US air dominance: The story so far

Following years of uncertainty and budget reviews, the US Air Force (USAF) Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) 6th-Gen fighter programme has passed a significant milestone with the selection of Boeing’s F-47. The service now faces the challenge of balancing the platform’s new capabilities with fiscal realities and production numbers.

On 21 March 2025 President Trump announced that Boeing had been selected to build a sixth generation fighter to meet the USAF’s NGAD requirement. Trump declared that the aircraft would be known as the F-47. The future of this, the Air Force’s next-generation combat jet, was originally to have been decided by the end of 2024. The Air Force’s NGAD review reportedly supported the development of a manned, next-generation fighter, but outgoing Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall delayed a decision as to who (if anyone) would build the NGAD core manned platform. This would be left to the incoming Trump administration.

 

Looking back, 2024 saw a dramatic shift in the fortunes of America’s two Next Generation Air Dominance programmes, in the face of severe budgetary pressure. A source selection for the USAF’s NGAD programme was expected in the summer, but was paused, while the USAF was directed to look afresh at exactly what it wanted from the crewed aircraft at the heart of the NGAD system of systems – and perhaps even whether it wants such an aircraft at all. Meanwhile, there was a renewed or restated commitment to the US Navy F/A-XX effort (confusingly also dubbed NGAD), which many had interpreted as having been halted.

The overwhelming success of US-led, Western air forces against Soviet-supplied IADS (Integrated Air Defence Systems) in Iraq, the Balkans, Libya and Syria provided a wake-up call for potential adversaries – particularly Russia and China. These campaigns all demonstrated the efficacy of the US/NATO ‘way of war’, using stealthy platforms as a spearhead, gaining air supremacy, while waging a ferocious SEAD (suppression of enemy air defences) campaign. This then allowed tactical air power to go about its business unmolested.

New challenges emerge

This led directly to a major effort to deny the US and its allies the ability to wage war in the way it would naturally choose to. One of the answers, notably in China’s case, was the A2/AD (Anti-Access/Area Denial) strategy, using very long range air defence capabilities to provide ‘Anti-Access’ (preventing an opponent from entering a given operational area), and ‘Area Denial’ (limiting the opponent’s freedom of action within that operational area).

[Editor’s note: it is worth clarifying that while the A2/AD strategy broadly applies within the context of the US facing China in the South China Sea, it has been misapplied elsewhere. Russian strategic planning does not actually advocate an A2/AD strategy, despite what many figures in Western military circles seem to think. Russia’s strategy is called ‘Active Defence’ and works quite differently to A2/AD, as detailed by Russian generals, as well as in numerous scholarly articles on contemporary Russian military thought.]

Effective A2/AD does not necessarily require that a given volume of airspace is made ‘impenetrable’. If the enemy’s aircraft can be pushed back to more distant bases, and if the enemy’s ‘enablers’ (such as tankers, battle management aircraft, and stand-off jammers) can be excluded, then the enemy’s tactical aircraft will themselves be ‘pushed back’ and will be unable to penetrate deeply or operate effectively. It relies on a complex network of systems, including fighters, airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft, surface to air, ballistic and hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs), conventional and hypersonic cruise missiles (HCMs), airborne radars, and air defence/air warfare ships. China also looked to gain significant mass, countering the numerical advantage that the US had once taken for granted.

These Chinese ‘counter-air’ forces now represent a more widespread and more complex array of threats than any existing regional US force could effectively handle, or even significantly negate, and that upgrades to the F-35A and F-22 will be entirely inadequate to overcome. A 2016 Defense Science Board (DSB) study concluded that air dominance “implies sufficient force capacity and capability to reign supreme against the defined threat.” It found that dominance of an entire battlespace was not “affordably achievable” in an A2/AD environment.

 

Air Vice Marshal Jim Beck, who became the RAF’s Director Capability and Programmes in April 2024, and a former Lightning Force Commander outlined China’s A2/AD (Anti-Access Area Denial) capabilities, which he said: “push you away, to keep you out of the fight”, and are “very, very difficult to overcome.” He said that the “ranges we’re dealing with are 500 nautical miles [926 km] today,” and would “reach 1,000 nautical miles [1,852 km] by 2030.” The emergence of new Chinese sixth generation fighters might suggest that the expansion of the Chinese A2/AD envelope might come sooner than expected. It also showed that the US and China are locked in a ‘race’ to field the next generation of fighter – here the Air Force’s outgoing acquisition executive, Andrew Hunter, said that: “They could beat us to the punch.” Hunter acknowledged that the US may not win the race to initial operational capability (IOC), but added “I think we’ll have the better capability, but we certainly have no time to lose”.

