Future 6th-Gen Stealth War: US vs China

by Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

(Washington D.C.) A stealthy, supersonic, semi-autonomous 6th-gen fighter maneuvers undetected through heavily armed enemy air space, evades radar detection to …. jam the adversaries command and control systems with EW weapons, gather, analyze and transmit targeting data across huge areas of terrain in milliseconds using AI-empowered computing, launch and operate groups of nearby minidrones, fire air-launched hypersonic missiles and then… incinerate enemy aircraft with fighter-jet fired precision laser weapons … all while flying too quickly at hypersonic speed and too stealthily to be targeted.

Taking this hypothetical mission yet another step farther, what if the 6th-Gen fighter not only performed many of its missions with complete autonomy but also operated with a kind of self-regenerating coating or even composite armor which used synthetic biology to essentially regenerate and restore external structures lost or damaged by enemy fire?

In 2030, all this could be reality, should various breakthrough innovations come to fruition and continued research, testing and integration keep hitting new levels.

The alignment and collective execution of these now-in-development technical attributes rests almost entirely on the continued pace of Pentagon and industry innovation now striving to prepare for and anticipate the unknown, if not even somewhat mysterious, future warfare environment. Making these things happen, and integrating them to one another such that they complement one another in a coordinated fashion, requires visionary thinking, some amount of guessing and a delicate blending of art and science combining the best conceptual theorizing with early evidence of scientific promise. Generally speaking, these are the kinds of innovations now being explored by the Pentagon, senior weapons developers and some of its key industry partners such as Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works and Raytheon’s Advanced Concepts & Technology division.