The 47th president of the United States, Donald Trump, declared Friday that Boeing had won the contract for the Air Force’s next-generation stealth fighter aircraft, which he said will be called the F-47.
“It will be referred to as the F-47, and nothing else in the world can compare to it. The generals chose a title, and it’s a beautiful number, F-47,” Trump declared at the White House.
The goal of the contract is to create a new, more sophisticated aircraft that can work with uncrewed drones to replace the F-22 jet, which has been in service for about 20 years.
“After a rigorous and thorough competition between some of America’s top aerospace companies, the Air Force is going to be awarding the contract for the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) platform to Boeing,” Trump stated during a televised speech in the Oval Office.
He said that for security concerns, the contract’s price could not be disclosed.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking alongside Trump, stated that the new plane “sends a very direct, clear message to our allies that we’re not going anywhere and to our enemies that… we will be able to project power around the globe unimpeded for generations to come.”
The news comes as a relief to Boeing, which had a challenging year due to a protracted labour strike and issues with safety on its commercial aircraft.
Boeing’s stock was up 4.78 per cent at $181.09 on the New York Stock Exchange at approximately 16:25 GMT on Friday.
– ‘Virtually unseeable’ –
Cost issues, a primary priority of the Trump administration, which has charged billionaire donor Elon Musk with cutting government expenditure through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), caused the NGAD endeavour to be put on hold in 2024.
The NGAD airframe might cost up to $300 million each, according to a 2018 Congressional Budget Office estimate. This is a lot more than the cost of several other aircraft that are currently in the US inventory.
In 2024, “officials cast doubt on whether the Air Force could afford to develop the NGAD alongside programmes including the B-21 Raider bomber and the Minuteman III ICBM replacement,” according to a report released earlier this year by the Congressional Research Service.
A senior Air Force officer stated earlier this month that the service’s analysis after the hiatus found that “air superiority matters not only in the past, not only in the present but in the future.”
Major General Joseph Kunkel told the AFA Warfare Symposium in Colorado, “After trying a lot of different options, this study told us that NGAD is the most viable option to achieve air superiority in this highly contested environment.”
The F-22 Raptor, which has remarkable manoeuvrability, stealth technology, and the capacity to supercruise—that is, sustain supersonic flight without the use of afterburners—will be replaced by the F-47.
Trump claimed that the F-47 would be “virtually unseeable” with unparalleled power and manoeuvrability, as well as the capacity to fly “with many drones, as many as we want, and that’s something that no other plane can do.” However, little is known about the aircraft’s capabilities.
