It’s Time to Build the Digital Century Series : War on the Rocks , March 5 , 2025
March 5, 2025
War on the Rocks
It’s Time to Build the Digital Century Series : War on the Rocks , March 5 , 2025
March 5, 2025
War on the Rocks
From the document: “The U.S. Air Force is losing the race to field a crewed sixth-generation fighter jet to China. If it loses this race, it will be qualitatively outmatched by the Chinese air force. The U.S. Air Force needs to resurrect the Digital Century Series, which would allow the service to buy and build aircraft using a process-centric, iterative acquisitions strategy. This would enable the Air Force to quickly buy and build new aircraft to remain responsive to the threat environment, incentivize contractors to build new aircraft instead of sustaining old aircraft, and attract new entrants to an atrophied tactical aircraft industrial base. Leaders in Washington are deliberating the direction of crewed sixth-generation fighter acquisitions as some are arguing against the need for this type of fighter, believing that the age of crewed fighter aircraft is giving way to fighter aircraft flown by artificial intelligence agents. The current state of AI-enabled autonomy is nowhere close to mature enough to cancel the acquisition of future crewed fighter aircraft.”
Authors - Mcnally, BenSubjects
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