Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said the service’s program engineers are working in coalition with two defense contractors on the Next Generation Air Dominance project at a design-and-development hub at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, Defense One reported Monday.
Kendall, a 2023 Wash100 Award winner, told reporters at an event that the military branch has “intimate knowledge” of the early-stage efforts of the two vendors and has assigned separate teams to each contractor working on the NGAD program, which will replace the service’s fleet of F-22 Raptor fighter jets.
“They have direct access into the database that’s being used for the design,” he said of the Air Force.
Kendall noted that the Air Force will work to ensure that it has access to all sustainment data related to the aircraft and advance the use of a modular open system design to facilitate the implementation of updates and work with different and new suppliers, according to a report by Defense News.
The Air Force plans to award an engineering and manufacturing development contract for the NGAD contract in 2024.
