As 2025 recedes in the rear-view mirror, it’s time to look at the combat-aircraft stories that are likely to make news in 2026.

Anyone waiting for the Xian H-20 shoe to drop over the holiday break will have been disappointed. We didn’t see the new Chinese bomber, despite expectations years ago that it would soon appear. But more pictures did emerge of the large uncrewed combat aircraft that had been sighted in October and is referred to as GJ-X. With an estimated span of 42 metres and a cranked-kite shape with a large centrebody, it resembles the X-47C that Northrop Grumman discussed in 2005. That aircraft had a payload of 4500 kg and intercontinental range and would have been powered by two General Electric engines based on the CF34 regional jet powerplant.

Also to be watched is the China’s WZ-X drone, with a span similar to the GJ-X’s but a smaller centrebody and higher aspect ratio. It apparently resembles the still classified Northrop Grumman RQ-180 uncrewed surveillance aircraft. The GJ-X and WZ-X could form an effective long-range hunter-killer team—and to no small extent will encroach on the H-20’s mission space.

One new puzzle from China is the emergence of two variants of a land-mobile electromagnetic aircraft catapult. Both comprised four identical wheeled vehicles, connected to form a catapult with a 60-metre stroke. One version used eight-wheeled trucks as modules with driver cabs; the other had 10-wheel modules without cabs.

Like  Shield AI’s X-Bat tail-sitter uncrewed combat aircraft design, the mobile electromagnetic catapult raises a few questions. This is a way to deploy such aircraft, but it seems to be a complex substitute for a ramp and a rocket booster, while having the same basic problem: it doesn’t address recovery. It also needs flat ground with a fly-out area ahead of it. Some sources advise waiting to see whether this is something the Chinese air force or is just something from an industry bright-idea fairy.

All projects for uncrewed combat aircraft will face the same issues: how are they to be sustained in the fight? If they’re attritable or expendable, would they be better replaced by missiles? Demonstrations under the US Collaborative Combat Aircraft program this year should point to some answers.

A 2026 story of great importance to the Royal Australian Air Force: when will the F-35 Lightning program make some important but long-delayed steps forward? In June 2025, Lockheed Martin said the software to make the fighter type’s new Tech Refresh 3 configuration combat-ready was merely awaiting customer approval. It still is. The US Government Accountability Office said in September that a revised plan for the entire Block 4 package (subsystem replacements and improvements enabled by TR-3) would be ready in 2025, but there’s no sign of it. The TR-3 and Block 4 problems were identified in 2023.

Related via the US defence budget: the US naval aviation community will be anxiously waiting and assiduously lobbying for the launch of the next carrier-based fighter, the F/A-XX. The F-35C is not being procured at the US Navy’s established replacement rate of about 30 to 35 aircraft a year, and the type is far from fulfilling the naval aviation community’s desires. But for now, there’s nothing to follow it, and the currently planned F-35C force does not replace the navy’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornets.

Of interest to those of us who have advocated for making defence less dependent on mercurial US policy is Canada’s reevaluation of its decision to buy 88 F-35s. The remaining contender is Saab’s JAS 39E Gripen. The issues are deep: the RCAF has been joined at the hip to the USAF since the 1950s, has exclusively operated US fighters since the 1960s, and is skittish about joining a new partner for training and supply. The new government of Prime Minister Mark Carney is rightly concerned about both the United States’ rhetoric and its threats to neighbouring Greenland, as well as the costs of operating F-35s.

A less US-dominated acquisition enterprise will present a different future for other European air combat programs. This year will see some kind of resolution for the contentious Franco-German-Spanish air-combat project, called FCAS or SCAF, depending on whether you use French or English. Core problems: France wants leadership of the central fighter element and needs it to be compatible with both its current aircraft carrier and that ship’s replacement. And France is also investing in the deeply modernised Dassault Rafale F5 fighter, its M88 T-Rex engine and a high-end uncrewed combat aircraft.

Team Rafale, too, believes that the infrared search and track and electro-optical technology introduced in Rafale F4.2 will match the performance of radar. If that’s right, it will at the very least challenge the need to invest in reduced radar cross-section for future aircraft and push the need for a new fighter well into the 2040s.

The question is whether French demands and hesitation will be enough to cause the German partners to bail out and, if they do, where they will go. The British-Italian-Japanese Global Combat Aircraft Program seems to be proceeding with harmony that China might envy. This is next to unbelievable, given the historical record, but there have been reports that Germany might want to get on board the train before it’s moving too fast.

Now add to the mix the effects of future low-cost drone attacks like Operation Spiderweb in June, when Ukraine damaged or destroyed tens of valuable Russian aircraft. Life is going to be interesting.