US Air Force News

[James1978]

Budget impasse risks ‘Doomsday’ plane delay, SNC says
By Michael Marrow
March 06, 2025

AFA WARFARE 2025 — A failure by lawmakers to pass a budget for fiscal year 2025 risks delaying the Air Force’s effort to field a new fleet of jumbo jets that can survive nuclear war, according to a company executive involved with the project.

Jon Piatt, SNC’s executive vice president for ISR, aviation and security, told Breaking Defense on the sidelines of the AFA Warfare Symposium on Tuesday that the Survivable Airborne Operations Center (SAOC) program is “fenced off” from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s budget drill, falling into the exempt category of nuclear command, control and communications. However, he said the aircraft conversion effort will be set back if Congress cannot agree on FY25 appropriations and instead opt for a stopgap funding patch known as a continuing resolution (CR) that would freeze funding at FY24 levels for the remainder of the fiscal year.

“I’m ramping up my work. I’m adding new facilities, I’m adding infrastructure, I’m adding cost. That cost has to be carried by someone,” Piatt said. The company is underway with large-scale expansions of efforts to militarize Boeing 747 jumbo jets that serve as a flying command center capable of surviving a nuclear blast, earning the “Doomsday” moniker for the fleet. The jets SNC is converting will replace older 747 aircraft, dubbed E-4B or “Nightwatch,” that also regularly transport top military officials like the defense secretary.

“It’s kind of hard to predict” exactly how much the program could be delayed “until we actually know if we’re going to realize the CR impact,” Piatt said. “What I will say is it indeed has a ripple effect.”

Congress ultimately provided roughly $700 million for the SAOC program in the FY24 budget, but the Air Force is seeking roughly a billion dollars more in FY25 as work gets underway following SNC’s contract win in April 2024. Whether those additional funds will be delivered in FY25 appears increasingly unlikely, as President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson now both back a plan for a full-year CR.

The Air Force’s request is seeking “about $1.7 billion in programmed funding for 2025. That’s a lot of people, it’s a lot of subcontractors,” Piatt said, pointing to other complications like a possible disruption in negotiations to procure more 747s, which could raise costs in turn. “I’m gonna have to put a halt to my hiring, which might impact some of the work we perform.”

According to Piatt, SNC is currently constructing a “baseline digital design” for the firm’s conversion work, which he characterized as the “foundation” for planned modifications. The efforts will also result in an “integrated digital environment” that will provide the data models the Air Force needs to carry out sustainment efforts, he said.

SNC has a lot to learn about the 747, as Piatt said the company will be “going through the digital design and discovery phase for at least four-to-five years.” Still, he said, the company is building in the required schedule margin to carry out the work to keep things on track — so long as necessary funding comes through.

“Even though they look similar, every aircraft can be slightly unique to the other. So we’re doing all of our scans internally and externally on all aircraft as a baseline configuration, making sure that we’re building that comparative database,” Piatt said. “When we get into the configuration management, there could be minor variations. We’re going to discover some differences, and we’re building that expectation into our primary schedule. We’re not expecting anything that’s going to be a major impact on the schedule,” he added.

SNC’s work on the SAOC program is somewhat similar to Boeing’s efforts to deliver new Air Force One planes, whose years of setbacks have drawn the ire of President Donald Trump — and the reported threat of cancellation under the Biden administration. Piatt acknowledged that though the SAOC and Air Force One programs have two different sets of requirements, they have “a lot of commonality.”

Nevertheless, SNC has “not been asked to do anything specific” on the Air Force One program, Piatt said.

[James1978]

Air Force aircraft readiness plunges to new low, alarming chief
By Stephen Losey
March 6, 2025

AURORA, Colo. — Barely more than six in 10 aircraft in the Air Force’s fleet were able to carry out their missions on an average day in fiscal 2024, according to a Defense News analysis.

The fleet-wide mission capable rate of 62% is the lowest in recent memory. It comes as the Air Force’s arsenal of more than 5,000 planes is aging and the service finds it increasingly difficult to keep some in the air.

The Air Force provided statistics on how many of each kind of aircraft it had in 2024, as well as the percentage of time each aircraft was ready to carry out its mission. Those stats were first reported by Air and Space Forces Magazine.

To come up with a fleet-wide mission-capable rate, Defense News calculated a weighted average of all airframes. Using a weighted average places more emphasis on airframes that the service has more of — such as the C-17 Globemaster, F-16 Fighting Falcon and the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter — and less emphasis on rarer airframes.

With the Air Force’s fleet at 5,025 — the smallest in the service’s 78-year history — a 62% mission-capable rate equates to roughly 1,900 planes being out of commission at any given time.

Heather Penney, a former F-16 pilot and senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said the figures are concerning, and suggest the situation is likely getting even worse this year.

“Readiness is often a lagging indicator,” Penney said. “And those aren’t even today’s MC rates,” which she predicted will be even worse when 2025 is done.

The Air Force, along with other services, has for years struggled to pull up its mission-capable rates. President Donald Trump’s first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, in 2018 set an ambitious goal of 80% readiness for F-16s, F-22s and F-35s — which went unmet.

And judging by a similar metric — aircraft availability — the true state of the fleet may even be worse.

According to a 2019 paper by analysts at the Air Force Institute of Technology and Air Force Materiel Command, mission-capable rates do not consider aircraft that are awaiting depot maintenance or are otherwise not possessed at the unit level. Those analysts said aircraft availability rates are a truer measure of how the Air Force’s planes are doing.

