Summary and Key Points: The U.S. Navy is set to choose between Boeing and Northrop Grumman for its next-generation F/A-XX stealth fighter, designed to replace the aging F/A-18 Super Hornet.
-The F/A-XX aims to provide long-range, stealthy strike capabilities critical for countering threats from China and Russia.
-Boeing offers potential cost savings by leveraging shared technologies with its Air Force F-47, but faces trust issues after recent setbacks. Northrop Grumman, famed for stealth expertise with the B-21 Raider, offers a fresh approach.
-The Navy’s decision will impact America’s strategic position, influencing future carrier operations and U.S. airpower dominance in a rapidly evolving global threat environment.
F/A-XX Fighter: A Big Call to Make for the U.S. Navy
The U.S. Navy is reportedly on the verge of naming a winner for its F/A-XX program – the stealthy, long-range, sixth-generation jet slated to replace the F/A-18 Super Hornet. And if that sentence doesn’t make your pulse quicken, it should.
Because the future of American sea-based airpower is about to be decided not in the skies over the South China Sea, but in a Pentagon conference room.
Two contractors remain in the running: Boeing, still reeling from a decade of screw-ups but newly resurgent, and Northrop Grumman, the stealth expert with no recent fighter track record. Lockheed Martin, surprisingly, is already out.
F/A-XX Needs to Deliver for the Navy
Don’t be fooled. This isn’t just another defense contract. The Navy is about to decide what its future looks like – whether it wants to remain relevant in the Indo-Pacific fight that’s coming into view, or whether it’ll cling to the comfortable illusions of the past. Carrier air wings built around Super Hornets and F-35Cs simply won’t cut it in a war with China. They don’t have the range. They don’t have the survivability. They were built for yesterday’s fights.
The F/A-XX is supposed to change that. Think deep strike. Real stealth. A weapons bay that isn’t limited to yesterday’s munitions. A brain wired for battle networks, loyal wingmen, and electronic warfare. Above all, it needs legs—enough range to keep America’s $13 billion floating airfields outside the Chinese missile umbrella while still hitting targets that matter. If the new jet can’t do that, we may as well stop building carriers.
Boeing’s in an interesting spot. Everyone knows the hits they’ve taken – 737 MAX disasters, KC-46 tanker delays, engineering layoffs, and a corporate culture that prizes financial tricks over technical excellence. And yet, somehow, they landed the F-47 contract for the Air Force. If they take the F/A-XX too, it could offer real efficiencies: shared supply chains, common systems, and cross-service interoperability. But it would also concentrate even more power in the hands of a defense giant that hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory lately. Trust, once lost, is hard to earn back.
Northrop Grumman’s pitch is different. They haven’t built a Navy fighter since acquiring Grumman three decades ago, but they’ve become the go-to firm for stealth. The B-2, the B-21—both theirs. Quiet, competent, serious. If you want a low-observable jet that actually works, Northrop has a case. A win here could mark their return to the top tier of tactical aviation and inject some much-needed competition into a stagnant industry.
Can the Navy Stay Focused?
But the real issue isn’t Boeing or Northrop. It’s whether the Navy knows what it needs—and whether it can stay focused long enough to get it. Because recent history doesn’t inspire confidence. The Ford-class carrier was years late and billions over budget. The Zumwalt-class destroyer turned into a high-tech orphan. The LCS program collapsed under the weight of its own incoherence. We
We’ve seen this movie before: ambitious specs, shifting requirements, a bloated acquisition bureaucracy, and eventually, a jet that’s either too expensive to field in numbers or too compromised to matter.
There’s another risk: taking so long to get the jet right that it arrives too late to matter. The Air Force’s NGAD effort is already further along. China is surging ahead with fifth-generation fighters and laying the foundation for a carrier air wing that, in a few years, won’t look all that different from ours. Beijing isn’t pausing to work through acquisition milestones and risk review boards. If we drag this out into the 2030s, we may find ourselves fielding a beautiful aircraft that solves yesterday’s problems.
And then there’s the deeper question. Even if the jet gets built – and even if it performs – will the carrier survive as a viable concept of operations in the age of hypersonics, long-range kill chains, and precision decapitation strikes? Maybe. But only if the air wing gets radically better. That means F/A-XX needs to be more than a new airframe. It needs to be the core of a distributed, survivable, networked kill web that stretches across thousands of miles and dozens of platforms. It needs to be a quarterback, a scout, a sniper, and a survivor. Anything less, and the whole edifice of American sea power begins to creak.
The good news is that the Navy seems to understand the urgency. The bad news is that it’s easier to understand urgency than to act with urgency. Picking a contractor is step one. Delivering an aircraft that actually works, at scale, on time, and without bankrupting the taxpayer – that’s where things tend to fall apart. We cannot afford that here. Not with China building ships faster than we can count them. Not with the balance in the Western Pacific shifting against us.
What Happens Next on F/A-XX?
So what happens if we get an F/A-XX winner? That depends. If it’s just a paper victory – a concept slide and a vague promise – we’ve wasted another decade. But if the Navy gets serious, if the contractor is held to account, if the requirements are kept clear and the goal kept in sight – then we may just reinvent the carrier air wing in time for the fight that’s coming.
It’s a choice. And it’s one we’ll have to live with. Because the next time American naval aviators go into combat, it won’t be in the sandbox. It’ll be in a contested battlespace, against a peer adversary, with no guarantee of air superiority. They’ll need every edge we can give them. And we need to start developing that edge now.
About the Author: Andrew Latham
Andrew Latham is a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities and a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. Andrew is now a Contributing Editor to 19FortyFive, where he writes a daily column. You can follow him on X: @aakatham.
waco
April 14, 2025 at 1:50 pm
If the admirals, navy boffins and the LM/northrop experts attempt to over-engineer the F/A-XX, it will bankrupt the DoD.
That’s because each copy of the fighter will then cost well over $999 million per unit delivery without the required payloads and fuel.
That is the flyaway price minus the equipment needed for combat.
After adding in all the extras, the DoD will have to hock its nimitz carriers in order to pay for the fighters.
But who will cough up the dollars. The shipbreakers in south asian shipyards. Or the neighbor to the west.
Philippines could buy a couple of them. But on the understanding that it would be paying only with philippine peso. Not greenbacks.
Andres
April 19, 2025 at 11:21 am
First, Boeing winning both won’t provide efficiencies any more than the F-35A,B, and C, which turn out to be vastly different airplanes did. Second, Navy has said they aren’t going to use the new adaptive cycle engines, so that’s a huge cost savings all by itself. Third, while the Navy of late has been clueless, rudderless, and leaderless, here’s hoping for a better outcome this time. Fourth, vulnerable as they are, you have to find the carrier to hit it, and a carrier at sea is a harder target to find than a fixed land based airfield in any circumstance. All that said, do you think 20 or 30 F/A-XXs in a carrier air wing will make all that much difference is a war with China, assuming they aren’t armed with tactical nukes?