What We Know About the F-47, America’s Sixth-Generation Aircraft

The F-47 is the first aircraft of a family of related systems under the umbrella of the military’s Next Generation of Air Dominance program.

An artist rendering of the Air Force’s sixth generation fighter, the F-47. U.S. Air Force graphic

President Donald Trump has announced that Boeing will build the United States Air Force’s sixth-generation fighter jet.

Air Force leaders will now move to produce fleets of the new aircraft, officially designated the F-47.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on March 21, Trump said an F-47 prototype had been secretly flying for the past half-decade and that the new aircraft would be the world’s most advanced.

“We’re confident that it massively overpowers the capabilities of any other nation,” Trump said.

“There’s never been anything even close to it from speed to maneuverability to what it can have [for] payload.”

The F-47 is the first aircraft of what is slated to become a family of related systems under the umbrella of the military’s Next Generation of Air Dominance (NGAD) program, which began in 2014 with the goal of deploying new aircraft by the 2030s.

Trump said that the F-47 would begin production runs shortly and that the military had already built many of the required facilities to manufacture the system in the coming years.

However, most of the project is still shrouded in a cloak of secrecy due to fears that foreign adversaries—including communist China—will attempt to steal valuable information about the new technology.

Here are the key takeaways from Trump’s F-47 announcement.

The F-47 Will Deploy Alongside Drones

The F-47 is a manned aircraft that is designed to serve as a leading unit alongside a swarm of unmanned aerial systems.

These uncrewed collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) will essentially operate as wingmen to the pilot of the F-47, thereby increasing the lethality that each fighter can bring to bear.

Trump suggested on March 21 that the number of drones operating in conjunction with the F-47 pilot was scalable, meaning that the pilot could be accompanied by as few or as many unmanned craft as was necessary for a specific mission set.

“This plane flies with drones,” Trump said. “It flies with many, many drones. As many as you want.”

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin, who joined Trump in the Oval Office, said that the F-47 would “unlock the magic that is human-machine teaming,” and ensure the system became the “crown jewel” of the NGAD family of systems.

“Air dominance isn’t a birthright but it [has] become synonymous with American airpower,” Allvin said. “But [that] air dominance needs to be earned every single day.”

Key Capabilities for a Conflict With China

The potential for a war with communist China has been a key factor in shaping the development of the F-47 as the United States seeks to transition away from asymmetrical warfare against terrorist insurgencies and towards a modern battlespace with near-peer adversaries.

Headaches about sustaining strong enough U.S. supply lines to project power across the Pacific in wartime have been a key consideration of the Pentagon in recent years.

The NGAD program was, in part, designed to address such operational needs and to increase the nation’s ability to project power into highly contestable theaters like the Indo-Pacific, where current fighters may lack sufficient range and payload to be maximally effective.

To that end, Trump said that the F-47 would be able to penetrate Chinese defenses, thereby adding a much-needed arrow to the U.S. quiver.

“America’s enemies will never see it coming,” Trump said.

“If it ever happens, they won’t know what the [expletive] hit them,” he added.

Trump said the F-47 will feature top-of-the-line capabilities in several areas, and its advanced stealth, avionics, and adaptive engines look to position it as the most advanced and capable fighter ever built.

“This is next level,” he said.

That next-level capability is just what the United States will need, as China has recently been observed testing new unidentified aircraft that appears to be the Asian nation’s attempt at a sixth-generation fighter.

Footage emerged in December of a tailless stealth aircraft conducting test flights near Chengdu, in Sichuan.

That aircraft, unofficially dubbed the J-36, is likely to be China’s bid to leapfrog the United States in combat aircraft design.

Boeing Lifeline After Years of Turbulence

That Boeing beat out Lockheed Martin for the $20 billion contract to develop the F-47 will also have cascading effects on the defense industrial base.

Both companies have previously published design concepts that feature a flat, tailless aircraft with a sharp nose, and Boeing only walked away with the contract to build the F-47 “after a rigorous and thorough competition,” according to Trump.

The defense contract could prove to be a vital lifeline for Boeing, which has weathered numerous scandals in recent years, leading to substantial financial and reputational impacts.

The Boeing 737 MAX program encountered severe setbacks following two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019.

Boeing leadership also acknowledged it made mistakes in the leadup to a climactic incident over Oregon last year, when a panel of an Alaska Airlines plane blew off mid-flight because it had not been properly bolted on.

The company also lost to SpaceX in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, with its Starliner spacecraft experiencing delays and technical issues leading to some $1.6 billion in losses on the Starliner program since 2016.

In March 2025, Boeing was forced to halt all shipments of its KC-46 Pegasus refueling plane after the Air Force discovered cracks in two of four new planes delivered by the company.

The costly discovery also led the Air Force to ground its entire fleet of the planes.

Then, on March 20, just a day before Trump announced Boeing would receive the contract to build the F-47, a wrongful death lawsuit was unveiled against Boeing by the family of John Barnett.

Barnett, a Boeing quality manager of three decades, died by suicide last year, after what his family described as a campaign of harassment and intimidation by the company over his whistleblowing complaints about the safety of one of its planes.

The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed last year that it was investigating assertions that components of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner were improperly put together and “could break apart mid-flight after thousands of trips.”

“We recognize the importance of designing, building, and delivering a 6th-generation fighter capability for the United States Air Force,” said Boeing Defense’s interim CEO Steve Parker in a March 21 press statement.