Air Force budget documents show that the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Superiority program is aimed at developing more advanced fighters (sixth generation) to provide “air superiority for joint forces in the most challenging environments. Pictured is the Air Force’s fifth-generation F-35A.
The U.S. military is already working on the sixth-generation fighter aircraft and has completed the preliminary concept design phase. The sixth-generation fighter has stealth, supersonic, semi-autonomous features, can be in the enemy’s densely fortified airspace everywhere, without being detected by the enemy’s radar. The fighter is also equipped with laser weapons, artificial intelligence technology, and the ability to control drones.
Military media outlet Warrior Maven recently reported that a sixth-generation stealth fighter could employ electronic warfare (EW) weapons to disrupt enemy command and control systems, use artificial intelligence capabilities to analyze and transmit regional terrain data on target locations in milliseconds …… The fighter then launches and maneuvers a swarm of miniature drones, fires supersonic air-to-surface missiles, and then fires precision lasers from the fighter to incinerate enemy aircraft, all so quickly that the enemy is unable to detect and track them (via radar systems) due to the stealth feature.
Taking this hypothetical scenario a step further, the sixth-generation fighter could not only perform many tasks completely autonomously, but also use a special coating layer or a special composite armor that uses synthetic biology to accomplish self-regeneration and repair of surface structures that could be damaged by enemy fire.
In 2030, all of this could become a reality. How these cutting-edge technologies, now under development, are applied to the military of the future depends entirely on the pace at which the Pentagon updates its weapons systems, how the military-industrial community drills down into the patterns of future warfare, and how it responds to the mystery and unknowability of future warfare.
Concretely realizing the military applications of these cutting-edge technologies requires visionary thinking and forward thinking, as well as a skillful combination of art and science. Simply put, this complex practical process of application combines human perception and scientific rigor, crystallizing the Pentagon’s understanding and foresight of the patterns of warfare in the decades to come, as well as the lesser known “advanced concepts and technologies” of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Lockheed’s Project Skunk (cutting-edge technology development program), or Raytheon’s “Advanced Concepts and Technology” (ACT) Development, which exist with the goal of exploring seemingly impossible areas and innovating warfare technologies that have yet to emerge and be foreseen.
While many of these institutions have been widely known and operating for decades, Raytheon’s ACT has only been formally established in the last three or five years.
Of course, large weapons suppliers like Raytheon are quietly working on these aspects of innovation, basic research, war games, and responses to future wars. The “Advanced Concepts and Technologies” (ACT) agency emerged to better enhance, leverage, optimize, and bring together the best and most promising ideas. Like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) or the Cutting Edge Technology Development Program (Skunk Works), the scope of Raytheon’s ACT research is broad and diverse, yet among the many, some emerging areas of research stand out, such as those mentioned in the Sixth Generation Fighter design proposal above.
In an interview with military media outlet Warrior Marvin, Tay Fitzgerald, acting vice president of the Advanced Concepts and Technology (ACT) division, of which Raytheon Space and Intelligence is a part, said, “We look for innovative solutions and disruptive ideas and technologies to help address topics or focal points such as those that DARPA is focused on. We are not a pure research organization, but rather we develop new technologies and apply them to the battlefield.”
Headquartered in McKinney, Texas, with locations in El Segundo, California, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, Raytheon’s ACT employs more than 1,000 scientists, engineers, academics and other experts on hundreds of short- and long-term research projects.
Raytheon’s ACT, for example, developed the fielded High Energy Laser Weapon System (HELWS), which uses a multispectral targeting system to perform laser surveillance and counter-drone missions from a light, high-speed tactical combat vehicle.
“The HELWS is an operational concept that was studied by the ACT agency several years ago and has now gone from design to delivery of finished equipment in less than 24 months; it has completed 13,000 hours of operational time.” Fitzgerald said.
Innovation in the application of HELWS and other similar laser products relies not only on the ability to design mobile power sources, but also to create small, lightweight form factors that are suitable for mounting to fast-moving platforms. This is particularly true in the case of laser weapons, which have been operating on large platforms for several years.
As a result, cutting-edge research in laser weapons has been centered around how to meet the high-power requirements of laser weapons while being small and light enough to fit on stealthy fighters, yet powerful enough to achieve the required destruction capability. “We are evolving rapidly while requiring our hardware suppliers to reduce costs.” Fitzgerald said.
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