U.S. President Donald Trump personally announced the winner of the U.S. Air Force’s NGAD program competition for the sixth-generation manned fighter.
U.S. President Donald Trump, together with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and U.S. Air Force Chief Gen. David Allvin, announced the award of the contract for the development of the U.S. Air Force’s Next-Generation Air Dominance manned fighter to Boeing and its F-47 design. The announcement of the contract follows months of uncertainty due to budget constraints and shifting priorities that led to a pause and a detailed review of the program.
Watch as @POTUS, @SecDef and @OfficialCSAF share major news for the Air Force and our country! https://t.co/cdhTc4GV33
— U.S. Air Force (@usairforce) March 21, 2025
“An experimental version of the plane has secretly been flying for almost 5 years and we’re confident that it massively overpowers the capabilities of any other nation,” Trump said, introducing the F-47. He also said experimental F-47 has been flying for five years and that toned-down versions of F-47 might be sold to U.S. allies.
The highly anticipated award comes shortly after reports mentioned the Air Force and Navy have briefed President Trump on their respective NGAD programs at his request. Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin and Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. James Kilby briefed the President on behalf of the Air Force and Navy, respectively.
Boeing and Lockheed Martin, with their Phantom Works and Skunk Works divisions, were the sole competitors for the engineering and manufacturing development contract, worth at least $20 billion, which would be followed by hundreds of billions of dollars in orders over the contract’s lifetime. The cost of the NGAD fighters is expected to be in the hundreds of millions apiece, with the most accredited estimate being $300 million per aircraft.
Both companies are reported to have finalized their designs in 2024, with the Air Force extending the Technology Maturation and Risk Reduction contracts to allow the designs to further progress while waiting for the final decision about the program. The winner chosen with this contract award is likely one of those designs or an evolution of it based on the results of the program’s review.
Actually, the former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall was ready to announce the winner at the end of 2024, however he later opted to leave the decision to the next administration as it “may want some additional analysis” because “it would have to live with the choice.” This suggests that the selection of the winning design might have already been made in 2024, with the service waiting for the green light from the administration before the announcement.
Gen. Allvin recently mentioned that the service needs a “high-end penetrating capability,” implicitly expressing support for the program. As a matter of fact, the manned fighter whitin the NGAD family of systems is also known as the Penetrating Combat Aircraft, as described in the “Air Superiority 2030” study released in 2016.
NGAD is currently the most expensive program in the Air Force’s research and development budget, with the 2025 budget request including $19.6 billion in the next five years. The leaders of the Senate and House Appropriations defense subcommittees, in their plans for 2025 spending, proposed a $325 million cut to NGAD justifying it as a “classified adjustment” which, if followed, would reduce the funding to $2.4 billion in FY25.
The announcement on Mar. 21, 2025 came with President Trump showing two images of the F-47 (someone suggests the designation comes from Trump being the 47th President of the US), one of those, not shown in the first part of the live stream.
There is actually a second image of the F-47 https://t.co/X3JG0DLo7B pic.twitter.com/kRqVFz0iju
— Fighterman_FFRC (@Fighterman_FFRC) March 21, 2025
A statement by Gen. Allvin was later published on the U.S. Air Force website.
The Next Generation Air Dominance Platform (the F-47) contract is a monumental leap forward in securing America’s air superiority for decades to come. This contract reaffirms our commitment to maintaining the United States’ position as the world’s most dominant Air Force, under the direction and leadership of our Commander in Chief, President Trump, and Secretary of Defense Hegseth.
With the F-47, we are not just building another fighter – we are shaping the future of warfare and putting our enemies on notice. This platform will be the most advanced, lethal, and adaptable fighter ever developed – designed to outpace, outmaneuver, and outmatch any adversary that dares to challenge our brave Airmen.
Despite what our adversaries claim, the F-47 is truly the world’s first crewed sixth-generation fighter, built to dominate the most capable peer adversary and operate in the most perilous threat environments imaginable. For the past five years, the X-planes for this aircraft have been quietly laying the foundation for the F-47 — flying hundreds of hours, testing cutting-edge concepts, and proving that we can push the envelope of technology with confidence. These experimental aircraft have demonstrated the innovations necessary to mature the F-47’s capabilities, ensuring that when we committed to building this fighter, we knew we were making the right investment for America.
