The Navy’s dream of building a sixth-generation manned carrier fighter could over before it even begins, 20 years before the first prototype might fly, reports Flightglobal’s Dave Majumdar.
The USN is working on the F/A-XX effort by itself. Not even the US Marine Corps, with which the USN’s tactical fighter force is integrated, has had any input into the F/A-XX.
The only place the money can come from is from within the F-35 programme, Gardner says. “There is a community in the Navy that says ‘let’s just skip the F-35C, let’s just keep buying F/A-18s and we’ll go and develop this other airplane,’” he says. “That’s very dangerous for the carrier because it makes the carrier irrelevant. They are not going to have first-day [of the war] capability. I’m absolutely convinced that if [the Navy does] not have stealth by the year 2022 to 2025 you will be irrelevant.”
Read more at DOD Buzz: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2012/05/04/report-navys-nextjetitis-irks-sibling-services/