F-47 NGAD: What We Know So Far

On March 21, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump made a highly anticipated announcement. The Pentagon awarded the contract for the U.S. Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) future fighter aircraft to Boeing. It is somewhat coincidental that the 47th President of the United States has designated it as the F-47.

Very little information is available about the NGAD program, although prototypes have been in the air for the past five years. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman were all contenders for the development of NGAD. Northrop Grumman withdrew from the competition earlier to focus on the B-21 Raider program, leaving Boeing as the winner on March 21.

Boeing’s decision to shut down the F/A-18E/F production line in 2023 and its significant investment in the St. Louis, Missouri facility showcased their commitment to the sixth-generation fighter program. Interestingly, NGAD will be the first fighter aircraft entirely developed by Boeing; previous models like the F-15 and F/A-18 were originally McDonnell Douglas platforms that became part of Boeing’s portfolio when it acquired McDonnell Douglas in 1997.

The total program cost is expected to reach $20 billion, with a projected production cost of $300 million per aircraft. The NGAD initiative evolved from the mid-2010s Penetrating Counter-Air (PCA) platform program, which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and featured at least one operational aircraft.

Although the NGAD program is primarily associated with a manned fighter system, it will also include highly autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), enhanced networking, battle management capabilities, along with advanced engines, weapons, sensors, and electronic warfare systems.

In September 2020, it was revealed that a full-scale NGAD flight demonstrator had successfully flown. However, the Biden Administration had placed the NGAD program on hold due to prohibitive costs. This suggests that recent demonstration flights of sixth-generation fighters by China may have acted as a catalyst for reviving the program.

The Design Features and Capabilities

In his statement on F-47 on 21 March 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump stated: “It’s something the likes of which nobody has seen before. In terms of all of the attributes of a fighter jet, there has never been anything even close to it, from speed to maneuverability, to what it can have to payload… The F-47 will be the most advanced, most capable, most lethal aircraft ever built. I am confident that the F-47 massively overpowers the capabilities of any other nation. There is no other nation, we know every other plane, I have seen every one of them, and it’s not even close. This is the next level.”

He continued: “As well as being equipped with state-of-the-art stealth technologies, which will make it virtually unseeable, the F-47 has the most power of any jet of its kind ever made. Maneuverability… there has never been anything like it, despite the power and speed. Its speed is top over two, which is something you don’t hear very often. An experimental version of the F-47 has been secretly flying for almost five years. I foresee the F-47 entering series production before the end of my term in office (January 2029). They have already built much of what has to be built in terms of production, including the sheds. As for the unit cost of the new fighter, we can’t tell you the price, because it would give way to the technology and some of the size of the plane.”

From Donald Trump’s statement, it is clear that the F-47 is expected to have a top speed of around Mach 2. The U.S. Air Force chief provided an interesting comparison, stating that the cost of the F-47 will be less than that of the F-22. Additionally, the number of F-47s produced is projected to be much higher than the 180 F-22s currently in service. The F-47 is also anticipated to have a longer range and better availability rate than the existing 5th-generation fighters. The Air Chief further noted that the new fighter would require significantly less manpower and infrastructure for maintenance and deployment.

The design features of the F-47 suggest that it has been inspired by Boeing’s YF-118G stealth technology demonstrator, which had dihedral wings with downward-swept wingtips that facilitate line-of-sight targeting of enemy aircraft even at extreme angles. Released images of the F-47 show a canard-like foreplane or root extension, which is generally not favored in stealth designs. This raises the possibility that the initial images may either not reveal the full design or are intended to confuse potential adversaries like China, who are likely closely monitoring these developments. The large nose cone could accommodate advanced radar systems, and the bubble canopy is designed to provide a 360-degree view in this tailless fighter concept.

The F-47 may also incorporate many fuselage design features from Boeing’s X-45 Tailless Fighter Agile Research Aircraft (UCAV). Currently, details about the air intake design remain unclear. Regarding the engine, both General Electric and Pratt & Whitney are working on the Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) program, specifically developed for the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) initiative. The NGAD platform is also expected to function as a forward Cooperative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drone controller. General Atomics and Anduril are developing a new family of air combat systems for the U.S. Air Force’s NGAD platform.

It is evident that the F-47 is being specifically designed to operate in the heavily contested Indo-Pacific theater, posing a challenge to China and its partners. The F-47 NGAD emphasises the United States’ commitment to maintaining strategic superiority and ensuring the security of its global interests, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region.

Karl Marx once famously stated, “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” Those interested in history, geopolitics, and military strategy may recall how U.S. President Ronald Reagan misled the USSR. In 1983, he proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), commonly referred to as Star Wars, which aimed to create a space-based missile defense system. It is widely believed that the Reagan Administration created the illusion of a functioning Star Wars model by manipulating tests and data. This pushed the USSR to initiate costly countermeasures, which ultimately contributed to its disintegration. Only time will tell if China, with its recent heightened focus on 6th-generation fighter demonstrator flights, has pressured the U.S. into repeating the USSR’s costly mistakes by igniting a new arms race.