In his Monday keynote address to the Air and Space Force Association’s AFA Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colorado, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin used that aircraft availability statistic to sound perhaps the strongest alarm yet about the state of the service’s fleet.

Allvin displayed a chart showing the increasing trouble facing the Air Force’s planes. The chart tracked a steady growth of the average aircraft age in the fleet — from about 17 in 1994 to nearly 32 in 2024 — while aircraft availability plummeted from 73% to 54%.

Allvin praised the service’s maintainers, who work long hours in tough conditions to keep their planes flying.

“You wouldn’t know this on the front lines,” Allvin said of the growing availability problems, “because of the miracles that are going on from our maintainers and those who are sustaining [airplanes]. … We’re eating into whatever margin we had.”

Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have proclaimed a focus on improving the military’s “lethality,” firing top brass they perceive to be standing in the way. Fresh budget cuts to the Defense Department have had the services clamoring to be spared from measures that would bring down readiness rates further.

In this environment, Penney said, poor aircraft readiness rates make top Air Force leaders vulnerable.

Even more worrying to Penney is that there’s no simple way to turn the situation around.

“It’s complex, because it’s spares, maintenance manpower, maintenance experience levels [and] depots, which are so behind right now,” Penney said.

‘Tired iron,’ even more exhausted
The Air Force’s current predicament, as Penney sees it, is largely due to the lack of enough major aircraft modernizations. Much of the Air Force’s fleet was around during the Cold War, and there are several air frames — such as the B-52 Stratofortress, C-5 Galaxy and KC-135 Stratotanker — that were around during the Vietnam War.

Air Force officials commonly refer to such planes as “tired iron,” and quip that they “find new and interesting ways to break.” Without enough modernizations to replace those planes with new airframes, the service is forced to sustain them longer and longer, trying to scrounge up spare parts to fix them.

In the case of the Air Force’s 76 B-52Hs, which have been flying since the early 1960s, some companies that originally made spare parts are no longer in business. This often forces the service to find new sources for those parts, custom make the parts itself, or “cannibalize” parts from other Stratofortresses that are even more broken.

The situation results in a slow and steady decline in the B-52′s availability. In 2021, the bomber had a 59% mission-capable rate, but that has now slid to 54%.

The overall numbers show a swift decline in aircraft readiness over the last few years, driven by some of the service’s most crucial airframes, such as the F-35A.

The Air Force’s overall mission-capable rate was nearly 78% in 2012, but steadily slid as the decade progressed to a then-low of slightly below 70% in 2018. Two years later, that fleet-wide figure had risen to 72.7%, and then dropped to 71.5% in 2021.

The Lockheed Martin-made F-35A — the cornerstone of the service’s fighter fleet and one of the most expensive military programs in history — has been plagued with reliability and availability issues. In 2021, the fighter was available nearly 69% of the time, according to the Air Force.

But the F-35A’s mission capable rates have since plunged, and the jet was ready 51.5% of the time in 2024.

The Joint Strike Fighter’s lagging availability has become such a problem that its program executive officer, Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt, in 2023 announced a “war on readiness” that seeks to improve how often the F-35 can fly.

The Government Accountability Office in 2023 released a report on the entire F-35 fleet’s maintenance challenges, which said services lacked spare parts and technical data needed to repair the fighters. Maintainers were also not properly trained, GAO said, and an effort to expand repair depots was falling behind.

Chauncey McIntosh, a Lockheed vice president and general manager of the company’s F-35 program, said in an interview at AFA that he is focused on improving the jet’s mission readiness, and is working with the F-35 Joint Program Office to do so.

Most parts in the F-35 are lasting longer than expected, McIntosh said, and the company is focused on improving those parts that are less reliable, which the program refers to as “degraders.”

“We’ve been able to drive down those top degraders, and there’s only really a few left that we’re focused on now,” McIntosh said.

The next major issue to tackle, he said, will be to ensure that repair depots have all the spare parts they need to fix F-35s.

“As we get the right parts, and get the right [funding from Congress for them], then we’ll be able to go procure those parts, put those parts on the shelf,” McIntosh said. “This is a growing fleet, so we need to make sure that the [spare parts inventory] keeps up with the fleet size — for not only the U.S., but all of our international partners.”

Readiness drops across the fleet
Other key airframes that dropped precipitously in recent years include the A-10 Warthog, the CV-22 Osprey, the F-16 fighter, the KC-46 Pegasus tanker and the T-38C Talon jet trainer.

* Mission-capable rates for the Air Force’s Ospreys were at about 51% in 2021, but by 2023 plunged to 46% and then to 30% in 2024. The Osprey, which is also flown by the Navy and Marine Corps, has been plagued in recent years by faulty components, clutch problems and fatal crashes that led to multiple groundings.
* The A-10 Warthog’s readiness rate slid from 72% in 2021 to 67% in 2023 and 2024.
* The F-16C fell from almost 72% in 2021 down to 64% in 2024; while the two-seater variant, the F-16D, dropped even more precipitously during that time, from 69% to 59%.
* The KC-46′s mission capable rates dropped from 71% in 2021 to 61% in 2024.
* The T-38C’s availability also declined from 63% in 2021 to 55% in 2024. The Air Force is buying new T-7A Red Hawk trainers from Boeing to replace the nearly 60-year-old T-38. But the T-7 has repeatedly fallen behind schedule, which will require the Air Force to keep flying — and maintaining — T-38s years longer than originally expected.

