Generational Conflict?

My latest at National Security Journal takes on a generational argument:

Does the United States need a sixth-generation fighter jet, or will its fifth-generation fighters be enough to meet its needs in the following decades? Can 4.5-generation fighters fill capability gaps?

And what should the military services do with the legacy fourth-generation fighters that fill out the remainder of the U.S. fleet?

Questions like the above are frustrating enough to some within the U.S. Air Force and the defense industry to spur a rethink of the classification scheme that divides fighter-jet technology into “generations.”

The argument is that the generational scheme is muddling clear thinking about the technology and should be abandoned as anything other than a tool of historical analysis.

The analytical community uses such classifications because they are useful. When they cease to be useful, we stop using them. After five generations of jet fighters, have we finally reached that point?

I’m riffing off Tony Osborne’s argument, who is riffing off some unnamed Air Force folks (Chatham House Rules rule!). I have found the Fighter Generations classificatory scheme to be useful in historical terms, but I am quite open to the argument that as a prescriptive scaffolding it’s not going to point us in the right direction.

Some other links:

• F-35s to Saudi Arabia, because what could go wrong?
• In addition to 150 Gripens, Ukraine has now signed a deal for 100 Rafales. This is politics, my friends.
• What might China do with its three aircraft carriers?
• Deathonomics!
• A measured response to Russian air incursions?
• Ukraine’s Underground Generation; very affecting read.