听说美国6代机全尺寸验证机已经试飞？_风闻

据说是美国军方人士在社交媒体发布，ngad全尺寸样机已经试飞？

真实性如何？

​以下内容转载至B站用户@飞羽社，【breaking news】美第六代战斗机全尺寸验证首飞 - 哔哩哔哩 (bilibili.com)

侵删。

美国国防新闻周刊在当地时间9月15日午间发布了一则对美国空军后勤部副部长威尔·罗珀的采访。

在采访中，威尔·罗珀声称下一代战斗机项目NGAD的全尺寸演示机已经首飞。

但相关性能指标不会透露。

我们也会尽快插更一期视频详细解释NGAD相关的一些问题。

采访链接以及原文+翻译发布如下:

https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2020/09/15/the-us-air-force-has-built-and-flown-a-mysterious-full-scale-prototype-of-its-future-fighter-jet/

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force has secretly designed, built and flown at least one prototype of its enigmatic next-generation fighter jet, the service’s top acquisition official confirmed to Defense News on Sept. 14.

美国国务院国际信息局（IIP）《防务新闻》9月14日消息，美国空军已秘密设计、制造和飞行了至少一架神秘的下一代战斗机原型。

The development is certain to shock the defense community, which last saw the first flight of an experimental fighter during the battle for the Joint Strike Fighter contract 20 years ago. With the Air Force’s future fighter program still in its infancy, the rollout and successful first flight of a demonstrator was not expected for years.

这一进展肯定会震惊国防界，他们上一次看到实验战斗机首次飞行是在20年前联合攻击战斗机合同的竞标中。由于美国空军未来的战斗机项目仍处于初级阶段，多年来，演示机的首次试飞和首次试飞都是意料之中的事。

“We’ve already built and flown a full-scale flight demonstrator in the real world, and we broke records in doing it,” Will Roper told Defense News in an exclusive interview ahead of the Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference. “We are ready to go and build the next-generation aircraft in a way that has never happened before.”

威尔·罗珀（Will Roper）在美国空军协会（Air Force Association）举行的空中、太空和网络会议前接受《防务新闻》（Defense News）专访时说：“我们已经在现实世界中建造并试飞了一架全尺寸飞行演示机，我们在这方面打破了纪录。”。“我们已经准备好以前所未有的方式制造下一代飞机。”

Almost every detail about the aircraft itself will remain a mystery due to the classification of the Next Generation Air Dominance program, the Air Force’s effort for fielding a family of connected air warfare systems that could include fighters, drones and other networked platforms in space or the cyber realm.

由于下一代空中优势计划的分类，关于飞机本身的几乎每一个细节都将仍然是一个谜。下一代空中优势计划是美国空军部署一系列相互连接的空战系统的努力，其中可能包括战斗机、无人机和其他空间或网络领域的网络平台。

Roper declined to comment on how many prototype aircraft have been flown or which defense contractors manufactured them. He wouldn’t say when or where the first flight occurred. And he refused to divulge any aspect of the aircraft’s design — its mission, whether it was uncrewed or optionally crewed, whether it could fly at hypersonic speeds or if it has stealth characteristics.

罗珀拒绝就已经试飞了多少架原型机或是哪家国防承包商制造的原型飞机置评。他不愿透露第一次飞行的时间和地点。他拒绝透露飞机设计的任何方面——它的任务，无论是无人驾驶的还是可以选择载人的，它是否能够以高超音速飞行，或者是否具有隐身特性。

Those attributes, he said, are beside the point.

他说，这些属性与重点无关。

The importance, Roper said, is that just a year after the service completed an analysis of alternatives, the Air Force has proven it can use cutting-edge advanced manufacturing techniques to build and test a virtual version of its next fighter — and then move to constructing a full-scale prototype and flying it with mission systems onboard.

罗珀说，重要的是，美国空军在完成对替代方案的分析仅仅一年之后，就证明了它可以使用尖端的先进制造技术来制造和测试下一架战斗机的虚拟版本，然后着手建造一个全尺寸的样机，并在飞机上搭载任务系统进行飞行。

“This is not just something that you can apply to things that are simple systems” like Boeing’s T-7 Red Hawk trainer jet, the first Air Force aircraft to be built using the “holy trinity” of digital engineering, agile software development and open architecture, Roper said.