The lack of enough mission-capable aircraft has forced the Air Force to make tough choices on how to use its working planes. The service has for years prioritized its ability to carry out operational missions over other missions like training. This means it front-loads its working aircraft to units overseas or that otherwise carry out operations, but stateside units are more likely to have shortages of working aircraft.

U.S. Air Forces Central Command, which for decades has flown aircraft such as the A-10, F-15, F-16 and F-35 in the Middle East to project American airpower, is one example of a command that is prioritized in such a way.

But even getting to the head of the line for things like spare parts doesn’t automatically solve all of AFCENT’s problems, commander Lt. Gen. Derek France told reporters at AFA. Sometimes logistical hurdles mean spare parts still take a while to get to the deployed jets that need them, he said. And environmental factors such as heat and sand — particularly in summertime — can wear on the aircraft, France said.

And most of all, he said, AFCENT’s planes are growing old, just like the rest of the service’s aircraft.

“The fact of the matter is, we’ve got an aging fleet,” France said. “Our AFCENT airmen do heroic work in keeping them in the air. The things that I have seen, with our airmen, to be able to put together the parts, and get after the things they need to, has been impressive in our [area of responsibility], for sure.”

France could not quantify readiness rates for AFCENT planes, but said “our airmen meet mission when they need to.”

A critical part of being AFCENT commander, he said, is forecasting when his units will need to surge aircraft and put large numbers of jets in the air, and when they can pull back. Those “pull back” phases give maintainers time and space to work more intensely on AFCENT’s planes and “get our jets healthy again,” France said.

In his speech at AFA, Allvin stressed how important it is for the Air Force to fix this problem once and for all.

“Our Air Force continues to be the most dominant on the planet,” Allvin said. “I don’t want to be here next year, or have the next chief, say we’re no longer [dominant]. So we’ve got to work on this.”

[James1978]

‘F’ for fighter: Air Force combat drones get novel mission designation
By Stephen Losey
March 5, 2025

AURORA, Colo. — The Air Force’s first two prototype collaborative combat aircraft have received their mission design series designations and will fly this summer, Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Allvin said Monday.

The CCAs, which are being built by Anduril Industries and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., are the first aircraft the Air Force has dubbed fighter drones. General Atomics’ CCA is now known as the YFQ-42A, and Anduril’s is the YFQ-44A, Allvin said in his keynote address at the Air and Space Forces Association’s AFA Warfare Symposium here.

In Air Force nomenclature, fighter aircraft are given an F designation, and Q stands for drones. Prototype aircraft are also given a Y prefix, which these CCAs will drop once they enter production.

“For the first time in our history, we have a fighter designation in the YFQ-42 Alpha and YFQ-44 Alpha,” Allvin said. “It may just be symbolic, but we are telling the world we are leaning into a new chapter of aerial warfare.”

CCAs are autonomous drones that will one day fly alongside crewed fighters like the F-35, or perhaps the future Next Generation Air Dominance fighter the Air Force is considering. The Air Force is heavily investing in CCAs as a way to expand airpower and provide strike capabilities, conduct reconnaissance, carry out electronic warfare operations, or even act as decoys.

Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in 2023 that the service plans to have about 1,000 CCAs, but the exact number of the future fleet is not yet known.

The Air Force awarded contracts to Anduril and General Atomics in April 2024 to build the first iteration of CCAs; further so-called “increments” are in the works.
Anduril's Fury collaborative combat aircraft, shown here at the Air and Space Forces Association's conference in September 2024. (Stephen Losey/Defense News)

Until now, General Atomics has referred to its CCA drone as Gambit, and Anduril’s CCA has been called Fury.

In his keynote address, Allvin said CCAs and their core technologies will be crucial for the Air Force to win wars to come.

“Embracing and leaning into human-machine teaming, understanding what autonomy can do for us,” Allvin said. “We know that’s got to be a part of our future.”

Anduril and General Atomics heralded their aircrafts’ designations as signs their work is bearing fruit.

“These aircraft represent an unrivaled history of capable, dependable uncrewed platforms that meet the needs of America’s warfighters and point the way to a significant new era for airpower,” said David Alexander, president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc.

“The designation is evidence of the program’s progress, and we continue to work tirelessly to deliver a capability that will expand the United States’ ability to project combat airpower,” Jason Levin, Anduril’s senior vice president of engineering, was quoted as saying in a company statement.

America’s First Unmanned Fighters Are Here: YFQ-42 and YFQ-44
March 3, 2025 | By Chris Gordon

AURORA, Colo.—The Air Force’s first two Collaborative Combat Aircraft are fighters, the first uncrewed aircraft to carry such a designation, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin announced in a keynote address at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March 3.

General Atomics’ CCA will be called the YFQ–42A and Anduril Industries’ CCA will be dubbed the YFQ–44A.

Under Air Force naming conventions, Y designates prototype, F means fighter, and Q means unmanned. Once a prototype moves into production, the Air Force would drop the Y from the prefix.

The chief said the unveiling represented far more than a name.

“We have two prototypes of Collaborative Combat Aircraft that were on paper less than a couple of years ago,” Allvin said. “For the first time in our history, we have a fighter designation in the YFQ-42 Alpha and the YFQ-44 Alpha—maybe just symbolic, but it’s telling the world that we are leaning into a new chapter of aerial warfare.”

