Here’s What You’ll Find on the Fighter Jet of 2030

Here’s What You’ll Find on the Fighter Jet of 2030

Well an interesting article to see some of what might be on a 6th generation fighter.
A fighter that will compliment the F-35.

One thing of interest to note was whether or not the fighter was going to be super fast. The answer, which should disappoint members of the forum, was that speed was not as important as SWAP-C. Which makes sense.

The article goes on to talk about some of the cool toys the fighter might have. Cognitive ECM Weapons, HELLADS, Smart Skins, Drones etc.

It's a nice read. It goes into talking about many of the things that have been mentioned in this forum so you'll be able to follow along. I suggest everyone check it out.

On Monday, President Barack Obama’s budget request for the Pentagon featured more than $5 million dollars for an item tagged “Next Generation Fighter.” If you haven’t heard of it, it’s the plane of the future meant to replace the F/A-18 Super Hornet and EA-18 Growler aircraft by 2030. Much like the future itself, it’s been a source of much speculation but exists only as an idea.

Yesterday, in broad but revealing terms, top Navy leaders described some of the capabilities that they want in tomorrow’s fighter.

First, a bit of background: The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is often called the 5th Generation fighter. It also goes by F/A-XX or, more colloquially, the X Plane. The Navy first put out a requirement for the 6th Generation plane nearly seven years ago, in June 2008. The Air Force followed with its own F-X research program. In 2013, the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, or DARPA, began a program to pull the two together. At the time, DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar said. “This is not a question about what does the next aircraft look like, this is a question about what are all the capabilities that it will take, layered together, in order to really comprehensively extend air superiority.”

If WW III intervenes, the fighter planes of 2030 will likely not be jets, but like that airplane from Mad Max...

For that matter, will we make it to 2030? Time will tell.

a reply to: Lazarus Short

According to this website the end of the world should of came a few years ago.

I think we'll keep chugging along just fine.

a reply to: grey580

Building # like that isnt exactly going to help.

a reply to: Dabrazzo

So if we stop building new weapons the rest of the world will too?

I've never agreed with the budgets they allow for these innovations, but as Zaphod has basically already said other countries aren't gonna stop so definitely cool! Thanks for the share OP.

a reply to: grey580

The hypersonic travel everyone is eager for at this point is still out of reach for an aircraft that needs to be able to maintain and self-power the speed. When you get to higher Mach numbers than our 'contemporary' high speed stuff of M2 and M3 you get some strange chemical activity due to the heat. Not only do you have to deal with very intense heating on the aircraft's surfaces (the challenges of which you'll be very familiar with if you have looked into the design work behind stuff like SR-71), but you get effects like ionization of the molecules that the air is made up of. The air is generally made up of stuff like Nitrogen gas, Oxygen gas, Argon, Carbon Dioxide, and this is all fairly stable stuff. Really the most dangerous stuff in the atmosphere is water vapour as it can cause oxidation of stuff that isn't well protected. At extremely high speeds the gas molecules around the aircraft actually start breaking apart from the energy, and you get electrically charged ions that really want to react with other things. Like the airplane. So the operating environment suddenly becomes a lot more hostile for your airplane, and the challenges you have to overcome in the design to be able to deal with that makes your life vastly more difficult.

The space program has to deal with these issues regularly as well, but it's going in the opposite (and easier direction). Coming from space you have way too much speed, and slowing down is the objective. So they use a very blunt, rounded shape to get the drag they need, and to force the air itself to absorb the heat from the bow shock, rather than letting it slip along a streamlined airplane body because they want to make more speed. And yet it's still immensely challenging to deal with that sort of heat, and you can see the sheer amount of expense and engineering that goes into designing such a thing. Never mind putting weapons systems on it. If you want to see the sheer violence and hostility of hypersonic speeds, have a look at NASA's video of the re-entry of the Orion capsule from inside the spacecraft. From the start of the video, this weird purple fiery glow comes over the view. That's the trail of gas behind the craft that was so disturbed and energized by the speed of the capsule that it has become ionized, and glows are a result. Having to make a nimble, fighter aircraft that can deal with that hostile of an environment... I do not envy the engineers assigned to that one.

Just trying to shed some light.