Boeing’s developmental sixth-generation F-47 fighter will take to the skies in 2028.
The airframer was selected to deliver the USA’s first-ever sixth-generation fighter in March, beating out Lockheed Martin in the US Air Force’s (USAF’s) Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) competition.
Since then, scant details have emerged about the highly classified programme other than a few renderings, which deliberately reveal very little about the new manned fighter.
However, the USAF’s top officer now confirms that assembly work is already underway on the initial F-47 example, with a first flight planned three years from now.
“The team is committed to get the first one flying in 2028,” USAF chief of staff General David Allvin said on 22 September. “In the few short months since we made the announcement, they are already beginning to manufacture the first article.”
Boeing is likely able to progress that fast because the company has already been flying an experimental F-47 concept for several years.
When he announced Boeing’s selection as the NGAD winner in March, Allvin revealed that two competitive prototypes had already been flying secretly for five years, accruing “hundreds of hours” of flight time.
That previously unacknowledged test campaign included the development of new technologies and the evaluation of concepts for employing the experimental sixth-generation designs.
Boeing is also well positioned to rapidly scale-up production of the new jet.
In recent years the airframer has invested nearly $2 billion in a classified production facility in St. Louis, Missouri intended to support unspecified “future combat aircraft programmes”.
Although not specifically tied to the NGAD programme, the massive investment was widely seen as intended to help Boeing secure the USAF sixth-generation development contract that has now become the F-47.
Speaking at the annual Air & Space Forces Association (AFA) conference near Washington, DC, Allvin revealed video footage of Boeing chief executive Kelly Ortberg announcing the F-47 win to Boeing workers arrayed before him on an unspecified factory floor in St. Louis.
Boeing assembles all of its tactical aircraft in the greater St. Louis area, including the F-15EX, F/A-18E/F, and EA-18G fighters, the T-7A trainer jet, and the MQ-25 autonomous refueller.
The classified aircraft production site is located in that same complex, which also houses the headquarters of Boeing Defense, Space & Security.
Very little is concretely known about the F-47 or the USAF’s concept for integrating sixth-generation aircraft into its existing fleet, other than the new design will fill an air superiority role.
Service leaders have long positioned the NGAD jet as the nucleus of a “family of systems” that includes legions of uncrewed support platforms known as Collaborative Combat Aircraft.
Unlike the USAF’s current air superiority fighter – the fifth-generation Lockheed F-22 – the F-47 is not expected to be a pure dogfighter, but will combine the latest stealth technology with advanced threat sensors to command and control the fight for air superiority.
Senior USAF officials have previously stated that each frontline NGAD aircraft is expected to cost on the order of multiple Lockheed F-35s, with a likely price tag of around $200 million per aircraft.
Despite that lofty price tag, the Pentagon and administration of President Donald Trump say they are “all in” on the F-47 – potentially at the expense of the US Navy’s less mature sixth-generation development effort.
“We did make a strategic decision to go all-in on F-47,” one Pentagon official told FlightGlobal in June.
Speaking at the AFA event this week, Allvin affirmed the USAF plans to move quickly on fielding the new jet.
“We’re ready to go fast,” he says. “We have to go fast.”
