Next Gen Navy Fighter In Development!

Story here.

I feel so vindicated and forgive me as I chest thump.  THIS IS WHY the Navy has been slow to buy the F-35.  It isn't a WANT airplane, its a MUST BUY TO KEEP THE OTHER SERVICES HAPPY airplane!

A few sections of the article that made me sit up....

“They could say, ‘well maybe we back off on some of the requirements when it comes to weapons payload, and maybe stealth or something, but so we keep the speed. We keep the range. We keep the C4ISR sophistication, but we relieve some of the requirements in terms of how much it carries and maybe how penetrating it can be into any airspace,’” Clark said. “And we offload those to unmanned systems, so there’s this family of systems now that instead of having five F-35s go do some mission, you’d send two of these new airplanes with some unmanned systems to do the same mission.”

Clark is diplomatic but from my seat he's trying to downplay the sad truth we all know.  Stealth is perishable and has maybe already perished.

 The Navy plans to seek a wholly new design, rather than a derivative design of aircraft already on the production line, for the sixth-generation fighter, despite the service receiving suggestions to combine Lockheed Martin’s F-35 and Boeing’s F/A-18 designs with modern technology for the future aircraft, Clark said.

Some have said that the next generation fighter would be a derivative of the F-35.  This makes those thoughts a lie.  The F-35 isn't in the future plans for the Navy and will be produced in such limited numbers that it really won't serve any meaningful role for the force going into the future.

 While the service’s objective for fielding the new fighter aircraft had been the 2030s, when the Super Hornets would begin to reach the end of their service lives, the Navy will try to speed up that timeline because the Super Hornets are likely to reach their maximum flight hours sooner than previously anticipated, according to Clark.

Let's not be cute.  The Navy is going to try and accelerate production of this plane so that it competes with funding for the F-35C.  That most definitely means that the F-35C buy will be cut...especially since money will be tight.  We just saw the USMC destroy its tank battalions.  Would it be outrageous to think that the Navy wouldn't ditch the F-35C entirely in a money saving move?

Good news.

What I want to see?  If the US Missile Marine Corps is ACTUALLY about the sea fight then that means that not only will it lose some of those F-35Cs it has programmed to buy, but it also means that the Missile Marine Corps carrier units will piggyback on the Navy's buy of the new plane.