At a press conference held in the Oval Office of the White House, President Trump unexpectedly announced that Boeing had won the contract to develop and deploy the US Air Force’s sixth generation fighter jet. Dubbed the F-47, to honor Trump as our nation’s 47th president, the aircraft, which as yet does not have a name, “came after a tumultuous competition between Boeing and Lockheed Martin for the prized rights to build the aircraft that is meant to anchor the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems,” said Aviation Week.
“The Air Force wants a new aircraft with the range, speed and stealth to operate effectively over the vast Indo-Pacific region and against some of China’s most advanced weapons systems, including current and future stealth fighters and surface-to-air missile systems.
The requirements dictate an aircraft with performance that defies familiar categories for combat aircraft, such as a fighter or bomber. Boeing’s future aircraft is expected to feature a supersonic speed and perhaps a lack of vertical control surfaces to enhance its survivability, along with a large structure to carry all fuel, sensors and weapons internally.
The NGAD contract also offers a reprieve for a defense and space business within Boeing that has reported over $18 billion in reach-forward losses on fixed-price military and NASA programs since 2014, including $5 billion in new charges from 2024 alone. Despite the losses, Boeing invested heavily to win the NGAD contract, including starting construction nearly two years ago on a new factory in St. Louis to produce the aircraft.
The development deal could sustain for several more decades Boeing’s historic combat aircraft production site in St. Louis, a line that dates back to the first flight of the FH-1 Phantom in 1945, reached peak output with the F-4 Phantom II and continues today with the F-15EX Eagle II. If the NGAD contract can stay on track, Boeing gains the opportunity to revitalize its defense engineering and operations, advancing on the digital engineering and manufacturing practices pioneered by the T-7A Red Hawk trainer and MQ-25 Stingray, an uncrewed, carrier-based air refueling aircraft.
Boeing’s victory also stops Lockheed Martin from attaining a monopoly on Air Force crewed fighter production after the end of the decade, with future U.S. orders for the F-35A still uncertain under the new Trump administration.
The NGAD award will reverberate in the defense industry beyond the crewed aircraft market. The aircraft is expected to feature the winner of the Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion program—GE Aerospace XA102 or Pratt & Whitney’s XA103. Both feature a new three-stream architecture that increases bypass flow in cruise mode to reduce fuel consumption by more than 20%.
The capabilities of the NGAD also will influence requirements for the Air Force’s proposed family of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA). The CCAs are expected to operate alongside NGAD aircraft on some missions, expanding options for sensors and weapons.”
Thus far its not clear what the aircraft will look like but it is expected to be tailless, boast an internal weapons bay and incorporate a variety of stealthy characteristics that are designed reduce its radar cross section. It had been thought that the F-47 (previously known as the NGAD) was on hold due to rising developmental costs so the announcement comes as a shock to both the aviation and defense community. The move is already being viewed with a measure of skepticism given Lockheed-Martin’s history of producing some of the finest cutting edge jets in recent years, among them the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter. So, it remains to be seen how Bowing gained a leg up on the competition given its current spate of miscues in the general aviation industry and its problems delivering astronauts into space via its problem-plagued Starliner capsule.