The Air Force has its “hands full” with delivering on a few key programs and staving off financial problems, leaving little room for inventing the next generation of air dominance fighter, said the service’s leadership. “We need to focus on [generation] five before we start investing heavily in Gen 6,” Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said in a press conference Feb. 24 at AFA’s Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Fla. “That’s what requires our maximum management attention,” he added. Technology efforts are underway in stealth, apertures, propulsion, electronic warfare, and other “key areas,” and “we’ll keep the seed corn going,” said Schwartz. “But we’re not going to get this programmatic definition” of a sixth generation fighter, he said. “I just don’t see that as being a valuable use of our limited ‘bandwidth,'” he added. At the same event, Secretary Michael Donley said a sixth generation fighter is a “good question for a couple of Chiefs and Secretaries after us.”
The U.S. military is maintaining a beefed-up presence in the Middle East, including fighters and air defense assets, following the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities June 22 and subsequent retaliation by the Iranians against Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
