17 last year, it opted to use some of the money to pay for more depot capacity, instead of buying an unspecified number of additional fighters.

“That’s a huge win,” he said. “I think once we can really figure out this global sustainment enterprise, to make sure that we can meet all the demands of all the countries … getting that right is a huge focus area of mine.”

The F-35 program, including the heavy maintenance depot at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma, has made great progress in fixing an engine shortage, which at one point was a “top degrader” dragging down readiness rates. Schmidt said. A little more than a year ago, 48 F-35s were without engines, he said. Last month, that number was down to one.

The commander of Tinker’s Oklahoma Air Logistics Complex told Defense News last year that the base had overhauled its processes, hired more workers and acquired new tools and equipment to repair more of the fighters’ F135 engines.

F-35 maintainers are also getting more data they can use to assess the health of the fighters’ engines, without having to go through the time-consuming effort of pulling the engines out of the plane to do a closer inspection.

“We’re seeing over a 50% increase in reliability in terms of engine-on-wing time,” Schmidt said. “I’m anxious to see how that really plays out over the life of the program.”

The rocket was carrying an Advanced Land Observation Satellite, or ALOS-3, tasked primarily with Earth observation and data collection for disaster response and mapmaking, and an experimental infrared sensor developed by the Defense Ministry that can monitor military activity including missile launches.

There is no plan for an alternative satellite launch to replace the earlier generation of ALOS, said Katsuhiko Hara, the education, culture, sports, science and technology minister. He did not say if or how the delay could affect disaster and missile detection capability.

Coming three weeks after an aborted launch due to a separate glitch, the H3′s failure was a setback for Japan’s space program — and possibly for its missile detection program — and a disappointment for space fans who were rooting for Tuesday’s retrial.

The H3 rocket with a white head blasted off and soared into the blue sky from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan as fans and local residents cheered. It followed its planned trajectory and the second stage separated as designed, but the ignition for it failed, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said.

JAXA officials apologized for the failure, and said it sent a command to destroy the rocket about 14 minutes after liftoff, as there was no hope for it to complete its mission.

Yasuhiro Funo, JAXA director for launch implementation, said the second stage and its payload fell into the deep sea off the eastern coast of the Philippines. He said the rocket, which was not going to enter the targeted orbit while carrying a lot of fuel, was unsafe and had to be destroyed.

No damages or injuries were reported from the destruction of the rocket or its falling debris.

The failure is the second in six months since a smaller Epsilon-series solid-fueled rocket designed to launch scientific satellites failed in October.

The H3 launch had also been held up more than two years because of an engine development delay. During a launch attempt in February, an electrical glitch after the main engine ignition aborted the launch just before its liftoff and narrowly saved the rocket.

Further delay is expected, but JAXA officials said analyzing the malfunction and rebuilding trust comes first.

“Our top priority is to do everything we can to find the cause and regain the trust in our rockets,” said JAXA President Hiroshi Yamakawa at a joint news conference. “We need to figure out what we should do to successfully achieve the next launch.”

Yamakawa said global competitiveness is still important. “Delays and additional costs are both burdens, but we will achieve international overall competitiveness from the perspectives of cost and user friendliness in delivering satellites.”

The H3 rocket — Japan’s first new series in more than 22 years — was developed at a cost of 200 billion yen (U.S. $1 billion) by JAXA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries as a successor to Japan’s H-2A rocket, which is due to retire after its upcoming 50th launch.

The H3, about 60 meters (196 feet) long, can carry larger payloads than the 53-meter (174-foot) H-2A. But its launch cost has been slashed approximately in half to about 50 million yen by simplifying its design, manufacturing and operation in an effort to win more commercial launch customers. The hydrogen-fueled main engine is newly developed and uses fewer parts by altering the combustion method.

The space launch business has become increasing competitive, with major players including SpaceX and Arianespace.

The HAAWC, which stands for High Altitude Anti-Submarine Warfare Weapon Capability, is an add-on kit for the Navy’s Mark 54 lightweight torpedo that gives the weapon the ability to glide through the air from high above the clouds. Boeing is aiming to have the technology on the Navy’s submarine-hunting P-8 in 2017, according to company representatives.

The HAAWC kit turns the torpedo into a miniature jet, complete with wings, a tail and a GPS-guided navigation system. Once it nears the water, the kit peels right off and the system activates a parachute that lowers the weapon to the water. Then the The engine then starts and the torpedo begins its run toward its the target.

The major advantage the HAAWC brings is enabling the P-8 to track and kill enemy submarines from high altitudes — as high as 30,000 feet, according to some reports — and for long far distances, according to Boeing’s Jeffrey Jones. This capability is in high demand as China, Russia and North Korea advance their nuclear submarine programs.

Email: lseligman@defensenews.com

Twitter: @laraseligman

Defense Secretary Ash Carter emphasized high-end innovation in his address.

How the U.S. Marine Corps maintains its high standards.

Boeing displayed its high-altitude sub-hunter, the HAAWC.

An audience learned how networks underpin fifth-generation warfare.

A cautionary note.