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American allies worldwide face a major but underappreciated challenge. Air combat dynamics are fast-evolving, with Chinese combat aircraft technology closing the technological gap with the United States and intensifying military-technological competition between China and the United States increasingly leaving others behind in the dust. American allies that look at advances in Chinese combat aircraft technology with apprehension have few options at present. The U.S. Air Force’s F-47 is likely to be exceedingly expensive and unavailable for export. The under-development trinational (Italy, Japan, United Kingdom) GCAP project is unlikely to be able to deliver a militarily significant number of aircraft to an export customer until around 2040. The trinational (France, Germany, Spain) FCAS project is no more, and whatever comes to succeed this effort is similarly unlikely to be available to an export customer until around 2040.
Until around 2040, the only in-production fighter aircraft available to American allies worldwide that will not encounter major obsolescence concerns at the time of its introduction is the F-35 (even then, any country receiving new-build F-35 aircraft by circa 2040 will likely have these aircraft in service into the circa 2070 timeframe, by which time the oldest American F-35 fighters will have been in service for over 50 years and, as such, likely retired). The U.S. Navy’s F/A-XX next-generation fighter, which has itself had a troubled gestation, may come to offer American allies an alternative. While the details are non-public, this will itself present American allies with a major challenge given how the F/A-XX may be less exquisite and expensive than the F-47 but is nevertheless unlikely to be remotely “cheap”: there will be no “medium-weight,” let alone “light-weight,” next-generation low-observable fighter aircraft for the price-conscious buyer. Even so, the F/A-XX may be the closest thing to something that is neither an F-35 nor GCAP (and whatever comes to succeed the FCAS effort). With next-generation fighter aircraft set to be considerably more expensive at the unit cost level, this may result in American allies experiencing another round of reduction in fleet size.
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