Cost escalation for fighter aircraft is arguably not sustainable. Pushing frontiers oftechnology by incremental improvements of traditional platforms has led to anexponential increase in cost. This paper addresses the process of concept generationwith the purpose to explore how affordability is managed in that process, in order toidentify possible measures to improve the likelihood of generating affordableconcepts. This is done by studying two cases of concept generation of future combatair systems. The concepts generated in these two cases are however not curbing thecost escalation and are, with only one notable exception, based on incrementalinnovation. Nevertheless, the empirical observations offer leads to potentially fostera more innovative and cost conscious concept generation process, indicatingavenues for future research.