罗珀说：“这不仅仅是你可以应用于简单系统的东西”，比如波音公司的T-7红鹰教练机，这是第一架使用数字工程、敏捷软件开发和开放式架构的“神圣三位一体”建造的空军飞机。

“We’re going after the most complicated systems that have ever been built, and checked all the boxes with this digital technology. In fact, [we’ve] not just checked the boxes, [we’ve] demonstrated something that’s truly magical.”

“我们正在寻找有史以来最复杂的系统，并用这种数字技术检查所有的盒子。事实上，[我们]不仅检查了这些方框，[我们]展示了一些真正神奇的东西。”

Now, the Next Generation Air Dominance program, or NGAD, sits at a decision point. Roper declined to say how quickly the Air Force could move its next-gen fighter into production, except to say “pretty fast.” But before the service decides to begin producing a new generation of fighters, it must determine how many aircraft it will commit to buy and when it wants to start purchasing them — all choices that could influence the fiscal 2022 budget.

现在，下一代空中优势计划（NGAD）正处于一个决定点。罗珀拒绝透露美国空军能以多快的速度将下一代战斗机投入生产，只是说“相当快”。但在空军决定开始生产新一代战斗机之前，它必须确定它将承诺购买多少架飞机以及何时开始购买这些飞机——所有这些选择都可能影响2022年财政预算。

The program itself has the potential to radically shake up the defense industry. Should the Air Force move to buy NGAD in the near term, it will be adding a challenger to the F-35 and F-15EX programs, potentially putting those programs at risk.

该计划本身有可能彻底改变国防工业。如果美国空军近期购买NGAD，它将给F-35和F-15EX项目增加一个挑战者，可能会使这些项目面临风险。

And because the advanced manufacturing techniques that are critical for building NGAD were pioneered by the commercial sector, the program could open the door for new prime contractors for the aircraft to emerge — and perhaps give SpaceX founder Elon Musk a shot at designing an F-35 competitor.

而且，由于制造NGAD的关键先进制造技术是由商业部门首创的，该计划可能会为新的主承包商打开大门，让新的主承包商出现——或许还能让SpaceX的创始人埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）尝试设计F-35的竞争对手。

“I have to imagine there will be a lot of engineers — maybe famous ones with well-known household names with billions of dollars to invest — that will decide starting the world’s greatest aircraft company to build the world’s greatest aircraft with the Air Force is exactly the kind of inspiring thing they want to do as a hobby or even a main gig,” Roper said.

“我不得不想象，会有很多工程师——也许是那些家喻户晓、投资数十亿美元的著名工程师——将决定创办世界上最伟大的飞机公司，与空军一起制造世界上最伟大的飞机，正是他们想做的一种鼓舞人心的事情，作为一种爱好，甚至是一种“主唱，”罗珀说。

The disclosure of a flying full-scale fighter prototype could be just what the Air Force needs to garner more financial support from Congress during a critical time where the service is facing budget constraints and needs to gain momentum, said Mackenzie Eaglen, a defense budget analyst with the American Enterprise Institute.

美国企业研究所（American Enterprise Institute）国防预算分析师麦肯齐·伊格伦（Mackenzie Eaglen）表示，在美国空军面临预算紧张、需要获得动力的关键时刻，美国空军需要从国会获得更多财政支持。

“If you can quickly get to something and show progress through product, it just changes the whole dynamic for the Hill,” she said. “[Roper has] got so many headwinds, it seems this would be a likely avenue to show conceptual success for his ideas.”

她说：“如果你能很快找到一些东西，并通过产品展示进展，这只会改变整个山丘的动态。”。“（罗珀）遇到了太多不利因素，看来这将是一条展示其理念成功的可能途径。”

A radical new acquisition

新采购模式

Flying a prototype of its future fighter was the easy part. Now the Air Force must choose whether to commit to a radical method of buying it.

