Will Sixth-Generation Fighters Transform Air Combat?

I’ve been following all the talk around NGAD/FCAS/GCAP and I’m trying to separate hype from reality. Everyone says “sixth-gen will change everything,” but I’m not sure what that means beyond better stealth and sensors.

Do you think sixth-generation fighters will actually transform air combat (how missions are planned and fought), or will it be more of an incremental upgrade like going from a late 4th gen to 5th? I’m especially curious about the “loyal wingman” concept, AI-assisted decision making, and whether dogfights will be even rarer—or somehow come back because of counter-stealth and electronic warfare.

Would love to hear from people who look at this historically, from a tech angle, or anyone with real training/ops perspective on how air combat might feel different.

I’m bullish on transformation specifically because autonomy and robotics scale faster than manned aircraft production.

A sixth-gen fighter might be “just” the command node for a cloud of unmanned systems: decoys, jammers, sensor pickets, and weapon carriers. If those unmanned platforms are cheap enough and numerous enough, you change the math of air superiority: you can present many dilemmas at once, saturate defenses, and accept attrition in a way you can’t with pilots in the loop.

The hard part is trust and control. Full autonomy in lethal decisions is politically and ethically constrained in many countries, so expect “human authorization” for weapons employment. Still, autonomy can handle navigation, formation keeping, threat reactions, and sensor management—freeing humans to make the key calls.

So yes, I think sixth-gen transforms air combat—but mainly by shifting the fighter from “the weapon” to “the orchestrator.”