Summary and Key Points: President Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced Boeing has won the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program, unveiling the new sixth-generation stealth fighter designated the F-47.
-Boeing beat Lockheed Martin for the $20 billion contract. The F-47, operational secretly for five years, will replace the F-22 within the next decade.
F-47 Fighter from U.S. Air Force.
-It promises groundbreaking stealth, Mach 2+ speeds, and capabilities to control autonomous drones (Collaborative Combat Aircraft).
-Its mission includes hypersonic weapons and teaming with the B-21 bomber, ensuring U.S. air dominance for decades and offering unprecedented strategic capabilities against adversaries like China and Russia.
The F-47 Is Going to Change Everything
There was some good, no… great news this morning. President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that Boeing won the Next Generation Air Dominance program, which the Air Force dubbed the sixth generation stealth fighter, the F-47.
The F-47 will replace the F-22 in the next decade.
Boeing beat out Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works for the $20 billion contract, which was a slight surprise.
However, Boeing has more experience building stealth aircraft than any other on the planet, dating back to the 1960s.
President Trump said the aircraft has been flying in a secret location for the past five years.
“The F-47 will be the most advanced, most capable, most lethal aircraft ever built,” Trump told reporters. “America’s enemies will never see it coming,” he added.
U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin, also present in the Oval Office, said that the aircraft represents what “peace through strength looks like into the future.”
There was some worry that the NGAD program would be put on hold indefinitely due to the ongoing budget crisis. However, President Trump wanted the program and listened to his Air Force commanders. This move will put American aircraft on top, technologically speaking, for quite some time.
The new aircraft will have state-of-the-art stealth, engines that will power the aircraft past Mach 2, and have the capability to quarterback stealth drone fighters, keeping American air dominance intact.
Boeing F-47 NGAD: An Entirely New Stealth Fighter
The contract for NGAD is expected to be worth approximately $20 billion, although the company is in line to receive hundreds of billions of dollars in orders across the program’s life.
Once series production commences, each copy of the aircraft has been estimated to cost upwards of $300 million. Although, there was no update on the per airframe price as of this publication.
The NGAD program is included among other ambitious programs, including developing Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones with high degrees of autonomy, new jet engines, weapons, electronic warfare suites, sensors, networking systems, battle management capabilities, and more.
The F-47 will replace the F-22 Raptor in the next decade. The F-22 is still the best fighter in the world, but it first flew in 1997 and was adopted in 2005.
However, massive cost overruns caused the production line to be shut down, and the US has only about 180 that are operational and only 150 that are ‘combat-coded.’
The Quarterback in the Sky
The F-47 is considered a “family or system of systems.” It will likely be able to fire hypersonic missiles. The engines will be powerful enough for at least MACH 2 or even MACH 3 speed.
It can be a drone mothership that could handle operating Collaborative Combat Aircraft drones that can fly out ahead and collect reconnaissance data, conduct electronic warfare, and protect the NGAD with early warning ability.
The US Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program is a multi-pronged initiative to test, develop, and implement new autonomous and manned-unmanned aircraft teaming concepts.
It is also known as the Loyal Wingman concept, capable of flying independently or in small groups that will be used to counter China’s anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities.
It is intended to rapidly deploy large numbers of autonomous unmanned aircraft, officially designated as CCAs, to team with sixth-generation manned fighter aircraft as part of the USAF’s NGAD program that envisions a system-of-systems approach with the next-generation fighter aircraft, weapons, sensors, networking, and battle management systems to maintain air superiority in the coming decades.
F-47 and B-21 Bomber Teams
The future could see F-47 fighters flying strike missions with the B-21 Raider bomber. Our potential enemies won’t have anything that compares to them. This will give them pause, as each will be advanced stealth designs with nuclear-capable weapons with the means to defeat any aircraft in the sky.
“The F-47 has unprecedented maturity,” General Allvin said. “While the F-22 is currently the finest air superiority fighter in the world, and its modernization will make it even better, the F-47 is a generational leap forward. The maturity of the aircraft at this phase in the program confirms its readiness to dominate the future fight.”
Allvin added the F-47 would cost less than the F-22 and “be more adaptable to future threats” and that the Air Force would have more NGAD fighters in its fleet than Raptors.
About the Author:
Steve Balestrieri is a 19FortyFive National Security Columnist. He served as a US Army Special Forces NCO and Warrant Officer. In addition to writing for 19FortyFive, he covers the NFL for PatsFans.com and is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America (PFWA). His work was regularly featured in many military publications.