The F-35A has a combat radius of just 590 NM (1,093 km), while the F-22A mission radius is a little less if it has to use supercruise. This means that both types would need to refuel within about 500 NM (926 km) of their intended target (from tankers that would be ‘sitting ducks’). This is plainly inadequate to cope with the emerging threat environment.

Tracing the path to NGAD

The answer to the aforementioned challenges was to design a new ‘system of systems’ for air dominance, and one that would be capable of projecting that air dominance much further – into the very heart of the enemy A2/AD envelope. This new ‘system of systems’ would use a mix of air, space and cyberspace capabilities, pairing stand-in and stand-off capabilities to defeat a future adversary’s A2/AD strategy, though the objective was to achieve air superiority (or even ‘pulsed air superiority’), rather than the blanket air dominance that US forces have become used to. At the heart of this new ‘system of systems’ would be a very long range, highly capable manned combat air platform (first known as the ‘Gen 6 F-X fighter’ and then as the Penetrating Counter-Air (PCA) aircraft).

The USAF launched a 2017 analysis of alternatives to identify PCA requirements, In 2019, completing the analysis in 2019 and creating a Program Executive Office for Advanced Aircraft to speed development of technology for digital engineering, modular open systems architecture, and agile software development.

PCA was not envisaged as a traditional fighter, designed to outmanoeuvre rival fighters, but it was essentially an F-22 replacement. Instead, the new PCA aircraft would have a counter-air role, targeting both air- and surface-based air defences, engaging enemy aircraft that made it into the air, performing SEAD, and calling in attacks by other aircraft carrying long range stand-off weapons. It would have to penetrate to the heart of the most contested airspace. The F-22 and F-35 are effectively being pushed out of this airspace, and will be able to operate only at its peripheries, limited by their own range and by the inability of tankers and other enablers to push far enough forward.

NGAD was briefly conceived as a joint Air Force-Navy programme, but the two services soon established separate offices and the programmes diverged. Though the US Navy and USAF face the same basic problem (projecting air dominance in an expanding A2/AD envelope), there was never much chance of finding a common solution. This was because, in order to meet its payload/range/capability requirements, it was soon clear that the USAF would be looking at a much larger and heavier aircraft than could comfortably operate in numbers from the US Navy’s aircraft carriers.

It is widely assumed that the USAF’s requirements will require an aircraft in the 110,000 lb (approx. 50 tonnes) maximum take-off weight (MTOW) class, while the Navy has set a hard limit of 85,000 lb (approx. 38.5 tonnes) MTOW with a landing weight with full weapons and minimal internal fuel of circa 55,000 lb (approx. 25 tonnes). The Navy is looking at an aircraft slightly heavier than a North American/Rockwell RA-5C Vigilante, while the Air Force is looking at an aircraft larger than the Tupolev Tu-128, in broadly the same MTOW class as an Airbus A318, or about the same as a pair of Tornados or F-35Bs!

Originally intended as what Frank Kendall (then the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics) described as “essentially an F-22 replacement,” the NGAD fighter was expected to have a unit cost equivalent to three or “multiple” F-35As, with long range and exquisite capabilities. The F-35A currently costs USD 116 million (Gross weapon system cost per unit), according to the P-1 procurement budget book.

 

It was always expected that the NGAD manned fighter would form part of a system of systems, with Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) operating further ‘up threat’, extending sensor coverage, bringing more weapons to the fight, and providing mass to try to claw back some of the advantage that the US always used to enjoy. Initially, the USAF expected each manned fighter to control between three and five CCA, but is today looking at larger numbers, and at relatively close control of these platforms.

NGAD hits turbulence

Early tinkering with the overall NGAD system of systems saw the apparent abandoning of the very high-end ‘Loyal Wingman’ in favour of less-costly expendable and attritable unmanned adjuncts, and senior Department of the Air Force officials also soon began pushing for a much cheaper core manned platform, shifting away from the original NGAD vision. The NGAD programme had been expected to reach a down-select or ‘source selection’ decision in the summer of 2024, but there were soon signs that this might not happen, and the Air Force’s most senior civilian and uniformed leaders appeared to cast doubt on the USAF’s commitment to the programme, as it was then arranged.

