Really can’t shoe horn B21 into the right class. It would need to be more than just supersonic but also super cruise.
Although I can see potential for subsystems exchange between the three. The problem is the three have dramatically different missions in mind.
Well most people think they are all doing the same jobs realistically well they overlap they all have different needs to address.
NGAD PCA is high altitude long range. It’s likely to be pulling a super cruise at Mach 1.7 at over 60,000 feet that’s something Raptor is said to be able to do. But we also want it to have its fuel and burn it too. That’s why there was a lot of talk of a variable cycle engine. An engine that can sip fuel line an airliner well crossing the Pacific and fire breathing well supersonic at Mach 2.1.
GCAP is much more oriented to European defense needs so shorter range and much more multirole. GCAP is much more a Eurofighter fifth gen. The only partner who may want some more PCA capabilities in GCAP would be Japan who sits at the heart of the First and second island chains with multiple geopolitical, Historical issues vs China. As such I just don’t see a GCAP exchange happening unless the U.S. basically redesigned it.
FCAS if either of these projects had potential to exchange with the U.S. it would be FCAS but not to the USAF.
The USN.
FCAS is more likely to be closer to F/A-XX because the French Navy wants that Carrier capability vs GCAP. The only other Navy on earth that uses (currently*) cats is the USN. Though it’s highly unlikely that the USN would buy French.
I might add that probably the true scope of GCAP and FCAS is an industry rationalization and thus a competition to see who survives RR/BAE/Leonardo vs Safran/Airbus/Indra etc... etc...
If we had a common European defense, and lets say field 4-5 CVN then we could had had the french program for the navy and the "continental" program for the AF. But we dont have a common defense, not even close, thus we dont have economies of scale, that forces us to see who survives this technological round.
Thus partnering with the NGAD from both projects would be a no because it would create again a F-35 that is mainly a foreign product and thus an industrial security threat. Same with GCAP/FCAS ending in a single project because would mean postponing the rationalization of the industry and we are already due to some cuts.
I see it more like a race to make the least amount of errors, stay in budget, survive the political turmoils, than like an american programm of designing a two step ahead technological wonder that will ecplipse the competition.
