Oh no - not that again......... every 20 years the USAF decides to build in volume
The error there is the phrase “in volume”. The concept being, as I understand it, to keep design teams together by building/buying small production runs.
You might end up with fleets of around 100 airframes - but that’s where the USAF and USN seem to have ended up with the F-22 and F-35C anyway.
It’s what was proposed just over a year ago* - and what General Brown seems to have bought into....
The idea for a clean-sheet 4.5th-generation aircraft was inspired by the digital engineering work that allowed Boeing to design the T-7A advanced jet trainer in a few years and the work that also allowed the service’s top-secret Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) platform to be designed and test flown in a matter of years, says Brown.
“If we’re going to do software defined, and we have the capability to do something even more capable for cheaper and faster, why not?” he says. “That’s what we’ve learned with our e-series approach with the T-7, and, what we learned with the NGAD. So, the question is: What is the son of NGAD?”
* https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zon...-in-five-years
Here's The Air Force's Questionably Ambitious Plan To Develop New Fighters In Five Years