In June 2024, then Secretary of the Air Force Kendall told Aviation Week that: “There are a lot of things that we probably might not have contemplated a few years ago, we’re taking a hard look at. The need for air dominance, obviously, is not going to go away. But what mix of systems and how we do that, I think, is something we can take another look at.”

In an interview with Defence News on 26 June 2024, Kendall elaborated why he was taking another look at NGAD: “It’s a very expensive platform. It’s roughly three times the cost of an F-35, and we can only afford it in small numbers. Ideally, I’d like to get it down to less than [the price of] an F-35, or at least in the ballpark of an F-35.” Kendall offered some reassurance that NGAD, including the manned fighter, remained a priority: “The family of systems concept of Next Generation Air Dominance is alive and well. I can tell you that we are looking at the NGAD platform design concept to see if it’s the right concept or not… We’re looking at whether we can do something that’s less expensive and do some trade-offs there.”

USAF commander Gen David Allvin seemed to add to the doubts over NGAD during a fireside chat organised by the Air & Space Forces Association in mid-June 2024. Allvin conspicuously failed to guarantee that NGAD would be insulated from expected cuts in the FY2026 budget, which he predicted would be “very, very thin across the board.” Allvin said that: “We’re looking at a lot of very difficult options that we have to consider,” and that: “We do have to ask the fundamental question, what does an effective Air Force look like in the future?”

At a media roundtable held during the weekend of 20/21 July 2024, Kendall vigorously restated his intention to: “take a hard look at NGAD,” though he did say that: “the family of systems, which includes a crewed platform and CCAs, and weapon systems, and communications, and offboard support… and space [based assets], is still very much the concept we’re pursuing.”

 

Kendall explained that “for any major program, the key decision point is… when you commit to doing engineering, manufacturing, and development… That’s when you really up the investment that you’re making. Once you make that commitment, you should have a lot of confidence that you’ve got the right design, the right concept, the right requirements, and a program that’s structured for success. We’re at that point pretty much on NGAD right now. So we’re doing what I think would be prudent for any program… take a hard look at whether we’ve got the right design concept, whether it’s affordable, etc.”

During this period, Kendall seemed to give slightly contradictory views as to whether the NGAD sixth-generation fighter, telling Breaking Defence, that he was only: “reasonably confident that it’s going to be crewed.” A few days later he was more upbeat, and said that: “I’m absolutely confident we’re still going to do a sixth-generation crewed aircraft.”

In late July 2024, it emerged that the USAF was pausing the NGAD effort in order to more thoroughly evaluate the options and potentially to rescope the programme. It later emerged that the Department of Defense (DoD) had estimated that completing research and development for NGAD would have needed more than USD 20 billion added to the budget. A USAF spokesperson said that: “We are pausing source selection of the Next Generation Air Dominance platform as we reconsider the design based on changing threats and affordability. Following concept definition, the Air Force is planning to develop and procure an NGAD platform. We don’t have any additional information on the timeline.”

More recently, General Allvin said that pausing to consider all the options is prudent because: “once we go through this one-way door, it’s hard to pivot. We are now in the point where … if we go down this path, this will be a very, very costly programme. The question is, with the cost, the capability, and where the threat is, is it the right [choice]?”

Allvin highlighted a real doubt as to whether NGAD as designed will fulfil a changing requirement. “The ability to say, ‘We know that when this platform delivers, it is going to meet the threat’—I think we’re less certain about that than we were when we designed it.” But he countered the idea that pausing source selection meant that the USAF had decided to cancel the programme. “I don’t like people having the presupposition that because we’re pausing and analysing, we’re walking away from it. That decision has not been made,” he said.

Prominent analyst Richard Aboulafia noted that the USAF had been facing an unappetising choice when it came to choosing an NGAD contractor, since Lockheed Martin was struggling to execute the F-35 programme (especially the TR-3 and Block 4 upgrades) while Boeing was mired in myriad technical, production and supply chain problems. The USAF was, Aboulafia contended, facing “the worst choice the Air Force ever could have been forced to make.”

 

“Do you hand the monopoly on fifth- and sixth-generation fighters to Lockheed? Or do you hope that Boeing, which seems to be trying to decide if rocks are still edible, somehow could execute?” Aboulafia observed. But there can be little doubt that cost is driving the ‘reimagining’ of the NGAD manned fighter, rather than source.