CCA drones are designed to be “loyal wingmen” that can fly alongside new and existing crewed fighter jets, including the F-35 Lightning II. The Air Force believes a single manned fighter can control a larger number of drones than originally envisioned and can do so using less-sophisticated autonomous technology.

“It’s a recognition that we’re moving into a new era of manned human-machine teaming, as we build out our force design,” Allvin said in an interview with Air & Space Forces Magazine.

Anduril released a statement hailing the milestone.

“Together, in close partnership with the Air Force, we are pioneering a new generation of semi-autonomous fighter aircraft that is fundamentally transforming air dominance by delivering highly capable, mass-producible, more affordable, and more autonomous aircraft by the end of the decade,” said Anduril senior vice president of engineering Jason Levin. “It reinforces what we already knew: our CCA is a high performance aircraft designed specifically for the air superiority mission, acting as a force multiplier for crewed aircraft within the real constraints of cost and time.”

General Atomics sounded a similar refrain.

“YFQ-42A will be critical in securing air dominance for the Joint Force in future conflicts, leveraging autonomous capabilities and crewed-uncrewed teaming to defeat enemy threats in contested environments,” GA said in a statement. “It is designed to integrate seamlessly with current and next-generation crewed aircraft, expanding mission capabilities and ensuring continued air dominance. In short, YFQ-42A provides fighter capacity—affordable mass—at a lower cost and on a threat-relevant timeline.”

The service has become increasingly bullish on the CCA program, which is part of the Next-Generation Air Dominance portfolio, which may also include a penetrating crewed fighter. A decision of the future of the crewed NGAD fighter will be up to the next Secretary of the Air Force and the Trump administration.

“If we’re in this dangerous and dynamic time, I want to give the president as many options as we possibly can,” Allvin said in his keynote. “So that means yes, keep on the modernization. Yes, NGAD. Yes, CCA. … That’s what it is going to take.”

[James1978]

U.S. Air Force Next-Gen Tanker Prospects Are Running On Fumes
By Steve Trimble
March 04, 2025

The U.S. Air Force has found clarity after months of tumultuous debate over two items at the top of its modernization agenda. And the organization’s recommendation: Keep the sixth-generation fighter, but kill the new tanker.

While the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter and Next-Generation Air Refueling System (NGAS) tanker are seemingly independent capabilities, their fates became intertwined in the monthslong analysis that followed the Air Force’s decision last July to pause a go-ahead decision on the former.

In the end, proposals to leverage the development of a more survivable tanker fleet to reduce the cost and complexity of an otherwise exquisite new fighter lost the internal debate. Air Force leaders settled on a different approach that seeks to achieve survivable air refueling through conventional large tankers, such as the Boeing KC-46 and KC-135.

Instead of fielding large, stealthy tankers costing hundreds of millions each to operate in contested airspace, the Air Force can focus on disrupting an enemy’s already complicated process of finding, tracking and engaging even larger aerial targets at extremely long ranges.

“There are many attack surfaces that we can attack to bring survivable air refueling,” Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel, the Air Force’s director of Force Design, Integration and Wargaming on the Air Staff in the Pentagon, said during a talk at the Hudson Institute Feb. 26.

“NGAS might be part of the solution, but there are other places along this kill chain that we can attack the adversary, and that’s the approach,” Kunkel said. “We’re taking it from a systems approach. That’s what you need to do.”

The Air Force’s internal conclusions remain only recommendations, but they could prove influential. The Trump administration is finalizing its fiscal 2026 budget proposal, and the NGAS and NGAD programs hang in the balance.

Prospects for a stealthy NGAS tanker have been on a roller-coaster ride. The concept emerged in 2006 as part of the Air Force’s three-phase approach to replacing more than 400 aging KC-135s. The plan started by fielding 179 KC-X tankers, now known as the KC-46. The service is debating whether to solicit bids for another batch of commercial-derivative tankers for the follow-on KC-Y contract or buy a second batch of KC-46s featuring survivability upgrades. And the KC-Z program envisioned a large stealthy tanker, perhaps with a flying wing or blended wing body configuration. This became the NGAS program.

At the beginning of 2024, the outlook for the NGAS program appeared dim. The Air Force outlined plans to launch a competition in fiscal 2026 but inserted no funding into the Pentagon’s long-term spending program. Prospects seemed to brighten over the summer, when the NGAD source-selection process was on hiatus.

The Air Force’s former civilian leaders, including then-Secretary Frank Kendall, became concerned that the NGAD program would be unaffordable unless it cost no more than a $94 million Lockheed Martin F-35A. Worries also grew within the service about the ability of forward bases to support the operations of an exquisite NGAD fighter, given their vulnerability to enemy missile barrage.

As debate over the NGAD program continued, the acquisition of a large stealthy tanker became more attractive. If the Air Force operated a more survivable tanker, the argument went, it could fly deeper into contested airspace. As a consequence, a next-generation fighter might not have to be large because it could top off its fuel tanks closer to an enemy target. Since unit cost correlates with aircraft weight and size, buying a small number of large, stealthy tankers could pay off if it meant the Air Force could acquire a larger number of smaller new fighters.