While our X-planes were flying in the shadows, we were cementing our air dominance – accelerating the technology, refining our operational concepts, and proving that we can field this capability faster than ever before. Because of this, the F-47 will fly during President Trump’s administration.
In addition, the F-47 has unprecedented maturity. While the F-22 is currently the finest air superiority fighter in the world, and its modernization will make it even better, the F-47 is a generational leap forward. The maturity of the aircraft at this phase in the program confirms its readiness to dominate the future fight.
Compared to the F-22, the F-47 will cost less and be more adaptable to future threats – and we will have more of the F-47s in our inventory. The F-47 will have significantly longer range, more advanced stealth, be more sustainable, supportable, and have higher availability than our fifth-generation fighters. This platform is designed with a “built to adapt” mindset and will take significantly less manpower and infrastructure to deploy.
Our mission is clear. We will ensure America’s skies remain secure and our deterrence remains unshakable. With the F-47, we will strengthen our global position, keeping our enemies off-balance and at bay. And when they look up, they will see nothing but the certain defeat that awaits those who dare to challenge us – ‘Airpower Anytime, Anywhere’ is not just an aspiration, it’s a promise.
History of NGAD program
In September 2020, Dr. Will Roper, the then Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, made it public that the U.S. Air Force had secretly designed, built and flown at least one full-scale prototype of a new generation fighter aircraft, as part of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program.
The NGAD program was said to exploit improved development and manufacturing techniques that would enable the Air Force to buy new fighter jets approximatively every eight years and replace them every 16 years, without the need for service life extensions or mid-life updates after the 3,500 flight-hour mark. NGAD (along with the entire Digital Century Series) revolved around three principles, which Roper called “the digital trinity”: agile software development with full digital threading based on containerized software continuously developed, tested, released and updated based on the feedback (Kubernetes are an example); open architecture systems with modular government-owned reference hardware and software that allows rapid upgrades and integration of new capabilities; and digital engineering, or the use of advanced CAE and Digital Twin concepts.
Few days after the digitally-engineered advanced sixth-generation full-scale flight demonstrator was announced, the Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs published on the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service an interesting graphic for the Air Force’s 73rd birthday featuring an unknown new aircraft.
While the aircraft in the image was most probably completely fictional, its shape could also be a loose hint at the design chosen for the first prototype build for the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program.
Fast forward to 2023, according a podcast from the Defense & Aerospace Report, which you can find here, at least three NGAD demonstrators are involved in testing. A couple of weeks later, on Jul. 1, 2023, Lockheed Martin’s official Instagram account posted an story to celebrate the 80th anniversary of its famous Skunk Works advanced projects division. Among the aircraft silhouettes shown in the IG story, there was one that really struck everyone’s attention: the one of an unknown, clearly manned next generation aircraft.
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall initiated a “strategic pause” in mid-2024 to ensure the NGAD meets the operational needs of modern warfare, which now increasingly involves autonomous systems such as Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA). With this review, the service was “going back to the beginning” to re-examine its fundamental requirements for a 6th-generation crewed fighter.
“From a requirements perspective, what I would say is we’re going back and starting at the beginning with ‘What is the thing we’re trying to do?’” said the Vice Chief of Staff James C. Slife. “‘How do we achieve air superiority in a contested environment?’ would be one way to frame the question. A different way to frame the question would be, ‘How do we build a sixth-gen manned fighter platform?’ I mean, those are not necessarily the same question.”
The initial focus was on creating a high-end fighter with cutting-edge capabilities, but the emphasis shifted toward a more integrated approach that considers the roles of CCAs, bombers like the B-21, and a distributed network of capabilities. The unmanned platforms could serve alongside manned fighters, reducing the reliance on a traditional, highly expensive 6th generation crewed aircraft.
One of the most critical aspects driving the review was the rising cost of the NGAD program, with the estimated price reaching several hundred million dollars per aircraft. The Air Force, under Kendall, was pushing for a leaner and more efficient program, exploring ways to break up the NGAD’s capabilities across multiple platforms to lower the overall cost.
In December 2024, the review concluded, supporting the development of a manned, next-generation fighter, but leaving the decision to the Trump administration. Kendall mentioned the service also checked how the NGAD would fit into the ACE (Agile Combat Employment) operational concept and whether elements like a next-generation tanker would be needed.
