The F-47: Next Generation Air Dominance
Boeing Wins Contest to Build the Next Manned Fighter.
By Chris Gordon and John A. Tirpak
When President Donald Trump announced March 21 that Boeing would build the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter, he unleashed a series of superlatives: faster, more maneuverable, more stealthy, “the likes of which nobody has seen before.”
“In terms of all of the attributes of a fighter jet, there’s never been anything even close to it, from speed to maneuverability to what it can have, to payload,” Trump said from his desk in the White House’s Oval Office, flanked by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin, and Lt. Gen. Dale R. White, the military deputy to the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology, and logistics.
Boeing defeated Lockheed Martin in the contest to build the world’s first sixth-generation fighter, named the F-47 in honor of the P-47 Thunderbolt, the year in which the Air Force was founded, and the second Trump administration, the 47th in American history.
The future of this Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter had been in question for nearly a year, having been paused by former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall last summer out of concern that its costs were too high and its requirements might be dated compared to new weapons coming out of China. Hegseth said the Biden administration had been “prepared to potentially scrap it.”
Kendall had ordered an internal review and appointed a senior panel of former Air Force Chiefs and other officials to review the options; they concluded the system was needed late last year, and Kendall acknowledged that given the timing, the decision on the airplane’s future was best left to the successor administration.
The F-47 joins two other new aircraft designations announced weeks ahead of the F-47 unveiling, when Allvin disclosed that the first two Collaborative Combat Aircraft would be designated YFQ-42 and YFQ-44. The two CCAs, the former built by General Atomics Aeronautics and the latter by Anduril Industries, are designed to operate with manned aircraft and are in the prototype stage today.
The F-47 is designed from the start to operate in concert with CCAs—“many many drones,” Trump said.
For Allvin, the announcement was a continuation of his pitch for “more Air Force,” a pitch he made at the AFA Warfare Symposium: “I want to give the President as many options as we possibly can,” he said there. “So that means, yes, keep on with modernization. Yes, NGAD. Yes, CCA. Yes, survivable bases.”
NGAD will succeed the fifth-generation air-to-air F-22, built by Lockheed Martin, as the Air Force’s air superiority fighter, but Trump and Allvin promised it will be built in greater volume than the F-22 Raptor, which suffered a series of cuts and ultimately was limited to 186 jets, about a quarter of the original plan.
“Compared to the F-22, the F-47 will cost less and be more adaptable to future threats—and we will have more of the F-47s in our inventory,” Allvin said in a statement. “The F-47 will have significantly longer range, more advanced stealth, be more sustainable, supportable, and have higher availability than our fifth-generation fighters. This platform is designed with a ‘built to adapt’ mindset, and will take significantly less manpower and infrastructure to deploy.”
Allvin praised the combat capabilities of the F-47, saying “We believe that this provides more lethality: It provides more modernized capability in a way that is built to adapt. Along with our Collaborative Combat Aircraft the President talked about with drones, this is allowing us to look into the future and unlock the magic that is human-machine teaming. And as we do that, we’re going to write the next generation of modern aerial warfare.”
Allvin said the program was structured to put “more control in the hands of the government, so we can update and adapt at the speed of relevance, at the speed of technology.” The Air Force chose a cost-plus-incentive-fee contract structure for F-47 engineering and manufacturing development. Speaking on background, an Air Force official said, “the contract will produce a small number of test aircraft … and competitively priced options for low-rate initial production aircraft.” Further details were withheld for security reasons.
Meanwhile, CCA are maturing. The YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A are scheduled to fly this summer and are designed to carry missiles, but the role of future CCAs could include a variety of missions, including electronic warfare, sensing, and more.
The Air Force has invested billions to develop the F-47 so far, and has billions more planned to invest in future research and development to ensure it will remain the most advanced fighter jet in the world.
The F-47 is seen as the high-end part of a “high-low” mix that will include the F-35 and CCAs. The F-35 is a multirole, fifth-generation jet optimized for air-to-ground attack and operating as a sort of combat quarterback; NGAD has been described as an air-to-air fighter and penetrator designed to operate in contested environments and to fly deep into enemy territory leveraging its stealth and electronic warfare capabilities to remain undetected and to protect penetrating bombers.
The engines competing to power the NGAD—GE’s XA102 and Pratt & Whitney’s XA103—have passed Design Reviews for the Next-Generation Adaptive Propulsion program, and employ new technology for increased thrust and efficiency, meaning greater range.
