Fifth-generation fighter aircraft are key to America maintaining domain dominance in the years ahead, US Air Force officials claimed during a media roundtable in the Pentagonon January 24.

Lt General Christopher D. Miller, Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Plans and Programmes, and Major General Noel T. “Tom” Jones, the Service’s Director for operation capability requirements, said the technology – exemplified in the F-22 and F-35 – assumes greater importance in combating growing anti-access, area-denial capabilities.

Fifth-generation aircraft are particularly valuable as part of the new defense strategy guidance that President Barack Obama unveiled here earlier this month, they said. That strategy explicitly affirms that the United States military must be able to defeat ant-access, area-denial threats.

“This is not a new thing,” Miller said. “Militaries have operated in ant-access environments probably since the beginning of time. But what is different, and why fifth-generation aircraft is relevant to that, is that operating in anti-access environments continues to become more complex and challenging.”

There is a continuing competition between nations developing anti-access capabilities and others devising ways to defeat that, the general said. “Fifth-generation aircraft are a key ability that the Air Force is bringing to the nation’s ability to operate in those environments,” he added.

The Air Force has flown against anti-access environments since it was founded. American fighters countered this capability in the skies over Korea and Vietnam. Airmen faced off against surface-to-air missiles ringing Hanoi. In the Persian Gulf War, airmen defeated the ground-to-air threat over Iraq, and most recently, they knocked out the anti-access capabilities around Tripoli.

But missile technology has become more complex and more difficult to counter. Command-and-control capabilities have grown. This will require a new set of capabilities flying against them, Jones told reporters. “The fifthgeneration capabilities that the F-22 and F-35 possess will allow us to deal with that environment,” he said.

F-22s and F-35s bring manoeuverability, survivability, advanced avionics and stealth technology to the fight. Both planes are multi-role capable, able to fight air-to-air and air-to-ground.