With the Air Force aiming for 200 fighters and 1000 large combat UAVs, personal protection UAVs for tankers and AWACs might be a neat idea. Plus, those big planes could refuel their drones.

Alex, how you don't have over a million + subscribers, baffles me. Top notch production & content as always

“Firing enough arrows to block out the sun….” A strong finisher Alex. Keep up the great work!

I listen to a lot of defense related channels and I look forward to your shows more than any of them by far. You are informed, entertaining, and more knowledgeable about America’s Air Power than anyone I know of . Thank you for spending the time to give us a podcast worth watching while also keeping it real.

The F/A capability of the F/A-18 might have been the first of the jet age, but plenty of WW2 Warbirds engaged ground targets and air targets on the same sortie

Great summation sir. Love your reporting and I'm excited to see some actual information on the work being done on the next aircraft.

Just simply an awesome episode. So well done from the best in the business. Thank you for your passion and skill.

Another great video! Your channel is like watching the military channel on TV. Such great attention to details and the graphics along with the videos makes your videos really great to watch and learn from. Thanks for another amazing episode!

Hey Alex, thanks for your hard work with this channel.

Another great video Alex, always interesting and informative.

Another great show Alex! Keep them coming!

Alex, thanks for all this! Being down post surgery, I just found your channel and am loving it! Maybe I’ll be able to learn enough and comment on all the tech stuff soon!

The quality of these videos amazes me. Alex has become my go to guy for information about military aircraft. That guy should have 2 million subscribers already. It baffles me that he doesn’t

Another well-made and informative podcast. Thank you for all your work.

A very well-researched and well-presented KZfaq documentary. Keep up the good work, Mr. Hollings.

Love the content! Keep it coming Alex!!!!!

Man, your end statement is absolutely spot on and a breath of fresh reality that so many seem to lack any understanding of. Thank you for such great work, man

Another great video 👍 keep it up!!!!!

Great video bro, keep up the good work

Thanks Alex. As always, great content.

Nice job Alex, Factual, objective, honest with speculation stated as such. Keep it up!

loving the videos lately!

YOU'RE GREAT AT YOUR JOB, ALEX. I WISH YOU EVERY SUCCESS.

That point about detterence at the end summarizes everything perfectly. Great job on this video!

The F/A-XX in my opinion is the most important program for Naval Aviation in 40 years. I would like to hear you focus on the Intercept capability of the F/A-XX. To me, the ability for long range and potentially super cruise may be one of the most important aspect. In the Indo-Pacific, the surface area is up to 1/3 the area of the earth. It is also important to review how the tomcat fit like a glove to deter the Soviet Union for many years in an intercept role. I like how you clarified that the F/A- XX is not a replacement for the F-35, yet an addition to the portfolio of Naval Aviation. Thanks for the great work.

Outstanding video, Alex; your depth of understanding, presentation and your patience to explain it to us semi-knowledgable viewers is astonishing. Now if we could only get the members of the US congress to watch your videos...

Great video Alex! Keep going man👍

Thank You! Just love this channel!!! Always very enlightening! Oohraah!!!🤠

I can't get enough of the NGAD programs

Alex the second image of the "potential" FA/XX you used here with it's forward semi canard wing is exceedingly similar to the test 1/12 model I saw recently on whether Tailless planes can fly with capability. Yes, it could have a 22-2400 mile range technically outside of China's missiles with one exception. That being their version of the B21 Raider which could carry similar ship killers.

Wow! I like your philosophy! You present more than just the technical data and policy. You dig into the WHY!

Outstanding - and reassuring - view of the future!

I've long been a proponent of naval-specific aircraft designs as their roles are prioritized differently. I think they need a long-range interdictor/strike aircraft which the F-35 doesn't quite fill because of its range and payload limitations as well as a dedicated replacement for the Growler and its ECM/ECCM abilities. One needs maximum fuel and payload with most likely an autonomous pilot to strike deep in the heart of enemy territory and the other needs maximum power generation and electronics integrated to defeat modern tracking systems, plus anti-submarine detection capabilities, so they end up being very different airframes that can't be solved by just bolting on a different AN/ALQ pod. If the U.S. Navy was really smart, they would derive two airframe formats from what appears to be the same airplane to an outside observer, so they don't know if they are fighting a UAV armed to the teeth or a human pilot and enough electronics to start your own tech company.

@5:47 Modelers take note of the non-standard national insignia on the side of the Superbug's fuselage. It's missing the blue border around the bottom half of the star. Here's how you can make an IPMS judge's blood pressure go up, build it and document it!

Great posting and analysis.

Keep it coming & real always

The F-35 ain't no joke despise some of its setbacks It has suffered over the years and yet it keeps getting improved and better with each blocks upgrades. I seen it over the years and the last time I went to the airshows to see the F-35A it blew my breath aways people think it can't dogfights is seriously wrong

As based as the Rapid Dragon system is, if they can adapt that to Malds too that would be comically op

WOW Mr Hollings. You Videos are so Great. And even I am from Germany I can understand almost everything you say and explain. Thank you for your videos

Outstanding, Alex !