驾驶未来战斗机的原型是最简单的部分。现在，空军必须选择是否要采取激进的购买方式。

Over the last 50 years, the U.S. industrial base has dwindled from 10 manufacturers capable of building an advanced fighter to only three defense companies: Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Northrop Grumman. The time it takes the Air Force to move a new fighter from research and development to full-rate production has stretched from a matter of years to multiple decades.

在过去的50年里，美国的工业基地已经从10家有能力制造先进战斗机的制造商缩减到只有3家国防公司：洛克希德马丁公司、波音公司和诺斯罗普格鲁曼公司。空军将一种新型战斗机从研发转移到全速生产所需的时间从几年延长到几十年。

The result is that every fighter program becomes existential for companies, who fight to prove that they can meet technical requirements during the development and production phase at a lower cost than their competitors. The companies are finally able to turn a profit during the later years of a program, when they become locked in as sustainment providers with the technical knowledge necessary for upgrading, repairing and extending the life of their product — often with little congressional interest or scrutiny.

其结果是，每一个战斗机项目对公司来说都是存在的，这些公司都在努力证明自己能够以比竞争对手更低的成本在开发和生产阶段满足技术要求。这些公司最终能够在项目的最后几年实现盈利，因为它们被锁定为具有升级、维修和延长产品寿命所需的技术知识的维持性保障供应商，而国会通常对此兴趣不大，也很少进行审查。

“The sustainment account is a black hole that nobody understands. The [operation and maintenance] account is a black hole that no one can figure out,” Eaglen said. “The person who can change sustainment can change the acquisition game, writ large.”

“维持账户是一个没有人理解的黑洞。伊格伦说：“（运营和维护）账户是一个没有人能搞清楚的黑洞。”。“能改变维持的人可以改变采办游戏，写得很大。”

For the Air Force, the turning point is when an aircraft hits 15 years old. At that age, maintenance costs compound rapidly, growing another 3-7 percent every year, Roper wrote in a Sept. 15 document titled “Take the Red Pill: The New Digital Acquisition Reality.”

对于空军来说，转折点是当一架飞机撞上15岁时。罗珀在9月15日的一份题为“吃红色药丸：新的数字化收购现实”的文件中写道，在这个年龄段，维护成本迅速复合，每年再增长3-7%

But what if instead of spending significant funds on sustaining old jets, the Air Force used that money to buy new ones?

但是，如果空军没有花费大量资金来维持旧飞机，而是用这些钱购买新飞机呢？

Instead of buying a large quantity of a single fighter over decades and retaining each plane for 30 years or more — as is currently the norm — the “Digital Century Series” model, proposed by Roper, posits that advanced manufacturing and software development techniques make it possible for the Air Force to rapidly develop and buy aircraft more frequently, much as the service did during the 1950s when it bought six fighters from six companies just years apart from each other during the original Century Series.

与过去几十年大量购买一架战斗机，并将每架飞机保留30年或更长时间——这是目前的惯例——由Roper提出的“数字世纪系列”模型，假设先进的制造技术和软件开发技术使得空军能够快速开发和更频繁地购买飞机，就像20世纪50年代空军从相距仅几年的6家公司购买了6架战斗机一样。

In August, Air Force’s advanced aircraft program office completed a business case analysis of the Digital Century Series model meant to validate whether the idea was technically feasible and, more importantly, whether it could save money.

今年8月，美国空军先进飞机项目办公室完成了数字世纪系列模型的商业案例分析，旨在验证这一想法在技术上是否可行，更重要的是，它是否能够节省资金。

Leaders found that by applying digital manufacturing and development practices — as used by the T-7 program, as well as in the development of the NGAD prototype — it could drop the total life cycle cost of a next-gen fighter by 10 percent over 30 years compared to legacy fighters like the F-35 and F-15, Roper wrote.

领导人们发现，通过应用数字化制造和开发实践——正如T-7项目所使用的，以及NGAD原型的开发——与F-35和F-15等传统战斗机相比，下一代战斗机的总寿命周期成本可在30年内降低10%。

But for the same price as a single variant of a digitally manufactured fighter produced with a 30-year life cycle, the Air Force could buy a new fighter every eight years and replace them after 16 years — before the plane reaches the 3,500 flight-hour mark here it starts needing heavy overhauls and expensive modifications to extend its service life.