In recent months, however, the original requirements for the NGAD program appear to have overcome the arguments of skeptics within the service. The program still needs the assent of the Trump administration to resume the long-delayed source-selection process, but Air Force leaders are again certain of the value provided by an exquisite next-generation fighter.

“NGAD remains an important part of our force design, and it fundamentally changes the character of the fight in a really, really good way for the joint force,” Kunkel said. “If the joint force wants to fight with an NGAD and air superiority in these really, really tough places to achieve it, then we’ll pursue NGAD. Frankly, it’ll be less operational risk.”

[James1978]

It will be interesting to see if this happens on Friday. Hopefully we get pictures, and maybe even a peak at the demonstrators we built a couple of years ago.

Trump to award US Air Force's next-generation fighter jet contract Friday, sources say
By Mike Stone
Thursday, March 20, 2025

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump will personally announce the Pentagon's decision on a next-generation fighter jet contract worth at least $20 billion as soon as Friday, despite concerns about budget constraints and shifting priorities, sources briefed on the plan said.

The Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program will replace Lockheed Martin's F-22 Raptor with a crewed aircraft built to enter combat alongside drones. The plane's design remains a closely held secret, but would most likely include stealthiness, advanced sensors and cutting-edge engines.

Lockheed and Boeing are competing for the winner-take-all engineering and manufacturing development contract, worth more than $20 billion. The winner will eventually receive hundreds of billions of dollars in orders over the contract's multi-decade lifetime.

For Boeing, a win would mark a sharp reversal of fortunes for a company that has struggled on both the commercial and defense sides of its business; a loss could be devastating. A victory for Lockheed Martin, the world's largest defense contractor, would keep its high-end offerings - it also makes the stealthy F-35 - on an upward trajectory.

An Air Force spokesperson and Boeing and Lockheed representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Trump's Friday schedule showed an 11 a.m. (1500 GMT) Oval Office announcement alongside Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. A U.S. official briefed on the plan said the announcement was slated for that time.

The announcement comes as Trump has been working to cut costs throughout the U.S. government, although the size and legality of the efforts have been challenged. On Thursday he signed an executive order meant to dismantle the Department of Education.

NGAD was conceived as a "family of systems" centered around a sixth-generation fighter to counter near-peer adversaries such as China and Russia.

Under President Donald Trump's administration, which took office in January, the program has moved forward after a period of uncertainty that cast doubt on the future of the next-generation fighter jet.

Billionaire and presidential adviser Elon Musk has voiced skepticism on the effectiveness of crewed high-end fighters, saying cheaper drones were a better option.

Last year, the program faced potential delays or scope reductions because of budget pressures and cost overruns in other Air Force programs.

The anticipated announcement on Friday, however, signals that a design finalized last year will be chosen for NGAD.

Boeing is fighting headwinds for both its commercial and defense businesses. A win would be a shot in the arm for its St. Louis, Missouri, fighter jet production businesses.

Lockheed was recently eliminated from the competition to build the Navy's next-generation carrier-based stealth fighter. If it loses the NGAD contract, it will likely double down on its F-35 fighter program and international sales of its F-16 jets.

[Lordroel]

It will be interesting to see if this happens on Friday. Hopefully we get pictures, and maybe even a peak at the demonstrators we built a couple of years ago.

DonaldTrump announces that Boeing gets the contract to build the next gen fighter, the F-47.

[James1978]

Trump awards Boeing much-needed win with fighter jet contract
By Mike Stone
March 21, 2025

WASHINGTON, March 21 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday awarded Boeing the contract to build the U.S. Air Force's most sophisticated fighter jet, handing the company a much-needed win.

The Next Generation Air Dominance program will replace Lockheed Martin's F-22 Raptor with a crewed aircraft built to enter combat alongside drones. The plane's design remains a closely held secret, but would likely include stealth, advanced sensors, and cutting-edge engines.

Shares of Boeing were up 5% after the news. The Seattle-based company beat out Lockheed Martin for the deal. Lockheed's shares fell nearly 6%. Reuters reported Boeing's victory before the official announcement.

Trump, the 47th U.S. president, announced the winner from the White House, saying the new jet will be called the F-47.

For Boeing, the win marks a reversal of fortune for a company that has struggled on both the commercial and defense sides of its business. It is a major boost for its St. Louis, Missouri, fighter jet production business.

The engineering and manufacturing development contract is worth more than $20 billion. The winner will eventually receive hundreds of billions of dollars in orders over the contract's multi-decade lifetime.

NGAD was conceived as a "family of systems" centered around a sixth-generation fighter to counter adversaries such as China and Russia.
Boeing's commercial operations have struggled as it attempts to get its best-selling 737 MAX jet production back up to full speed, while its defense operation has been weighed down by underperforming contracts for mid-air refueling tankers, drones and training jets.

Cost overruns at the KC-46 mid-air refueling tanker program have surpassed $7 billion in recent years, while another fixed-price contract to upgrade two Air Force One planes has created a $2-billion loss for the top 5 U.S. defense contractor.

Lockheed, which was recently eliminated from the competition to build the Navy's next-generation carrier-based stealth fighter, faces an uncertain future in the high-end fighter market after the loss.

Billionaire and presidential adviser Elon Musk has voiced skepticism about the effectiveness of crewed high-end fighters, saying cheaper drones were a better option.

While Lockheed could still protest the award to Boeing, the fact Trump announced the deal in a high-profile Oval Office press conference could reduce the possibility of a public airing of arguments against the agreement from the Bethesda, Maryland-based defense firm.

