A new era for X-ray astronomy has begun with the launch of Chandra on July 23rd 1999, soon to be followed by XMM (December 1999) and Astro-E (January 2000). Arcsecond imaging and detailed spectroscopy with Chandra (see http://chandra.harvard.edu/) will probe the central regions of radio galaxies, telling us whether or not radio sources have dense cooling gas on sub-cluster/group scales, a possible jet trigger, and will provide information on the role of mergers and clumping in radio-galaxy formation, evolution, and intermittency. We expect new X-ray detections of knots, hotspots, and compact jets, from which physical parameters of the emission regions will be deduced. XMM's unprecedented throughput coupled with ~ 15 arcsec imaging and CCD spectroscopy (see http://xmm.esac.esa.int/) will measure large samples of more distant sources, probing the relationship between X-ray environment and radio-source structure. Spectroscopic separation of components (non-thermal and thermal) will be easier, testing, among other things, models for jet disruption. The Astro-E mission (see http://astroe.gsfc.nasa.gov/), with its calorimeter spectral resolution of ~ 12 eV FWHM, should open the door to new radio-source science - kinematic and dynamical studies via X-ray line emission - paving the way for a future generation of X-ray missions with high-throughput eV-level spectroscopy (see http://constellation.gsfc.nasa.gov/ and http://astro.estec.esa.nl/SA-general/Projects/XEUS/).