但与30年生命周期的数字化制造战斗机的单一变体价格相同，美国空军可以每8年购买一架新战斗机，16年后更换——在飞机达到3500飞行小时标志着它开始需要大修和昂贵的改装来延长它的使用寿命之前。

“I don’t think it’s smart thinking to build one and only one aircraft that has to be dominant for all missions in all cases all the time,” he said. “Digital engineering allows us to build different kinds of airplanes, and if we’re really smart … we ensure smart commonality across the fleet — common support equipment, common cockpit configurations, common interfaces, common architecture, even common components like a landing gear — that simplify the sustainment and maintenance in the field.”

他说：“我不认为制造一架而且只有一架飞机必须在所有情况下一直主导所有任务是明智的想法。”。“数字工程允许我们制造不同种类的飞机，如果我们真的很聪明的话……我们确保整个机队的智能通用性——通用的支援设备、通用的驾驶舱配置、通用的接口、通用的体系结构，甚至是起落架等通用部件——这些都简化了飞机的维护和维护“字段。”

The main difference is that the Air Force would flip from spending the majority of fighter program costs upfront instead of at the end of the aircraft’s life. To continuously design new fighter jets, the service would keep multiple vendors constantly under contract for the development of new planes, choosing a new design about every eight years. To make a business case that is profitable for industry, it would then buy batches of about 50-80 aircraft every year.

主要的区别在于，空军将把战斗机项目的大部分费用预先花掉，而不是在飞机寿命结束时。为了不断地设计新的战斗机，这项服务将使多个供应商不断地签订新飞机的开发合同，大约每八年就要选择一种新的设计。为了创造一个能为工业带来利润的商业案例，它每年都会购买大约50-80架飞机。

The result is a 25 percent increase in development costs and an 18 percent increase in production costs. However, the price of modernizing aircraft would drop by 79 percent while sustainment costs are basically cut in half, Roper wrote in the paper.

结果是开发成本增加了25%，生产成本增加了18%。然而，现代化飞机的价格将下降79%，而维持费用基本上减半，罗珀在论文中写道。

“I can’t make both ends of the life cycle go away; industry has to make a profit somewhere,” Roper said. “And I’m arguing in the paper that if you get to choose what color of money you use for future air superiority, make it research, development and production because it’s the sharp point of the spear, not the geriatric side that consumes so much of our resources today.”

“我不能让生命周期的两端都消失；工业必须在某个地方盈利，”Roper说。“我在报纸上说，如果你要为未来的空中优势选择什么颜色的钱，那就让它成为研究、开发和生产，因为今天消耗我们这么多资源的是长矛的尖头，而不是老气横秋的一面。”

There is also a strategic benefit to continuous fighter production and development, Roper said. It puts China on the defense, having to respond to U.S. technical advances as new capabilities — whether they’re hypersonic missiles or drone wingmen — are matured and spiraled into the fighter’s production.

罗珀说，持续的战斗机生产和发展也有战略上的好处。它使中国处于防御状态，必须对美国的技术进步作出反应，因为新的能力——无论是高超音速导弹还是无人机翼手——都已经成熟，并逐步进入战斗机的生产。

“This speeds up the pace at which we can do things so that we can be the disrupter instead of the disrupted, but it does so in a way that can’t be undermined by throwing cheap labor at the problem,” he said.

他说：“这加快了我们做事的速度，这样我们就可以成为破坏者，而不是被打乱的人，但这样做的方式不会因为在问题上投入廉价劳动力而受到损害。”。

The next step is for Air Force leadership to decide how much it can afford for the program in FY22 and whether it will adopt the Digital Century Series model for developing the aircraft.

下一步是由空军领导层决定其在FY22中能负担多少费用，以及是否将采用数字世纪系列模型来开发飞机。

“What we need to do going forward is simply understand the [Department of the Air Force’s] level of financial commitment and the date they want us to charge towards for initial operations, and we can fit the acquisition strategy for [NGAD] to it, and explain how quickly we can afford to spiral and when we need to retire the aircraft to generate enough savings to afford those spirals,” he said.