Boeing wins Air Force contract for NGAD next-gen fighter, dubbed F-47
By Michael Marrow and Valerie Insinna
March 21, 2025

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.

[James1978]

Statement by Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. David Allvin on the USAF NGAD Contract Award
Published March 21, 2025
Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs

ARLINGTON, Va. (AFNS) --

The Next Generation Air Dominance Platform (the F-47) contract is a monumental leap forward in securing America’s air superiority for decades to come. This contract reaffirms our commitment to maintaining the United States’ position as the world’s most dominant Air Force, under the direction and leadership of our Commander in Chief, President Trump, and Secretary of Defense Hegseth.

With the F-47, we are not just building another fighter – we are shaping the future of warfare and putting our enemies on notice. This platform will be the most advanced, lethal, and adaptable fighter ever developed – designed to outpace, outmaneuver, and outmatch any adversary that dares to challenge our brave Airmen.

Despite what our adversaries claim, the F-47 is truly the world’s first crewed sixth-generation fighter, built to dominate the most capable peer adversary and operate in the most perilous threat environments imaginable. For the past five years, the X-planes for this aircraft have been quietly laying the foundation for the F-47 — flying hundreds of hours, testing cutting-edge concepts, and proving that we can push the envelope of technology with confidence. These experimental aircraft have demonstrated the innovations necessary to mature the F-47’s capabilities, ensuring that when we committed to building this fighter, we knew we were making the right investment for America.

While our X-planes were flying in the shadows, we were cementing our air dominance – accelerating the technology, refining our operational concepts, and proving that we can field this capability faster than ever before. Because of this, the F-47 will fly during President Trump’s administration.

In addition, the F-47 has unprecedented maturity. While the F-22 is currently the finest air superiority fighter in the world, and its modernization will make it even better, the F-47 is a generational leap forward. The maturity of the aircraft at this phase in the program confirms its readiness to dominate the future fight.

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, be more sustainable, supportable, and have higher availability than our fifth-generation fighters. This platform is designed with a “built to adapt” mindset and will take significantly less manpower and infrastructure to deploy.

Our mission is clear. We will ensure America’s skies remain secure and our deterrence remains unshakable. With the F-47, we will strengthen our global position, keeping our enemies off-balance and at bay. And when they look up, they will see nothing but the certain defeat that awaits those who dare to challenge us – ‘Airpower Anytime, Anywhere’ is not just an aspiration, it’s a promise.

[kdahm]

The good news is that we can probably hook up a generator to MacNamara and get some reliable base load renewable power out of him.

F-24 jumps to the X-32/F-35 competition, then now jumps to the F-47. They might as well go back to the old AF/Navy naming instead of continuing this hash of a tri-service system. Please tell me they'll at least give it the Thunderbolt name.

[James1978]

The good news is that we can probably hook up a generator to MacNamara and get some reliable base load renewable power out of him.

F-24 jumps to the X-32/F-35 competition, then now jumps to the F-47. They might as well go back to the old AF/Navy naming instead of continuing this hash of a tri-service system. Please tell me they'll at least give it the Thunderbolt name.

Apparently Boeing is pushing for Voodoo II.

[Johnnie Lyle]

The good news is that we can probably hook up a generator to MacNamara and get some reliable base load renewable power out of him.

F-24 jumps to the X-32/F-35 competition, then now jumps to the F-47. They might as well go back to the old AF/Navy naming instead of continuing this hash of a tri-service system. Please tell me they'll at least give it the Thunderbolt name.

Apparently Boeing is pushing for Voodoo II.

Voodoo II: Electric Boogaloo.

[jemhouston]

I'm hoping the Navy fighter will run smoothing and get into production.

I do not have any confidence in Boeing.

[Rocket J Squrriel]

The good news is that we can probably hook up a generator to MacNamara and get some reliable base load renewable power out of him.

F-24 jumps to the X-32/F-35 competition, then now jumps to the F-47. They might as well go back to the old AF/Navy naming instead of continuing this hash of a tri-service system. Please tell me they'll at least give it the Thunderbolt name.

That would be 'Thunderbolt III' then.

[MikeKozlowski]

The good news is that we can probably hook up a generator to MacNamara and get some reliable base load renewable power out of him.

F-24 jumps to the X-32/F-35 competition, then now jumps to the F-47. They might as well go back to the old AF/Navy naming instead of continuing this hash of a tri-service system. Please tell me they'll at least give it the Thunderbolt name.

Apparently Boeing is pushing for Voodoo II.

Voodoo II: Electric Boogaloo.

voodoo-blazing.gif

Mike

[Johnnie Lyle]

Apparently Boeing is pushing for Voodoo II.

Voodoo II: Electric Boogaloo.

voodoo-blazing.gif

Mike

I’m Johnnie Lyle, and I approve this message.

[jemhouston]

SandBoxx's take https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-5l6x8Rh0w

[James1978]

I'm hoping the Navy fighter will run smoothing and get into production.

I do not have any confidence in Boeing.

I hear you re. Boeing. But Lockheed-Martin hasn't exactly inspired confidence with the delays to to TR3/Block 4 upgrades for the F-35.

The prevailing thought seems to be that Northrup-Grumman will get the Navy F/A-XX contract.

Northrup-Grumman previously withdrew from the NGAD competition, apparently to focus on F/A-XX where they felt their design was better suited.
Lockheed-Martin was already down-selected out of F/A-XX.