Going to be interesting to see if the additional capabilities of the new aircraft offset the limited numbers they'll be able to have on a carrier due to their increased size. Maybe they'll fold up to fit a lot on there or the combination with the drones will make up the difference, like I said, going to be interesting to see.

Hypothetical future near peer adversary: "our new air defense system can detect and destroy your stealth aircraft at 500km" USN and USAF: "here's 1000 things that look like they could be stealth aircraft for your system to detect. Good luck figuring it out"

Thanks for the aeroplane insights. Great video.

Great video brother!!!!!

B-21s dedicated to fleet operations are the ultimate solution to range, stealth, persistence, armament, BDA, comms. No point anymore in limiting some carrier aircraft to having to actually operate off carriers.

That makes a lot of sense in differences in role. While both will likely be capable of all of each others roles, the F/A-XX will probably be used in anti ship, stand off land attack capability, and long range SEAD, while the F-35 will continue to provide crucial SEAD in high sortie volume where the limited number of NGAD will be a limitation, CAS support, and general air interdiction, which it was specifically designed for. So while F/A-XX will be capable of lots of missions, it will primarily do the job that the Rhino couldn’t fully replace to the Tomcat in, fleet defense. High speed and launch parameters beyond Mach 1.8 with a large fuel load will mean a return to the era of area denial. Instead of bombers with fridges, it’ll now be hypersonic missiles. That makes me speculate (completely baselessly BTW) that it might carry A2A missiles capable of intercepting such weapons. Maybe it’ll carry LREW, or something new, who knows. To be clear it doesn’t make a huge amount of sense given HGV flight profiles, but I’m just thinking outside the box. The JASSM-XR being used on F/A-XX makes much more sense.

You are the best. Alex!

Your a genius man,nice work and very smart !keep up the good work!

I imagine the USAF and Navy NGAD will be more like a stealth F111 in terms of size and range, as much as it was panned by everyone. Though the drones will be capable of a much smaller profile.

The sub and destroyer programs are mature and more iterative than cutting edge tech, so it’s expected to cost less as most of the really expensive R&D for both programs has already been funded. The fighter is brand new cutting edge tech.

Well said Alex!

04:56 IIRC for a brief time back in the early '00s it actually was designated F/A-22! I remember reading an article at the time that the USAF were desperate to rebrand the Raptor as a multirole aircraft to save it from getting canned. Can't remember if it was before or after 9/11 and the start of the forever wars, but with Donald "Transformation" Rumsfeld as DefSec and Chop-Chop Cheney as VP the air force were right to be concerned either way.

This sounds great. Shame we don't have the logistics hulls to keep the ships themselves sailing overseas, or enough airborne tankers to keep large numbers of aircraft in the air in SE. Asia.

This next gen sounds very ambitious! Always outstanding Alex

Great video, as usual! 👍

Another fantastic video! Well researched and entertaining! Have you looked into doing a video comparing the relative AWACS capabilities of the PLA/PLAN and United States? The Chinese investment in special air assets has been break neck for the last few years.

Regarding the GE XA100... The military has chosen not to mount the new ACE in the F-35A & C. They're choosing a more moderate upgrade from P&W. I was really excited to see the new engine in the F-35, but I guess we'll have to wait till the first 6th Gen fighter. Do you think it was because it was too pricey of an upgrade, or do you think there were/are problems?

Great analysis! Thanks

Awesome job !