Harsh fiscal realities

The uncomfortable fact is that the USAF can barely afford an NGAD fighter with a circa USD 300 million unit cost in the timescales in which that aircraft will be required. It’s an unfamiliar situation for what has usually been the best-resourced air force in the world, but right now, the US Air Force cannot afford all of its planned procurement programmes. Inevitably, (and perhaps necessarily) the USAF is prioritising the two legs of the nuclear triad for which it has responsibility, and so the B-21A Raider bomber and the LGM-35A Sentinel (also known as the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent or GBSD) are its top priorities. Unfortunately, both of these are consuming a massive slice of the available budget, and since the cost of the Sentinel programme has almost doubled, to just under USD 141 Billion, there is no longer headroom for a high-cost NGAD manned fighter. This, rather than any change to the perception of the threat, lies behind the drive to reduce the cost of NGAD.

At the Air & Space Forces Association’s 2024 Air, Space, and Cyber conference Frank Kendall confirmed that the USAF was re-evaluating what it wanted from the crewed aircraft at the heart of the NGAD system of systems, and emphasised the importance of price.

Kendall said that: “The F-35 kind of represents, to me, the upper bounds of what we’d like to pay for an individual [NGAD] aircraft for that mission,” and pointed out that the F 15EX and F-35 were in roughly in the same cost category. “I’d like to go lower though. Once you start integrating CCAs and transferring some mission equipment, capabilities and functions to the CCAs, then you can talk about a different concept, potentially, for the crewed fighter that’s controlling them.”

Kendall said that the USAF needed an aircraft with a unit cost that would be affordable in significant numbers, though he did say that the original NGAD concept was “one of the things we’re looking at,” and was still a possibility. He concluded: “If that turns out to be the most cost-effective operational answer, that’s what we’re going to do and we’ll go fight for the money to have it. But you end up with small numbers. The more the airplane costs, the fewer of them you’re going to have, and numbers do matter. So it’s a trade-off.”

To achieve a price anywhere close to that of an F-35 or F-15EX, the only option would be to remove key mission systems and disaggregate capabilities from the NGAD manned fighters into the CCAs and then network them together. Kendall (mistakenly) observed that “the CCA concept came along after the service had begun working to develop NGAD,” and that a new ‘reimagined’ NGAD might be better tailored to operating with CCAs. In fact, even the PCA that preceded NGAD was designed to operate as part of a system of systems, operating alongside CCAs.

Alternatives assessed

Some have suggested that a new crewed fighter designed to only operate synergistically with CCAs might be smaller, lighter and cheaper than the existing NGAD concept, with less fuel capacity, and internal payload. However, such an ‘NGAD Lite’ would be more dependent on the CCAs, more reliant on datalinks, and less capable in its own right, while increasing the cost of the unmanned platforms themselves. Imposing such dependence would potentially impose greater risk for the mission, since the loss of the CCAs could render the manned aircraft impotent.

In any case, even if capabilities and some payload requirements were to be dropped from the NGAD core manned fighter, the range requirement in the Indo-Pacific theatre will necessarily require a relatively large (and therefore expensive) airframe. Some have even speculated that the B-21 Raider stealth bomber could work in close collaboration with CCAs to penetrate and suppress enemy air defences, and even to carry large, very long range BVR missiles, reducing the requirement for a penetrating air dominance fighter.

Some believe that new low-observable (LO) tankers could operate within, or at least closer to denied or contested air space, thereby enabling smaller fighters with limited range to operate effectively in the Indo-Pacific, but it is unclear as to whether these unproven ‘paper’ LO tankers could actually allow F-35s and shorter-range fighters to unlock China’s A2/AD envelope. Others believe that CCAs and other unmanned adjuncts and effectors could achieve mission success in concert with a 4th/5th Gen fighter mix, or operating alongside a small cheap new fighter, or on their own, but this would seem at best foolish, and at worse disingenuous.

There would seem to be a real need for a big, highly capable, highly sophisticated, long range core NGAD manned platform, and this will necessarily cost far more than current tactical aircraft platforms. “Distinct differences” in design parameters, and materials will inevitably drive the cost of an NGAD sixth-generation fighter to be significantly higher compared to older, smaller, more simply built tactical aircraft. Moreover, only about 200 NGAD fighters are expected to be built, and none of those are ever likely to be exported. Such a small fleet size means that the aircraft will therefore never enjoy significant economies of scale.