Apparently LM's NGAD offering was more evolutionary, while Boeing's is more advanced (WOW! factor).

From what I've read, LM were trying to clone the F-35 from a program perspective - customer has to go to LM for everything. Seems the Pentagon actually learned a few correct lessons from the F-35 and will NOT be repeating those aspects of the F-35 program. If what I've read is correct, the Pentagon is outright buying the IP so they aren't locked in with the OEM for upgrades. We'll see.

[James1978]

Boeing wins contract for NGAD fighter jet, dubbed F-47
By Stephen Losey
March 21, 2025

The Pentagon has awarded the long-awaited contract for the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance future fighter jet, known as NGAD, to Boeing, President Donald Trump announced Friday.

The sixth-generation fighter, which will replace the F-22 Raptor, will be designated the F-47, Trump said. It will have “state-of-the-art stealth technologies [making it] virtually unseeable,” and will fly alongside multiple autonomous drone wingmen, known as collaborative combat aircraft.

“It’s something the likes of which nobody has ever seen before,” Trump said in an Oval Office announcement with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin and Lt. Gen. Dale White, the Air Force’s military deputy for acquisition, technology and logistics. “In terms of all the attributes of a fighter jet, there’s never been anything even close to it, from speed to maneuverability to what it can have [as] payload. And this has been in the works for a long period of time.”

“America’s enemies will never see it coming,” he continued.

Allvin said in a statement the F-47 will be “the most advanced, lethal and adaptable fighter ever developed.”

“We are not just building another fighter,” Allvin said. “We are shaping the future of warfare and putting our enemies on notice.”

The competition for NGAD was between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, after Northrop Grumman announced in 2023 that it would not compete for the program as a prime contractor.

“We recognize the importance of designing, building a sixth-generation fighter capability for the United States Air Force,” Steve Parker, the interim president and chief executive of Boeing Defense, Space and Security, said in a release. “In preparation for this mission, we made the most significant investment in the history of our defense business, and we are ready to provide the most advanced and innovative NGAD aircraft needed to support the mission.”

Lockheed Martin said in a statement that it is disappointed by the result of the NGAD competition but is “confident we delivered a competitive solution.”

Lockheed did not say whether it was considering a protest of the award.

“We will await further discussions with the U.S. Air Force on any next steps,” the company said.

The F-47 will be the heart of the NGAD concept’s “family of systems,” which also includes collaborative combat aircraft and cutting-edge sensors, weaponry and other technology that will allow it to better connect with satellites and other aircraft. Air Force officials have consistently said NGAD will be necessary to counter an advanced adversary, such as China.

General Atomics and Anduril are building their own CCA candidates — the RFQ-42A and RFQ-44A, respectively — to be the first iteration of drone wingmen flying alongside the F-35 or F-47. Subsequent generations are on their way. The Air Force wants CCAs to be relatively cheap, piloted with autonomous software and have the ability conduct recon, strike missions, electronic warfare and decoy missions.

They are also expected to have advanced adaptive engines, dubbed NGAP or next-generation adaptive propulsion, that shift to the best configuration for any given situation for the best thrust and efficiency. General Electric Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney are in the running to build NGAP.

Boeing’s victory will likely help strengthen the defense industrial base, said Doug Birkey, executive director of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. It means all three of the U.S. military’s prime aerospace contractors now have deals to build fifth- or sixth-generation stealth penetrating aircraft. Lockheed builds the fifth-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, and Northrop has touted its B-21 Raider as the world’s first sixth-generation plane.

“For the country, that’s a really important thing, to have that innovation, that competition and frankly, the volume production,” Birkey said. “Our ability to turn stuff en masse — which is what the future world is going to require — has been limited, and we need to rebuild the defense industrial base that the current environment demands. We’ve been slow to get there. This is an important step in rounding that corner.”

But Boeing has struggled company-wide in recent years on both civilian and military aircraft. Nearly 350 people died in a pair of crashes of the company’s 737 Max airliners, and last July, the company agreed to a plea deal with the Justice Department to avoid a felony fraud trial related to the crashes. The door plug of another 737 Max blew out in midair in January 2024, and videos from the harrowing scene went viral. Boeing’s machinists also went on strike for nearly two months last year amid a contract dispute.

The aerospace giant’s T-7A Red Hawk trainer, KC-46A Pegasus tanker and Air Force One programs have struggled with quality problems and delays, and the company has lost billions of dollars in cost overruns. In September 2024, Boeing fired the head of its defense sector, Ted Colbert, amid steep losses.

Amid that turmoil, Birkey said, this was an important win for Boeing — and now the company must show it can produce.

“It’s up to Boeing to make this opportunity a win,” Birkey said. “Only time will tell on that.”

The engineering and manufacturing development contract awarded Friday is structured as a cost-plus incentive fee deal, an Air Force official said. Under such a deal, the government pays the contractor to cover expenses as it develops a system, and the contractor also receives a fee that can be adjusted based on how well it performs. That is the same structure used for the early development of Northrop Grumman’s B-21 Raider stealth bomber.

Under this contract, the official said, Boeing will mature, integrate and test all parts of the NGAD crewed fighter, and it will produce a handful of test aircraft.

Boeing’s contract also includes “competitively priced” options for building low-rate initial production models of the F-47, the Air Force said.

