New Views Of Northrop Grumman’s Totally Notional Long-Range Stealth Fighter

The main video itself, which is only 15 seconds long, plays in the company previous ‘hangar’ setting. Here, we see three Northrop Grumman employees discuss the contribution of women to the history of military aviation in the company’s “Advanced Aeronautics Hangar.” Refers to the all-female crew of Grand Forks Air Force Base – which in 2014 recorded the longest, full-scaled pilotless flight of a military aircraft without aerial refueling (34.3 hours) – the trio ponders the possible contributions each could make to future aviation history at the company.

All we can assume is a notional NGAD-like crewed tactical jet concept seen on the left in the video. Unlike Northrop’s 2021 ad, which shows the nose of what appears to be the same concept in more detail, the new ad provides a better view of the airframe as a whole. As we said in our previous piece, the aircraft certainly seems to fit the NGAD bill – being relatively large with an assumed premium on range, payload, and low observability (stealth) with no vertical tail. Top-mounted low-observable air intakes can also be seen. The design also features a very long chine line around the airframe as well as a B-2-like ‘beak’ nose and a pilot cockpit.

Two other videos from the same series give us a partial head-on view with a strong B-21 Raider vibe and a wider view in the distance of the design in question.

How accurate the concept seen in the ad is to what Northrop Grumman has developed in terms of a crewed NGAD platform design is unknown. While there will obviously be differences due to the sensitivity of such a design, it’s still interesting to see what they maintain even as a placeholder. It’s also possible that the concept seen in the videos is loosely based on elements of a real-life NGAD demonstrator that has been flying with the Air Force for several years now. However, we still don’t know who built this experimental demonstrator aircraft. It can be owned Boeing or Lockheed Martin. And just because the demonstrator belongs to any of these companies doesn’t mean that the production version that is now competing will be made either.

While Northrop’s current workload building the B-21 Raider next-generation stealth bomber is certainly high, building the crewed component of the NGAD would be a big win for the company, and it certainly has an edge in the work it has done. at B- 21. That program was also, by most all accounts, relatively on time and on budget, which was a stunning success. The crewed NGAD aircraft will likely be identical to the next-generation bomber, with many shared technologies, as well as potential efficiencies, directly carried over. There will also be other big opportunities beyond the crewed component surrounding NGAD as the program rolls out, which Northrop also wants to be involved with.

Comprised of the so-called ‘family of systems,’ NGAD refers to the US’s multi-faceted effort to field next-generation tactical air combat capabilities. While the acquisition of a new crewed jet, currently under construction, remains a major part of the NGAD program, it also includes the development and production of potentially thousands of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), new weapons, sensors, networking and combat management capabilities, lasers, advanced jet engines, and more. Furthermore, the NGAD will fit, at least to a large degree, into the elusive Long-Range Strike (LRS) family of systems of which the B-21 is central.

The Air Force and Navy also have similar initiatives in developing their own NGAD programs, including the above components. The Air Force recently indicated that it envisions a notional fleet of about 200 NGAD combat jets, which would cost “hundreds of millions” each. While the fleet size of similar aircraft for the Navy remains unclear, the service’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2024 sees nearly $1.53 billion allocated to support the development of a Next-Generation Fighter aircraft, or F/ A-XX, under its own NGAD program. This is a big help indicating how quickly the program is maturing.

That said, the latest ad certainly adds to the intrigue surrounding the NGAD program and Northrop Grumman’s possible involvement in it, or at least its ambitions to develop the crewed part of it.