Lockheed Martin eliminated from US Navy’s F/A-XX next generation fighter programme
March 7, 2025
Lockheed Martin has been eliminated from the US Navy’s F/A-XX programme, leaving Boeing and Northrop Grumman as the only remaining bidders. Breaking Defense said that Lockheed Martin’s proposal “did not satisfy the service’s criteria,” and that the company was no longer proceeding with the bid. An official announcement is felt to be unlikely until a new Navy Secretary has been confirmed.
The ejection of Lockheed Martin came as a surprise to some, since the company has been responsible for all three of the USAF’s operational LO combat air platforms – the F-117A, the F-22A and the F-35. It did, however, reduce the number of bidders to two, echoing the NGAD programme, in which Northrop Grumman ‘dropped out’, leaving just Boeing and Lockheed Martin in the running.
The Navy’s programme for a sixth-generation fighter is separate from the USAF’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) programme, and aims to replace the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and E/A-18G Growler in US Navy Carrier Air Wings, complementing the 270 planned F-35C aircraft.
Though the US Navy and US Air Force 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, where the Navy has a hard limit of 85,000-lbs MTOW. The NGAD project was briefly conceived as a joint Air Force-Navy programme, but the two services soon established separate offices and the programmes diverged.
The F/A-XX will be a long range platform optimised to overcome China’s increasingly formidable A2/AD capabilities, using Low Observability (stealth) and electronic attack capabilities to operate in heavily contested airspace. John Phelan, the Trump administration’s nominee as the next Navy secretary, described the F/A-XX as a “next-generation aircraft, offering significant advancements in operational reach and capacity within contested environments… intended to enable Carrier Strike Groups to outpace adversaries while maintaining naval air dominance.”
NGAD and F/A-XX will both be ‘systems of systems’, teaming a core manned fighter with unmanned adjuncts and effectors, space-based systems and other assets. Both programmes are expected to draw upon the same autonomous UCAVs, using the same (or closely related) mission systems, sensors, weapons and communications architecture. Numbers of aircraft required, programme value and timelines all remain classified.
A final selection between the remaining Boeing and Northrop Grumman bids is not expected until there is a confirmed Secretary of the Navy, when an EMD (Engineering and Manufacturing Development) contract is expected to be awarded to one of the two remaining competitors.
The US Navy remains publicly committed to awarding an F/A-XX contract this year, though In the Navy delayed about $1 billion of F/A-XX research and development funding in its fiscal 2025 budget request, in order to fund other “readiness priorities” and to keep the budget within the constraints of the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
Last year, Rear Adm. Ben Reynolds, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget stressed that: “We’re absolutely committed to the capacity and lethality of the carrier wing. The capacity and firepower of the air wing is orders of magnitude above anything else that the Department of Defense has.”
The US Navy may face high level opposition to its intended sixth-generation fighter, since Trump’s billionaire adviser Elon Musk has expressed strong opposition to the procurement of advanced manned fighters, decrying their effectiveness and challenging their cost effectiveness. The US Air Force delayed a decision on its NGAD programme last year, while it carried out an internal analysis. This effectively punted a decision to the Trump administration.
