The US Department of the Air Force has awarded Boeing a contract for the engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) programme, the centrepiece of which is a sixth-generation fighter.
The EMD contract, which is believed to be worth around USD 20 billion (EUR 18.5 billion), was announced on 21 March 2025 by US President Donald Trump, who declared that the fighter would be designated the F-47. The EMD phase includes maturing, integrating and testing all aspects of the F-47 and will produce a small number of test aircraft for evaluation. The contract also includes competitively priced options for low-rate initial production.
Boeing, in vying with Lockheed Martin to secure the NGAD programme, had already bet big on the project. Both companies had built and secretively flown X-plane demonstrators, but on 26 June 2024 Boeing lifted the lid on a new 1.1 million square-foot factory on which ground was broken at the turn of that year. Expected to be completed in 2026, the USD 1.8 billion factory, which will nearly double the company’s manufacturing footprint at its site near St Louis Lambert International Airport, is intended to revolutionise how military aircraft are built and was assumed to be in anticipation of work on NGAD and/or the US Navy’s F/A-XX future fighter programme.
However, while the US Air Force (USAF) had released a request for proposals for the NGAD EMD contract in May 2023, with a contract award then expected in 2024, the air force then paused in May 2024 over concerns that a full-blown, sixth-generation NGAD platform would be unaffordable and that a more modest solution might be the best way forward.
A decision over NGAD was thus left for the incoming Trump Administration, which, although currently on a mission to slash government spending across the board, appears to have concluded that only proceeding with NGAD would preserve the US technological edge over a peer-level adversary, ie China.
Announcing the go-ahead for the NGAD programme in the Oval Office of the White House on 21 March, Trump said, “I’m thrilled to announce that, at my direction, the United States Air Force is moving forward with the world’s first sixth-generation fighter jet. Nothing in the world comes even close to it, and it’ll be known as the F-47.
“In terms of all of the attributes of a fighter jet, there’s never been anything even close to it, from speed to manoeuvrability, to what it can have, to payload. And this has been in the works for a long period of time,” Trump added. “America’s enemies will never see it coming.”
The fact that the NGAD fighter platform is being designated the F-47 is somewhat intriguing, given that Trump – who never misses an opportunity for self-aggrandisement – is the 47th president of the United States. Numbers are often taken up by experimental and prototype platforms that ultimately never make it into production – the most recent USAF bomber designations, for example, went from B-2 to B-21 – so the jump from F-35 to F-47 could simply be coincidental.
If, however, the USAF has conceded its designation authority or otherwise moved to allow Trump to associate himself with the NGAD platform, perhaps that will induce the US president to look favourably on the programme as it moves forward.
Trump has recently not had kind words to say about Boeing, given the delays to the company’s delivery of two new Air Force One presidential jets.
“I’m not happy with Boeing,” Trump said on 19 February 2025 while speaking to the press on a current VC-25 Air Force One. “We gave that contract out a long time ago.”
Boeing received a USD 3.9 billion fixed-price contract to build two 747-8-based aircraft for use as Air Force Ones in 2018, but supply chain, inflation, workforce and other challenges with the programme means that delivery could be delayed until 2029.
Relatively little is known about the F-47, which could potentially be the last manned USAF fighter programme. The USAF stated in a press release on 21 March, “As the cornerstone of the NGAD Family of Systems, the F-47 is designed to integrate next-generation stealth, sensor fusion and long-range strike capabilities to counter the most sophisticated adversaries in contested environments. Its adaptability and modular design ensure seamless integration with emerging technologies, positioning it as a dominant platform for decades to come.”
The USAF added that, by leveraging cutting-edge digital engineering techniques and government-owned architecture, the F-47 will benefit from a streamlined and accelerated development timeline compared to previous fighter programmes. These advancements will enable rapid technology integration, ensuring the F-47 remains adaptable and upgradable to meet future mission requirements and counter emerging threats.
“With this F-47 as the crown jewel in the Next Generation Air Dominance Family of Systems, we believe that this provides more lethality,” said USAF Chief of Staff General David Allvin. “It provides more capability, more modernised capability, in a way that is built to adapt, along with our Collaborative Combat Aircraft.
“Air dominance is not a birthright, but it’s become synonymous with American airpower, but our dominance needs to be earned every single day,” added Gen Allvin. “Since the earliest days of aerial warfare, brave American airmen have jumped into their machines, taken to the air, and they’ve cleared the skies. That’s been our commitment to the fight, and that’s really been our promise to America, and with this F-47 we’re going to be able to keep that promise well into the future.”