Allvin said in a statement Friday that experimental versions of the NGAD have been flying for the last five years, “flying hundreds of hours, testing cutting-edge concepts and proving that we can push the envelope of technology with confidence.”

Allvin said the significant advance experimentation and work on the F-47 will allow the service to fly the jet by the end of Trump’s administration. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency helped conduct the early experimentation to refine NGAD, the Air Force said.

“The F-47 has unprecedented maturity,” Allvin said. “While the F-22 is currently the finest air superiority fighter in the world, and its modernization will make it even better, the F-47 is a generational leap forward. The maturity of the aircraft at this phase in the program confirms its readiness to dominate the future fight.”

Allvin also scoffed at China’s claims last December to have test flown its own sixth-generation fighter, the J-36.

“Despite what our adversaries claim, the F-47 is truly the world’s first crewed sixth-generation fighter, built to dominate the most capable peer adversary and operate in the most perilous threat environments imaginable,” Allvin said. “While our X-planes were flying in the shadows, we were cementing our air dominance — accelerating the technology, refining our operational concepts, and proving that we can field this capability faster than ever before.”

Allvin said the F-47 would cost less than the F-22 and “be more adaptable to future threats.” The Air Force will have more NGAD fighters in its fleet than Raptors, he added. The Air Force now has about 180 F-22s, which cost $143 million apiece.

Trump declined to disclose the price of NGAD, saying that would reveal some of the jet’s highly classified technology and size. But the Air Force expects to spend $20 billion on NGAD between 2025 and 2029.

The price of NGAD has presented a major vulnerability to the program, one which placed it in jeopardy last year. Former Air Force Sec. Frank Kendall paused the program in May 2024 after cost estimates came in around triple that of the F-35, or as much as $300 million per tail.

The pause was needed, Kendall said, to reconsider whether NGAD was the right concept and look for ways to bring its costs down through a redesign. A review of the program concluded that NGAD was necessary, but after the presidential election, Kendall chose to leave the final decision on how to proceed to the incoming Trump administration.

The Air Force said decisions on basing the F-47 and other program elements will be made in years to come, as the fighter comes closer to becoming operational.

Trump also left the door open to selling versions of NGAD to allies — though he said those might be “toned-down” versions.

“Because someday, maybe they’re not our allies, right?” Trump said.

[jemhouston]

Ward Carroll's take https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e_EXmVUJCM on the F-47

[James1978]

Older article from early February, but Boeing Disease has spread. Given the delays in F-35 upgrades, I can see why DOD may have said "why the hell not" and decided to give Boeing a chance.

Key tests for latest F-35s will begin in 2026, two years after rollout
By Stephen Losey
February 5, 2025

An important series of tests for the latest upgrades to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will likely not begin until two years after these jets started hitting the field — and at least three years following their original due date.

The Office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation said in its annual report, submitted to Congress on Jan. 31, that dedicated operational tests for the F-35’s Technology Refresh 3, or TR-3, upgrades will probably start in mid to late fiscal 2026, or around next summer. Those tests are intended to determine whether TR-3 is operationally effective.

Lt. Gen. Michael Schmidt, the military’s F-35 program executive officer, said in a statement to Defense News that as of January, Lockheed Martin has delivered more than 100 TR-3 equipped fighters. All of those jets have software allowing its pilots to conduct training flights, including combat training.

“We are aggressively implementing comprehensive test plans to ensure this critical upgrade delivers cutting-edge capabilities to the warfighter,” Schmidt said. “The F-35 [Joint Program Office] remains focused on working through known risks to deliver TR-3 combat capability in 2025. The capability will continue to be improved in future lots to ensure warfighters have what they need to win in future conflicts.”

An official with knowledge of the operational test program for the F-35, who spoke about the program on the condition of anonymity, said that starting operational testing next year would not delay the fielding of the newest jets.

“It is not uncommon for fielding decisions to come before operational testing is complete,” the official said.

The Office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation said the TR-3 tests can’t begin until its software is stable and aircraft modifications, flight test instruments and open-air battle shaping capabilities are in place. But if those systems and software are matured and in place sooner than expected, testing could start earlier, the office said.

The delayed launch of the TR-3 tests is the latest in a series of setbacks for the Lockheed Martin-made fighter, which have caused efforts to modernize the program to slip further behind.

TR-3 is a set of improvements to the F-35′s hardware and software, which include better displays, computer memory and processing power. TR-3 was originally set to be released in April 2023, but software problems and integration difficulties stalled the program.

The Pentagon refused to accept deliveries of the newest F-35s until July 2024, when an interim version of the TR-3 software that allows the jets to conduct training flights was completed.

But the TR-3-enabled F-35s can’t yet carry out combat missions. And while the F-35 Joint Program Office still hopes to have the jets combat ready in 2025, the timeline might slip further. In a January earnings call, Lockheed Chief Financial Officer Jay Malave said the work might not be finished until early 2026.

The delays in TR-3 are also having cascading effects on subsequent improvements to the F-35 – particularly another modernization program called Block 4 – which is intended to allow the jet to carry more weapons, better recognize targets and improve its electronic warfare capabilities.

The Office of the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation criticized the F-35 program’s lack of progress in rolling out necessary software.

“The F-35 program has shown no improvement in meeting schedule and performance timelines for developing and testing software designed to address deficiencies and add new capabilities,” the office’s annual report said.