Recently, the news about the American sixth-generation fighter project (NGAD) has attracted everyone's attention on the Internet, because NGAD is at a turning point of life and death. Those who know the situation know that the US sixth-generation fighter program, as a "next-generation air superiority fighter" on which the US Air Force has high hopes, is regarded as the successor of the F-22 and is expected to lead the US Air Force to re-establish its generational superiority over fighters from other countries. However, since the establishment of the NGAD project, it has stumbled along the way, making the Pentagon and the US military top brass love and hate it.
I don't know when it began, but the research and development of new equipment for the US military seems to have fallen into a curse, that is, it will always fall into a situation where the funds are seriously exceeded, the progress is delayed again and again, and finally it has to face the situation of being discontinued. This time, the NGAD project of the US Air Force is also a familiar recipe and a familiar taste.
According to U.S. Air Force Secretary Kendall, even if the NGAD project can be implemented, the final purchase price of a single aircraft is close to 300 million US dollars, which takes away the title of "the world's most expensive fighter". From the NGAD project, we can clearly see the US military's equipment development style over the years, that is, blindly seeking advancement, rushing to the top, and being sure to be far ahead of its opponents in various indicators, so as to be "far ahead." This extreme sense of technological superiority is burying the future of the US military.
Taking NGAD as an example, the US military has greatly used new technologies, enabled new concepts, and stuffed adaptive cycle engines and unmanned wingmen into it, anyway, in a word, it must be advanced enough. However, with the current efficiency of the U.S. military industry, this kind of equipment research and development thinking that does not take into account the cost during the Cold War is obviously not suitable for the present, and Congress cannot let the U.S. military come to the ground. After all, two other major military-industrial projects that are also seriously overbudgeted, the intercontinental missile and the B-21, which are far more important than NGAD, are also in dire need of money. Therefore, under the realistic conditions of not being able to squeeze out more budget, it is difficult for the US military to weigh the pros and cons, temporarily dismiss the NGAD project and switch to purchasing more F-35s to ensure its numerical superiority in fifth-generation aircraft.
Talking about the bumpy course of the new equipment of the perfect army, and then looking back at our equipment research and development, we have taken a right path. From the relevant information, it can be seen that we are not blindly pursuing absolute leadership in various indicators, and we have changed the old "threat-based" model to a new "capability-based" model. To put it bluntly, it is how much ability to do a lot of things, based on stability, and the typical case is that the development progress of the supporting engines of the latest fighters cannot keep up, so the mature Russian-made engine will be used to make the transition first, and do not seek to be in place in one step.
At the present stage, the informationization construction and leapfrog development of our army's weapons and equipment should be centered on "rapid, accurate, comprehensive, and efficient," and through the innovation of the all-factor system, a system of coordination between theory and technology and seamless hardware construction and software construction should be formed as soon as possible, so as to ensure that the construction of weapons and equipment will embark on a path of rapid advancement, high quality, high efficiency, and comprehensive development. This kind of overall arrangement is much more stable, reliable, and scientific than the US model in which military industrial units, the military, and the government fight their own battles and dismantle each other.