There have been a number of hints about new lightweight fighter aircraft projects, but these may not indicate that the USAF has lost its collective mind, and that it is now considering a small, lightweight aircraft as the NGAD core manned platform. Rather the new light fighter could augment NGAD, perhaps able to operate within the same system of systems, but not replace it.

The idea of fielding two distinct versions of the NGAD manned fighter was not new. Retired Gen James M. Holmes, the former head of Air Combat Command suggested exactly this, with one fighter optimised for long-range/large-payload missions demanded in the Indo-Pacific region, and the other better suited to the shorter ranges required in the European theatre.

In February 2021, the then Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. announced the launch of a study into the USAF’s future fighter force and offered the possibility that it could include a new lightweight fighter that would be the aircraft of choice, an ‘airborne pick-up truck’ for day-to-day missions. Brown outlined a “four-and-a-half-gen or fifth-gen-minus… clean-sheet design,” with open-mission systems allowing it to rapidly receive software updates, perhaps even in-flight, during a mission. “You don’t drive your Ferrari to work every day, you only drive it on Sundays. This [NGAD] is our ‘high end’ [fighter], we want to make sure we don’t use it all for the low-end fight.” Brown described the aircraft as: “something new and different, that’s not the F-16 — that has some of those capabilities but gets there faster and uses some of our digital approach.”

During his speech to the Global Air and Space Chiefs Conference, hosted by the Royal Aeronautical Society in London on 17-18 July 2024, General David W. Allvin, the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, showed an illustration of a new, single-engined, relatively small fighter concept. Allvin argued that air forces needed to move away from the philosophy of seeing ‘built to last’ as necessarily being a good thing. Built to last, he said, can easily become an ‘albatross’ – shackling an air force to past legacy platforms and outdated thinking. Instead, he outlined a ‘built to adapt’ approach, in which the use of common software across multiple platforms could allow hardware to be rapidly upgraded (or discarded), echoing the ‘Digital Century Series’ approach espoused by Will Roper, the former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics. He said: “The capability to update at the speed of software, this is the edge we can deliver over our adversaries.”

NGAD reviewed

The USAF announced a review of NGAD in the middle of 2024, aiming to thoroughly assess and analyse all alternatives, including the use of “disaggregated capabilities distributed across multiple assets,” and looking at the likely effect on Agile Combat Employment and tanker requirements. The Technology Maturation and Risk Reduction contracts for the Boeing and Lockheed Martin teams were extended accordingly.

The stated need to examine disaggregated capabilities was puzzling, as the original NGAD concept always saw the core manned platform as operating within just such a distributed, disaggregated, multi-platform ‘system of systems’, with some sensing and weapons engagement capabilities handled by CCAs and other unmanned systems. An aircraft maximising fuel and networking capacity and off-loading weapons and sensors to uncrewed platforms can be smaller and cheaper than one that is not, but may be much less versatile and less operationally effective, because the very aspects of an aircraft that drive its cost (size, mission systems, propulsion) are exactly those that drive combat effectiveness. The USAF’s NGAD review reported on schedule, but the US election threw the programme another curveball. Air Force leaders decided to further review the NGAD concept, conducting additional analysis, while waiting for the new Trump administration to take the reins of power.

“What motivated us to take another look at NGAD was the affordability” Kendall said, noting that as a very expensive programme, NGAD would be weighed against other high priority projects and strategic priorities. As well as B-21 and Sentinel, these could include “more aggressive counter-space capabilities, and airbase protection, particularly [of] our forward air bases.”

Yet Kendall was not only concerned with the affordability of NGAD, explaining that changing threats and the emergence of new technologies also warranted a reconsideration. Kendall told John Tirpak of Air and Space Forces magazine that: “My operators were not 100% sure they had the right airplane. And I agree with that. I think it’s really worthwhile to think carefully about what is essentially an F-22 replacement. Is that really the right new design?”

“We’re not going to get another sixth-generation programme any time soon. This is a tens of billions of dollars commitment, and it’s a multi-decade commitment, so you really want to be sure you’re pursuing the best operational capability with those resources,” Kendall said.

