“We worked together long and hard on this,” President Donald Trump said in announcement Friday. “As a matter of fact, this was a big secret.”
“This is a big day for our warfighters, this is a big day for our country, this is a big day for the world,” said Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. “The name of this program is the next generation of air dominance.”
Boeing “will build the world’s first 6th-gen fighter jet: the F-47,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said on X. “It will be the most advanced, lethal, & adaptable fighter ever developed, designed to outpace, outmaneuver, & outmatch any adversary that dares to challenge our Airmen.”
The program is overseen at Wright-Patterson. The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Fighters & Advanced Aircraft Directorate manages the A-10, F-15, F-16, F-22, and special programs, as well as the development of the Next Generation Air Dominance program and the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, which aims to build an uncrewed fighter than can fly with and assist piloted jets.
The directorate’s primary locations are Wright-Patterson, as well as Hill, Tinker and Robins Air Force bases.
Lockheed and Boeing had been competing for the single-winner engineering and manufacturing development contract, whose value Reuters news service put at more than $20 billion.
While the F-22 is today the finest air superiority fighter in the world, the F-47 is a “generational leap forward,” Allvin said in a statement.
“The maturity of the aircraft at this phase in the program confirms its readiness to dominate the future fight,” the chief of staff said. “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.”
The F-47 will have significantly longer range, more advanced stealth, higher availability and other strengths relative to the Air Force’s fifth-generation fighters, the F-22 and F-35, he said.
“The team leading the NGAD family of systems, which includes the F-47 program, is a lean and hand-picked team of cross-functional acquisition warfighters,” an Air Force official said in response to questions. “The size and composition of the team will continue to evolve as the F-47 and CCA (Collaborative Combat Aircraft) programs ramp up to field-dominant warfighting capability critical to the national security of the United States.
“Today’s announcement is monumental for the entire Air Force and our Nation, as we move forward with the capability that will secure air superiority for decades to come,” the official added.
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