Aim-260 will change the game a bit

Love your work Alex. I'm an Australian, unfortunately old enough to remember when we signed up for the Joint Strike Fighter program, and handed over the previously unheard of sum of One Billion Dollars to help in the R & D. I know now that sounds like chicken feed, but it seemed an enormous sum in the early 1990's just after the Soviet Union had collapsed, and China had been ENTICED into joining us in the WTO, and, we believed, on their way to joining us in Western Liberal Capitalism. Whoops. Technology has progressed sooo far since then. Hell, we we're just discovering dial up Internet and the amazing speed of E-mail when this program began. Now F-35 Pilots have 360 degree vision, can lock on targets by just looking at them, and the on-board systems can select the best scanning tool, and the best weapon for the task. But, all that aside, we have learned so much beyond the obvious. One of the JSF's now most criticised features is the fact it was developed to be a jack of all trades, and a platform shared by Air Force, Navy and Marines. Whilst perhaps that's not been the success that was hoped, we learned a lot from the exercise. I believe the internals between the the base F-35 A and the VTOL version are so wildly different, to some degree they're almost two completely different aircraft, forced to visually look the same. But look at the original brief, and cast your mind back to the Air Fleet in the 90's. There were so many different planes and variants and engines and weapons systems it was not only mind boggling, it was bordering on Logistically impossible to maintain around the World, when we were NOT in an actual Fight. Look at Russia drowning in the Ukrainian mud right now. The Ukrainians are saying over 30% of the Russian Tanks they've taken were simply abandoned in the field, out of either Fuel or Ammo, having outrun the Logistics train in a 'Special Military Operation' where half the Ukrainian Population was expected to side with the Russian 'Liberators'. With the T80 Tank, that uses a Gas Turbine Engine like the Abrams, that needs Jet Fuel, and the Attrition Rate from running out of Fuel is over 50% of the defeated Tanks. Back to the F-35. Australia got some of the first A series Jets. Now, because there are literally a thousand of the same Airframe out there, it's been worth the effort of Engine Developers to Design and Build Adaptive Cycle Engines that can be installed as an upgrade to existing Airframes, rather than having to Plan, Design, Test and Build an entirely new Fighter Attack Plane, and with missiles like the Peregrine, we're also able to update the Weapon Load, again, without purchasing an entirely New Platform. The single greatest achievement of the F-35 program is possibly the slimming down of that impossible logistics train we were developing while we had a different Plane for every different task. Clearly the program was insanely more expensive than originally envisaged, but at the end of the day, if we have a range of Aircraft Superior to any other in the World, we have filled the original Mission Brief. And we have a manageable Logistics Train. Fat Amy might not be the prettiest Girl at the Ball, compared to the Sexy F-22 or Su-57. But she may well be the one you actually want to Marry.

Good one, Alex!

Great episode

5:30 The new fighter will either: 1) unmanned or optionally-manned and thus built to a level of G-loading that a human couldn't survive. Or 2) it may be a bomb truck, with say 2-3x the internal storage bays of the F-35, much longer range, and duel-engined. Or, 3) a huge amount of power generation for directed-beam weapons (lasers). Either way it's not going to be a replacement for the existing fighters. I don't think the F/A-18 will be replaced, due to low operating costs and low maintenance. You'll keep it around forever for any operations against people who can't shoot it down, as well as routine patrols, refueling and so on. I actually like the F-35 a lot, and it's not going anywhere either. I think we'll simply see carriers adapt to a three airframes; it's been quite freakish to have as few as two as we have done for a while.

Another excellent video, great content! I feel the Wingman Drone will have the biggest effects (other than more missles) when used in 2 modes: Scout Mode: Drone fly's further ahead and relays information rearward providing enhanced situational awareness Protect Mode: Drone follows and monitors for threats with the goal of engaging the threat, using countermeasures or sacrifice.

Awesome!!!! Go NAVY.

Extremely informative

Best video to date!

Really well done, especially the ending punchline.

Another great video.

An excellent analysis!

Thanks for your videos. Please make one on the TR3B. Thank You

Thank you. 😎

Let's do it!!

BEST AIR POWER BREAK DOWN'S ON YT 👍👍

Your amazing Alex

Very nice work. 😊

Brother your channel is great your awesome I learn so much thanks Air power👍👍👍👍👍✈🛩 🇺🇸

Good to the last drop, as always. :) Excellent coverage of "today's science fiction is tomorrow's reality", meaning that what we dreamed of yesterday is becoming reality today. First, authors write about something, we game programmers make it happen on our computers, then it makes it into the real world. How cool is that?! Thanks again for presenting facts and thoughts...much appreciated!

Thanks!

Great job

Excellent!

Thanks Alex!!👊🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸👍😉

Great job as always I perticurly like your script at the end of your monoluge on this one.

Great video

Love me some Alex Hollings

Wow that was a good way of putting it.

Alex, I subscribe to over 1,100 KZfaq channels. (Yes, I'm "old guard"). In my opinion, yours is one of the best. Way to go, buddy. 😊

Superb

Woohoo let the Aloha Friday weekend begin with Sandboxx News! Yeah! 🤙🏽😁

I hear what you said at the end of your video, but remember there are those out there who enjoy fighting in the shade!

Hi Alex!! As you said at the end, what you should cover for the next episode. Well, I can suggest you to make a video on Poor Chinise strategy of air power and how they will get punished ...

Numbers and variety for overwhelming force has always proven effective. Technological superiority is the icing on the cake.

great video,

Amazing Documentary. 🇨🇦 Veteran

hanks Alex

Love it. One question - what's the equation for how many lower-performance (but cheaper and disposable) drones displace how many human-piloted aircraft in a battlespace? EG: Do you want 10 drones flying along side you or one Maverick? Are the drones mainly decoys, or desirable battle partners even after the enemy automated Air defence systems are down. Can drones dogfight? Are we talking about having additional aircraft carriers and expense to carry all these 'cheap drones'? I love the idea - but I'm wondering what the background logistics might mean.

Excellent 👍

Excellent video! Yeah, we need to be able to crush any and all aggressors.

Also having the manned system keep its defense and offense missles for the defense of the human in the system. And also use the unmanned units as sacifical platforms to also protect the manned aircraft.