Boeing wins Air Force contract for NGAD next-gen fighter, dubbed F-47

A Boeing rendering of a next-gen fighter. (Boeing photo)

WASHINGTON — Boeing has won an Air Force contract to develop a new, sixth-generation fighter that officials emphasize will be critical to maintain America’s air supremacy over China, Breaking Defense has learned.

The aerospace giant’s victory in the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program gives Boeing the opportunity to build a new fighter jet at a time when its F/A-18 line is nearing closure, a major lifeline for the company’s St. Louis facility. The win also helps boost the aerospace giant’s defense business, which has suffered billions of dollars in losses in recent years stemming from a series of ill-performing fixed-price contracts, and comes at a time when Boeing’s commercial arm is still in turmoil.

Boeing bested Lockheed Martin in the NGAD competition, ending Lockheed’s status as the sole prime contractor producing stealth fighters in the West — namely the F-22 Raptor and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. A third competitor, Northrop Grumman, dropped out of the competition in 2023 but is expected to compete for a new Navy fighter jet.

In the decade since the existence of the program was revealed, little has come to light about the highly-secretive NGAD fighter, which is expected to enter service in the 2030s and replace the F-22. 

Unlike the Joint Strike Fighter competition, which played out publicly between Boeing and Lockheed in a series of flight demonstrations, the NGAD competition has taken place largely behind closed doors, aside from the Air Force’s disclosure in 2020 that at least one NGAD demonstrator had flown.

Dubbed a “sixth-generation” system, officials say the jet will have cutting-edge stealth, communications and weapons capabilities. The fighter will additionally be expected to operate with the service’s forthcoming fleet of drone wingmen known as Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA). General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Anduril are competing for the separate CCA contract. 

Despite expectations previously laid out by the Air Force, the formal contract award for the NGAD platform failed to come to pass last year amid questions relating to its design and projected price tag. Following the results of the November election, former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall then decided to punt the decision on the platform to the Trump administration.

An internal Air Force review in December subsequently validated the jet’s requirements, Breaking Defense previously reported, potentially strengthening the decision by the Trump administration to ultimately award the stealth fighter’s contract.

In the time since, China has unveiled purported sixth-generation platforms, and Air Force officials have become more vocal about the need for NGAD if air superiority is going to be achieved.

“Bluntly, what this study told us is, we tried a whole bunch of different options, and there was no more viable option than NGAD to achieve air superiority in this highly contested environment,” Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel, the Air Force’s director of force design, integration and wargaming said during a March 4 panel discussion at the AFA Warfare Symposium.

Billions On The Line

Winning NGAD isn’t just a point of pride for Boeing — it will serve as a foundational part of the company’s business going forward. 

Barring any major revisions by the Trump administration, the NGAD fighter’s per unit price is thought to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall previously described the fighter as costing “multiples” of the F-35 and shared plans that the service was then aiming for an initial buy of 200 NGAD fighters, though that number could change. 

But that’s just part of the spending. Air Force budget documents say the service plans to invest billions of dollars between fiscal years 2025 and 2029 to develop the NGAD fighter, with more funds planned beyond to finish development and proceed with production. When the Air Force announced in May 2023 the goal of awarding the NGAD contract in 2024, the service said the winning vendor would enter at the engineering and manufacturing development phase.

The Air Force is also spending billions to develop a new engine for the fighter, which uses “adaptive” turbofan technologies that can adjust how air flows through the powerplant in flight, altering what’s known as its bypass ratio. The technology promises improved performance for features like thrust and fuel efficiency. Pratt & Whitney and GE Aerospace are facing off under that separate engine development effort known as Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion, which recently saw its budget ceiling raised in a new round of contracts to both vendors.

Meanwhile, the Navy is forging ahead with its own next-gen fighter that will replace the venerable F/A-18 and E/A-18 for the service’s own air superiority missions. That contest is now down to Boeing and Northrop after Lockheed was knocked out of the running, Breaking Defense previously reported. Lockheed’s loss in the Air Force’s NGAD competition now leaves the world’s largest defense contractor locked out of foreseeable sixth-generation aircraft efforts — and comes at a time when the F-35 is under new scrutiny by historic allies wary of the new Trump administration.

It’s not clear whether the Air Force might pursue Kendall’s suggestions of aggressive cost savings for the stealth jet, especially as budgetary constraints may no longer be much of a factor. While Kendall indicated that some sacrifices, like reducing the complexity of the fighter’s engine, might be necessary to make the jet viable, a surge in defense spending championed by Republicans on Capitol Hill may obviate the need for such tradeoffs. It’s also notable the award comes prior to the Senate confirmation of Troy Meink, who President Donald Trump has tapped to serve as Kendall’s successor.

According to Kendall, the F-35 program has been instructive for the Air Force, namely for what the NGAD program should not do. Specifically, Kendall — a longtime critic of the F-35, who accused the program of exhibiting “acquisition malpractice” years ago in a previous DoD role — said in May 2023 that the government will acquire requisite intellectual property and data rights, as well as ensure the jet has a modular open systems architecture. 

Failing to take the same steps on the F-35, Kendall said, was a “serious mistake” that officials have long complained allowed Lockheed too much control over the Joint Strike Fighter enterprise and fostered conditions for disappointing readiness rates. 

“We’ll have a much tighter degree of government control over the future of [NGAD] than we’ve had,” Kendall said.