New NGAD details emerge
March 24, 2025
The F-47 will be the cornerstone of the NGAD Family of Systems, operating alongside a plethora of unmanned adjuncts and effectors, including the so-called collaborative combat aircraft – the first increment of which are the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A.
The F-47 aircraft is designed to integrate next-generation stealth, sensor fusion, and long-range strike capabilities to counter the most sophisticated adversaries in contested environments bringing lethal, next-generation technologies to ensure air superiority for the Joint Force in any conflict. Its adaptability and modular design ensure seamless integration with emerging technologies, positioning it as a dominant platform for decades to come.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said that: “With this F-47 as the crown jewel in the Next Generation Air Dominance Family of Systems, we believe that this provides more lethality. It provides more capability, more modernized capability, in a way that is built to adapt, along with our Collaborative Combat Aircraft.”
Little detail emerged from President Trump’s Oval Office briefing, though General Allvin did reveal that the F-47 would cost less than the F-22, and that there would be more F-47s in the inventory than there are F-22s. He said that the F-47 would have significantly longer range, more advanced stealth, and would be more sustainable, supportable, and have higher availability than the F-22 and F-35. He also said that the aircraft would take significantly less manpower and infrastructure to deploy. None of this was surprising, though it did seem to confirm that proposals for a cheap, lower capability ‘NGAD Lite’ had been dismissed.
His statement also contradicted President Trump’s somewhat asinine suggestion that the F-47 would be ‘be totally obsolete in five years’. Allvin explained that the platform was designed with a “built to adapt” mindset and would be more adaptable to future threats.
DARPA’s involvement began with its Air Dominance Initiative study in 2014, which resulted in the agency’s Aerospace Innovation Initiative. This strategy for procuring a next-generation fighter for the Air Force and Navy was revealed by Pentagon acquisition chief Frank Kendall in congressional testimony in January 2015.
“The intent is to develop prototypes for the next generation of air dominance platforms, X-plane programs, if you will,” Kendall said. The two aircraft (Naval and Air Force) were by then seen as two separate aircraft that would share common parts.
The funding for NGAD started to flow in FY16.
The Air Force completed its analysis of alternatives in about 2018, and then used cutting-edge advanced manufacturing techniques to build and test a virtual version of its next fighter before competing X-planes were commissioned.
Under research and development contracts with DARPA, Boeing and Lockheed Martin designed two X-planes as part of a risk reduction effort in support of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) Platform, though the identity of the companies was not revealed at the time.
DARPA Acting Director Rob McHenry said that: “It is often only in future decades when DARPA’s disruptive impact can be unveiled – today, we’re proud to be able to share the ten-year DARPA research arc that has culminated in the F-47 program, defining the next era of American air dominance.”
It is now known that the first X-plane flew in 2019, and Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, confirmed that “at least one prototype” had flown. “We’ve already built and flown a full-scale flight demonstrator in the real world, and we broke records in doing it,” Roper told Defense News in September 2020, ahead of the Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference.
We now know that the second X-plane flew in 2022.
Over the past five years, in a strong partnership between the Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) these two X-planes laid the foundations for the F-47, flying hundreds of hours, testing cutting-edge concepts, advancing stealth, range, and autonomous systems while refining operational concepts.
In doing this, the aircraft proved: “that we can push the envelope of technology with confidence,” Allvin observed.
By way of comparison, the two YF-22 and two YF-23 prototypes logged about 157 flying hours during the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) competition.
The USAF finalized and released its NGAD RFP in 2023. In July, Northrop Grumman then notified the Air Force that it was not planning to respond to the NGAD RFP as a prime, leaving Boeing and Lockheed ‘in the running’.
In May 2024, the Air Force conducted a strategic pause in the programme (delaying the down-select decision/announcement that had been due in June/July). It was said that this was to ensure that the USAF was making the right decision for its warfighters and for the security of the nation, though delaying it for the incoming Trump administration to make a decision was almost certainly also a factor. During this time, the Air Force continued collaborating with industry to aggressively mature critical technologies and accelerate innovation.
On Friday 21 March 2025, the Department of the Air Force announced a contract award to Boeing for the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) Platform.
The contract award funds the engineering and manufacturing development phase, which includes maturing, integrating, and testing all aspects of the F-47. This phase will produce a small number of test aircraft for evaluation. The contract also includes competitively priced options for low-rate initial production. Future basing decisions and additional program elements will be determined in the coming years as the Air Force advances the F-47 toward operational deployment.
The US Air Force hopes that by leveraging cutting-edge digital engineering techniques and government-owned architecture, the F-47 will benefit from a streamlined and accelerated development timeline compared to previous fighter programs. This will enable rapid technology integration, ensuring that the F-47 remains adaptable and upgradable to meet future mission requirements and to counter emerging threats.
The Air Force says that its decision followed a fair and thorough source selection process which, it said, reaffirmed the NGAD Platform as the most capable and cost-effective solution to maintain air superiority in an increasingly complex and contested global threat environment.
The decision, it insisted, reflects the Air Force’s commitment to delivering cutting-edge technology to the warfighter while optimizing taxpayer investment.