The Navy is also developing a next-generation fighter and intends to award a contract for its sixth-generation F/A-XX in the coming months. The two programs are separate, however, unlike the F-35 which produced Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps variants.
Big Win for Boeing
Boeing’s selection is a major coup at a time when America’s largest aircraft maker has been struggling in every aspect of its business. Boeing has suffered cost overruns, delays, and technical challenges on a host of programs, from the much-delayed VC-25B presidential aircraft known as Air Force One to the KC-46 Pegasus tanker, the T-7A Red Hawk trainer, its space and commercial aircraft programs, and even its commercial airliners.
The delays on the new “Air Force One” even prompted Trump, weeks before the F-47 announcement, to suggest the military should look at alternative integrators (Boeing is responsible for fitting out 747 airliners for the job.)
In winning a fighter competition, Boeing also gains a foothold into a business that had seemed to belong to Lockheed, which won the F-22 and F-35 competitions. Boeing’s only other fighter is the F-15EX, based on a decades-old airframe design.
The F-47 will join the B-21 bomber as the Air Force’s second sixth-gen jet, a generation Allvin promised will deliver “next-generation stealth, sensor fusion, and long-range strike capabilities to counter the most sophisticated adversaries in contested environments.”
Renderings of the F-47 intentionally conceal many of its features, but indicate distinct differences from the fifth-generation F-22 and F-35. The F-47 is pictured with a conventionally stealthy nose and bubble canopy, a chiseled chine, and a flattened overall fuselage. It appears to feature canards, or a forward winglet, as well as wings that appear to be canted at a distinctive upward angle, features not typical of previous stealth designs.
These features might lend themselves to what Allvin called “significantly longer range.” The F-22 can fly more than 1,850 miles when fitted with two external wing fuel tanks before it needs to be refueled.
Air Force leaders have discussed the possibility of building two variants of the plane in the past, one larger version with greater range to cope with the great distances of the Pacific theater. The announcement made no indication of variants of the aircraft, however.
Allvin said X-planes have been testing NGAD technologies for the past five years, “flying hundreds of hours, testing cutting-edge concepts, and proving that we can push the edge of technology with confidence.” The flying campaign has been “accelerating the technology, refining our operational concepts, and proving that we can field this capability faster than ever before,” he said. As a result, he promised: “This fighter will fly during President Trump’s administration.”
That means the jet will fly within four years; by comparison, it took six years for the F-22 to go from contract to first flight.
Air Force officials first made reference to flying NGAD prototypes in 2020, and former Secretary Frank Kendall later revealed that X-plane prototypes flew even earlier than that, in the mid-2010s.
Allvin also promised that the F-47 “will cost less and be more adaptable to future threats—and we will have more of the F-47s in our inventory.”
The flyaway cost of the F-22—including just the cost of one aircraft, and not research and development, military construction, or any other nonrecurring engineering costs—was about $140 million. All in, F-22 costs equate to about $350 million per jet, higher than expected because the Air Force ended up buying just a quarter of the jets planned.
Air Force officials have privately suggested they will build between 220 and 250 F-47s.
Allvin said the F-47 will also be “more sustainable, supportable, and have higher availability than our fifth-generation fighters,” which could be references to enhancements in the hardiness of new low-observable surface treatments. In the early days of stealth, those treatments were among the most expensive aspects of maintaining these jets. But advancements since then and included in the sixth-gen B-21 have been described as enabling that aircraft to be a “daily flyer,” due to more resilient and contiguous stealth surfaces. The same principles are likely applied in the design of the F-47.
The F-47 was also designed with a “built to adapt” mindset, Allvin said, a likely reference to digital design and an open-systems architecture that will allow frequent changeouts of software, sensors, and other mission gear. He also said the fighter will “take significantly less manpower and infrastructure to deploy,” suggesting a reduced dependence on ground equipment and more maintenance-friendly components.
Steve Parker, interim president and chief executive officer of Boeing Defense, Space and Security, said Boeing worked hard for the win: “In preparation for this mission, we made the most significant investment in the history of our defense business, and we are ready to provide the most advanced and innovative NGAD aircraft needed to support the mission.”
Allvin offered a striking description of what the Air Force will gain with its next fighter jet. “With the F-47, we will strengthen our global position, keeping our enemies off-balance and at bay,” he said. “And when they look up, they will see nothing but the certain defeat that awaits those who dare to challenge us.”