“我们今后需要做的只是简单地了解[空军部]的财政承诺水平以及他们希望我们在初期运营中收取费用的日期，然后我们就可以为[NGAD]制定收购战略，并解释我们能多快地承受螺旋式上升，以及何时我们需要让飞机退役，以产生足够的储蓄来负担这些螺旋式飞机，”他说。

“Perhaps getting to the fastest [initial fielding date] may not be the most important thing. It may be important for us to push the [technical] boundaries more. Those are decisions that I’ve given for leadership to think about. But every decision I’ve given them is a better decision over the legacy ones.”

“也许最快的[最初的部署日期]可能不是最重要的事情。对我们来说，进一步突破（技术）界限可能很重要。这些都是我给领导层考虑的决定。但我给他们的每一个决定都是比传统决定更好的决定。”

If the Air Force is going to get financial support for a business plan that requires taxpayers to pay a higher upfront cost for fighter aircraft, it must clearly identify desired combat capabilities, said Rebecca Grant, an aerospace analyst with IRIS Independent Research.

IRIS独立研究公司（IRIS Independent Research）的航空航天分析师丽贝卡•格兰特（Rebecca Grant）表示，如果美国空军要为一项商业计划获得财政支持，该计划要求纳税人为战斗机支付更高的前期成本，那么它必须清楚地确定所需的作战能力。

“Now we have the F-35, F-15EX and the Digital Century Series’ small batch costs,” she said. “If it’s that great, maybe it’s worth the upfront cost. I could argue that, for sure. Is this the new F-117, which was similar batch size at similar cost and worth every penny? We just don’t know.”

“现在我们有了F-35、F-15EX和数字世纪系列的小批量成本，”她说。“如果这么好的话，也许它值得前期的花费。我当然可以这么说。这是新的F-117吗？它的批量大小和成本差不多，而且每一分钱都值？我们只是不知道。”

On the technical side, the Air Force needs to solidify a rigorous, standardized method of conducting test activities in a virtual environment using modeling and simulation tools that can cut down the amount of time needed for live flight tests. It also needs industry to buy in to coding via a government-owned computing environment, Roper said.

在技术方面，空军需要巩固一种严格的、标准化的方法，在虚拟环境中使用建模和仿真工具进行测试活动，这样可以减少实飞测试所需的时间。它还需要业界通过政府拥有的计算环境来接受编码，Roper说。

“We can’t have every industry partner creating their own mechanism,” Roper said. “We have to have just as rigorous a process for digital design and assembly as we do for physical design assembly. So we will own that in the government, we will certify that in the government.”

“我们不可能拥有自己的产业合作伙伴。“我们必须有一个严格的数字设计和装配过程，就像我们对物理设计装配一样。因此，我们将在政府中拥有这些权利，我们将在政府中证明这一点。”

And — perhaps most critically — the Air Force will have to sell the concept to Congress. Roper has briefed staff members on the defense committees, and he held classified sessions with many of the lawmakers who sit on those panels to present findings of the business case study as well as the detailed progress of NGAD development and test activities.

或许最关键的是，空军将不得不向国会推销这一概念。Roper向工作人员简要介绍了国防委员会的情况，他与参加这些委员会的许多议员举行了秘密会议，介绍了商业案例研究的结果以及NGAD开发和测试活动的详细进展。

“I had some tough audiences on this. I’ve had people that I’ve been told want to cut the program or they don’t understand why we need it,” he acknowledged. “But I have not left a single one of those briefings with anything other than [lawmakers saying]: ‘This is the future, we ought to do it now. And why aren’t we going faster?’ And the answer [to] why we aren’t going faster is simply money. We can push the accelerator down more today because the digital technology allows it.”

“在这件事上，我遇到了一些难缠的听众。他承认：“有人告诉我要削减这个项目，或者他们不明白我们为什么需要它。”。“但我没有在这些简报中留下任何一个，除了（议员们说的）以外：“这是未来，我们应该现在就做。为什么我们不快点？“而我们为什么不能更快的答案就是钱。今天我们可以把加速器推得更慢，因为数字技术允许它。”