Andrew Thornebrooke
The F-47 is the first aircraft of a family of related systems under the umbrella of the U.S. military’s ‘Next Generation of Air Dominance’ (NGAD) program, which began in 2014 with the goal of deploying new aircraft by the 2030s.
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.
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 manoeuvrability to what it can have for payload.”
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.
The F-47 is a manned aircraft that is designed to serve as a leading unit alongside a swarm of drones.
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.”
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 theatres 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 defences, 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.
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 rigorous and thorough competition.
The problem – as also applies to our AUKUS nuclear submarines – is timing. The F-47 Is not likely to be available until the mid-2030s, the same as our subs.
Xi Jinping will be 80 in 2033 – is he really going to wait until then before moving on Taiwan?
Originally published at Richardson Post and Epoch Times.
