WASHINGTON — Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle today said he wants the decision for the Navy’s next-generation fighter made “quickly” given the time it will take to build, test and field any resulting aircraft.
“It’s my job to inform the secretary of war’s team about that imperative,” he told reporters at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California. “I’m part of those discussions, but my job is to pressurize that decision because the war fighting imperative, I think, is there, and I’m trying to build a compelling case to get that decision made quickly.”
The comments from Caudle come as a final decision for the Navy’s fighter program, otherwise known as F/A-XX, have been stalled out amid reported in-fighting between Congress, the Navy and the broader the Defense Department. Both Boeing and Northrop Grumman are competing to build the next-generation aircraft, which would complement Lockheed Martin’s F-35 in the Navy’s carrier air wings.
During a panel at the forum today, Caudle said “of course” he wants the F/A-XX because “in no world will what flies off of [a carrier] shouldn’t be the highest-end platform possible to penetrate deep into a weapon engagement zone and have confidence with longer-range munitions that it can close that kill chain.”
In response to Breaking Defense’s question about the F/A-XX’s status, Caudle said he wants to make sure the Navy is “pacing” with challengers in “all domains.”
“I see threat curves are in some domains I’m diverging from where I’m being overmatched,” he said.
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At a separate panel today, Michael Duffey, the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, said the department had to balance the need to produce the aircraft quickly with concerns about the industrial base’s ability to produce two sixth-generation fighter simultaneously — the second being the Air Force’s F-47 program, which awarded a contract to Boeing earlier this year.
When pressed on whether he thought the industrial base could successfully build both planes simultaneously, he responded, “I don’t have an opinion [on that] right now. That’s one of the things that we’re working through.”
Bloomberg reported earlier this month that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is opposed to moving forward with the F/A-XX program, in line with the White House’s public position that pursuing both sixth-gen fighters simultaneously is too risky.
Meanwhile, numerous top defense hawks in Congress have ostensibly sided with the Navy on the need to produce the next-gen fighter.
“We need F/A-XX,” Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., said on the same panel with Duffey. “By any measure we need it, and we want to make sure the decision is made quickly. In fact, I would argue Congress has made the decision. Congress has done the direction. Congress has done the authorization. Congress has put in the dollars in the reconciliation bill.”
Valerie Insinna contributed to this story from Simi Valley, Calif.