Well, America's decided to build a state-of-the-art six-generation fighter aircraft.

Yippee, he says they want to be fighter pilot, but do we really need it?

Says the conservative commentator.

Hi everybody, I'm Bill Whittle here with Steve Green and Scott.

And gentlemen, you are probably aware that we are going to be building the F-47 advanced fighter.

It's called the NGAD, the next generation air dominance fighter. It was right on

the blocks for quite a long time. To be perfectly honest with you, I thought its goose was cooked.

The thing about this particular aircraft is a little spicy, though, because it will be a six-generation

fighter. The term has some meaning. It will be more advanced in stealth

than our current fifth-generation stealth fighters, the F-35 and the F-22 Raptor. But it will not

be our first six-generation military aircraft. That particular honor goes to the B-21 Raider,

and here's where we begin to find some of our problems. Gentlemen, modern air

combat is becoming a battle of the radii, radii, combat radius. We are not as a nation

foreseeing anyone particularly coming close enough to invade our golden shores here in America,

our ability to project force and our future procurement needs are predicated on our ability

to be able to operate anywhere else on the face of the earth.

And let's not mince words, that means, off the coast of China.

So here's where the battle of the radii comes in.

China has developed a large number of highly effective long-range missiles, which they don't need to base at sea.

They can base them on mainland China, easily reach Taiwan,

and keep aircraft carriers from the United States out of the way because they simply swarm the

defenses of the carriers and the carrier groups, and we can only get so close to the Chinese mainland.

...