Fifth-gen jets like the F-35 are now the bare minimum for seizing even brief control of the skies in modern peer combat, a Royal Air Force officer said this week.
“Fifth-generation combat air is not new,” Air Vice-Marshal James Beck, the RAF’s director of capabilities and programs, said. These jets are the “peer-level baseline and now the entry standard for any attempt” to take even temporary control of the air “against the most basic threats.”
Fifth-generation fighter jets are the most advanced in the skies, boasting low observability, or stealth, as well as advanced sensors and avionics. Some also feature advanced networking.
The American F-22 Raptor entered service in the early 2000s. The newest US fifth-gen fighter is the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter, another Lockheed Martin aircraft that is operated by both the US and its allies and partners. Russia is developing the Su-57, and China has the J-20 and J-35, the latter supporting new carrier advancements.
Speaking to the UK’s Royal United Services Institute on Monday, Beck said that fifth-generation is no longer a “futuristic” concept. “It’s very much the here and now.” The future fighter technology that can’t get here fast enough is the sixth-gen fighter, he said.
Sixth-gen jets are expected to incorporate artificial intelligence, integrate with autonomous combat drones, feature improved stealth and greater range, and deliver greater overall combat power.
Boeing was selected to build a new US sixth-gen jet known as the F-47 for the Next Generation Air Dominance program. A joint venture involving the UK, Italy, and Japan is working on the Global Air Combat Programme (GCAP). And China appears to be working on the prototypes for sixth-generation aircraft, but details are limited.
When fifth-generation jets like the F-22 or even the newer F-35 were conceived, stealth, advanced sensors, and data fusion offered a decisive edge in combat. The overmatch has shrunk with advancements in not just air combat capabilities but also integrated air defense networks, as well as the rise of drones, AI-enabled sensing, and other emerging technologies.
Beck said that sixth-gen fighters need significantly improved data awareness and the ability to feed “information to the widest operational level cohort in real time.” They need to be able to know and understand what the best course of action is to achieve high-level operational outcomes, he said.
“In its most simple terms, fifth-generation is about tactical superiority,” he said, adding that “sixth-generation is about bringing systems together that seek and understand the requirements and priorities for operational superiority.”
Operational sixth-gen fighter jets are likely still years away from being a reality. Top militaries are still dependent on fifth-gen fighters and aging fourth-gen jets. Many militaries possess only the latter.
The future fight
Achieving air superiority, even temporarily, is essential, as it enables battlefield maneuvers for troops and combat vehicles, but the war in Ukraine has led Western military officials to question whether the control they enjoyed in recent conflicts in the Middle East will be possible in future fights against foes like Russia or China. It may only be possible in short bursts.
Echoing previous warnings, he said that the attritional war, with skies full of drones, “continues to show us what happens if you don’t master control of the air.” Beck added that failure to achieve superiority early on is almost impossible to rectify later.
“The longer the conflict reigns, this lesson becomes ever more compelling,” he said.
Sixth-gen jets, Beck explained, need “not just to be stealthy for today’s war but have the design signature such that it’ll give an advantage for the inevitable cat and mouse challenge,” meaning it can evolve as the fighting does.
Full-spectrum stealth, he said, will be “one of the most challenging parts of the platform’s design and an area that cannot be compromised in design.”
Beck added that the transition from fifth to sixth generation “needs to be about ongoing evolution rather than waiting for revolutionary improvements that are measured in decades and not days.”
In the meantime, he said, production of fifth-generation fighters is accelerating and doing so rapidly.
Beck said the UK is focused on Russia, stressing that “Russia will be our pacing threat for many years to come.”
He said Russia is “developing its defense industrial base in a wartime environment.” And, as a result, “we must assume that its Soviet design manufacturing base will regenerate once the war in Ukraine is over.”
He said that offensive action is the best way to deny adversaries the ability to strike, but given that NATO is a defensive alliance, its priority needs to be upgrading its command and control capabilities, including through advances in sensor technology, to get better at detecting and tracking threats.
He said NATO will expand the ranges of its active and passive defense systems to reflect the increased number of threats seen in current conflicts, which range from drones to missiles.
“We must focus on defending the right assets at the right time,” he explained, adding that the aim is to ensure that an “attack is met with an appropriate and robust response.”
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