The US Air Force will choose only one company to design the NGAD sixth-generation fighter because of the high cost - the aircraft will cost hundreds of millions of dollars

The US Air Force last week opened a multi-billion-dollar competition for full-scale production of a sixth-generation fighter jet. The service will choose just one company to design the aircraft.

Here's What We Know

Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman will have to work hard to win the contract. The US Air Force cannot afford to choose several contractors because of the high cost. Although several companies were working on the concept.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said that a single fighter jet would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. In total, the service wants "about 200 planes" to replace about the same number of F-22 Raptors. At the same time, experts believe that a more likely target is 250 fighters.

On the other hand, the US Air Force secretary stressed that he was not as concerned about the total number of planes in service as he was about upgrading them. He said the service had neglected this for years, while China was aggressively building up its air superiority and air defence capabilities. The US did not respond as quickly as it should have.

The sixth-generation fighter jet is being developed under the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) programme. It has its roots in the Aerospace Innovation Initiative, which began under the Barack Obama administration.

The Aerospace Innovation Initiative was designed to create a set of sixth-generation technologies for future air supremacy. As a result, a contract was signed in 2015 to build experimental prototypes and test the new technologies that would eventually form the basis of NGAD.

Source: Air & Space Forces Magazine