The US has begun discussing collaboration on next-gen air superiority technologies with Australia, Japan and the United Kingdom, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said.

The Pentagon’s inspector general wants to look into whether the Next Generation Air Dominance program was mature enough to enter the engineering and manufacturing development phase. However, the program may have never officially entered EMD.

America’s Chinese “frenemies” are “not having a debate over the relevance of six-gen air dominance. And I can also tell you they’re on track,” said Air Combat Command head Gen. Mark Kelly.

[Sponsored] A new strategy for operations explaining how air dominance isn’t always about sustained control as much as it is about temporary air-corridor control.

Before any technical decisions can get finalized, the companies need to figure out how to “reach an agreement that satisfies the interests of all three nations in terms of participation on an equal footing,” as a German Defense Ministry report wrote in June.

The US Air Force hopes to develop and field autonomous combat drones that would augment piloted fighters “in the mid to late 2020s,” Andrew Hunter, the Air Force’s top acquisition official, said in August.