Although
he’s generally satisfied with the range of weapons in his inventory, Air Combat Command chief Gen. William Fraser said he’s anxious to get going on a new air superiority missile. “We need to move out on … a fifth-generation weapon for our fifth-generation fighters,” in the form of the DRADM, which stands for Dual-Role Air Dominance Missile. The DRADM is supposed to deliver sharp improvement increases over the existing AIM-9 and AIM-120 dogfight missiles, particularly in the terminal phase.
Lockheed Martin won’t protest the award of the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter to Boeing but is instead looking to port the technologies it developed for the program to the F-35 and the F-22.