The NGAD decision has been made – Trump announces the selection of the Boeing F-47
March 21, 2025
US Air Force and US Navy leaders had briefed President Donald Trump on their future fighter programmes on 12 March 2025, ahead of the upcoming fiscal 2026 budget request. In a live-streamed press briefing, the decision was announced on 21 March by the President, flanked by his Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, the USAF Chief of Staff, General David Allvin and General Dale White, the Military Deputy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics.
President Trump, the 47th President, said that the world’s first sixth generation fighter would be known as the F-47, insisting that: “The generals picked a title, and it’s a beautiful number…”
Trump said that: “the Air Force is going to be awarding the contract for the next generation air dominance platform to Boeing,” and that “an experimental version of the plane has secretly been flying for almost five years.”
Trump also noted that certain allies would be offered the opportunity to buy the aircraft, perhaps in a toned down form. “We like to tone them down about 10% which probably makes sense, because someday, maybe they’re not our allies, right?” Trump said.
The President said that the aircraft would have “unprecedented power, the most power of any jet of its kind ever made,” and appeared to say that the aircraft would have a top speed of Mach 2. He said that the aircraft would be equipped with state of the art stealth technologies, which would render it “virtually unseeable.” He also noted that: “This plane flies with drones… And it’s a technology that’s new, but it doesn’t fly by itself. It flies with many drones, as many as we want, and that’s something that no other plane can do.”
Little other hard information was revealed (and it was apparent that the President did not fully understand what he was saying), but the aircraft was variously claimed to be: “next level,” that “nothing in the world comes even close to it,” (in terms of speed, manoeuvrability, “what it can have,” and payload). In other words, Trump crowed, it will be: “the most advanced, most capable, most lethal aircraft ever built,” and will: “massively overpowers the capabilities of any other nation.”
“America’s enemies will never see it coming,” Trump insisted, saying that it: “Will ensure that the USA continues to dominate the skies.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth paid tribute to the President’s “leadership” and “clarity” and called it “a big day for our war fighters, with the new aircraft enabling the USA “to project power around the globe unimpeded for generations to come.”
Hegseth said that: “This is a historic investment in the American military, in the American industrial base, in American industry.” He took a sideswipe at the previous administration, who, he pointed out: “paused this program and were prepared to potentially scrap it.”