Kendall said that a number of alternative options were studied as part of the NGAD review, including a lower-cost design focused primarily on acting as a ‘quarterback’ for Collaborative Combat Aircraft, which could be a derivative of today’s F-35A. “We looked at something that’s more of a lower-cost, multi-role kind of a capability. We looked at something that’s more tailored to work with [Collaborative Combat Aircraft], although, of course, NGAD could do that. And we looked at some other ’out of the box’ ideas, some of them might be worth pursuing independently.”

Yet in the end, the panel reached “a consensus that [while] there are a number of other things that we need to fund, it would still be beneficial to have an NGAD-like aircraft.” Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said that while the NGAD review had arrived at a consensus that there was “value” in proceeding with the platform, and compelling advantages for the US industrial base, the programme would require more than USD 20 billion to complete development, and noted that “there are other priorities that we really need to fund first.”

So instead of moving ahead, Kendall punted the decision into the future, for the incoming Trump administration to decide on. He justified this by saying that: “Anything I did with a couple of months left in office was like to be reconsidered anyway, but it would be much harder to change direction if contracts were awarded and the program was moved forward. Keeping that trade space open … was a much more efficient thing to do. It was just the right thing to do.”

Moving ahead

The attitude of the incoming Trump administration to NGAD was always hard to predict. On the one hand, the emergence of new Chinese ‘sixth generation’ fighters making their maiden flights on or around 26 December 2024 (the birthday of Mao Zedong) seemed to highlight the inadequacy of the F-35 going forward, and to underline the requirement for the US to field a sixth generation fighter aircraft of its own.

On the other, Elon Musk, then a prominent advisor to President-elect Donald Trump, and nominated to lead the new ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ is a vocal (if poorly informed) critic of manned combat air. “Manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway. [They] Will just get pilots killed,” he posted on X.

Frank Kendall reacted by saying: “I have a lot of respect for Elon Musk as an engineer, but he’s not a warfighter, and he needs to learn a little bit more about the business, I think, before he makes such grand announcements as he did.” Kendall added: “I can imagine at some point — I don’t think it’s centuries, by the way, I think it’s more like decades when something like he imagines can occur. But we’re not there, and it’s going to be a little while before we get there.”

Experts dismissed Musk’s views, and so, it seems, did the new President, announcing in March 2025 that NGAD would be moving going ahead under Boeing as the F-47. Subsequent to Trump’s announcement, General Allvin revealed a handful of new details about the Boeing F-47 aircraft, and the Collaborative Combat Aircraft that are being designed to augment it.

 

The USAF plans to procure a planned fleet of over 185 Boeing F-47 air superiority fighters (the same number given for today’s F-22 fleet). These will feature a top speed of more than Mach 2, and ‘stealth++’, compared to the F-35’s ‘stealth’ and the F-22’s ‘Stealth+’ The aircraft is to have a combat radius of greater than 1,000 NM (1,852 km). This is impressive, though slated to be less than the combat radius of the Anglo/Italian/Japanese GCAP, which has been estimated at between 1200-1600 NM (2,222-2,963 km). It is, however, significantly greater than the 400 NM (741 km) unrefuelled mission radius of the Lockheed Martin F-16, the 590 NM (1,093 km) radius of the Lockheed Martin F-22, the 670 NM (1,241 km) radius of the Lockheed Martin F-35A, and the 690 NM (1,278 km) radius of the Boeing F-15EX.

Interestingly, the radius of the GA-ASI YFQ-42A and Anduril YFQ-44A designs competing for the CCA programme was given as 700 NM (1,296 km), while top speed was described as ‘classified’, raising all sorts of questions as to how these will operate alongside the F-47, and casting some doubt on their ability to loiter well forward in the battlespace. There are also questions as to how the USAF will project air dominance in the enemy’s A2/AD bubble, with the Chinese A2/AD envelope predicted to extend out to 1,000 NM (1,852 km) by 2030.

Regarding development timescales, the USAF has said that: “The F-47 will fly during this Administration,” but has not provided any clarification as to when the aircraft would become formally operational.

In the wake of the F-47 announcement, Lockheed Martin said that it would not protest the NGAD award, and would instead offer a ‘supercharged, 5th generation plus’ F-35 variant, using technologies developed for NGAD, some of them self-funded by the company, and some funded by the US Government. This, Lockheed Martin claimed, would offer 80% of the capability of the Boeing F-47, at 50% of the unit cost per aircraft. It is unclear as to whether this is intended as an alternative NGAD or something that would augment the F-47 and add mass.

Jon Lake