Abstract
Abstract: This working paper endeavors, with an eye to the author's prior discussion of the sixth generation fighter aircraft (initially drafted in 2010), consider the development of the technology in the past decade as revealed through the publicly available literature on the subject, and that development's interaction with the technological, economic and political changes of the period. It concludes that while (as the author had suggested would be the case) technological change has been slower than predicted, and economic growth slow, making implausible the development and large-scale procurement of the radical aircraft in question (morphing, hypersonic, intercontinental-range, potentially unmanned fighter aircraft with integral directed-energy weaponry), the more aggressive relations among the major powers have seen them more determined to acquire the most advanced combat aircraft available. The result is the presently aggressive pursuit of new fighter designs of more advanced but less revolutionary character (which, if characterized as sixth generation fighters, may ultimately prove to be fifth generation or fifth generation+ planes).
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