President Trump described the F-55 as a substantial upgrade over the F-35, together with the ongoing upgrades to F-35 and F-22.
U.S. President Donald Trump is currently on a tour in the Middle East, and on May. 15, 2025, made the second stop of the tour in Qatar. Trump began the day at a breakfast with representatives from U.S. aerospace and defense companies, releasing some interesting comments.
In fact, during the press conference in Doha, the President talked about the budget for the military and describing as the ‘biggest ever done.’ Providing more details, Trump mentioned a previously unheard “F-55” fighter jet, described as a “substantial upgrade” over the F-35 “with two engines”.
.@POTUS: “The F-35, we’re doing an upgrade, a simple upgrade, but we’re also doing an F-55… and that’s going to be a substantial upgrade… and then we’re going to do the F-22… it will be a very modern version of the F-22 fighter jet.” pic.twitter.com/5LbsiqneEF
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 15, 2025
Here is the transcription from the President’s speech, which was also posted on X by the official Rapid Response 47 profile of the White House:
“One of the things that, for the people that reach us in the military, I asked to look into, [is] the F-35. We’re doing an upgrade, a simple upgrade, but we’re also doing an F-55, I’m going to call it an F-55, and that’s going to be a substantial upgrade, but it’s going to be also with two engines, because the F-35 has a single engine, I don’t like single engines.
Even this man [referring to Larry Culp, Chairman & CEO of GE Aerospace, sitting by Trump’s side], he’s the best in the world at engines, but on occasion, I know you won’t admit this, if an engine goes out it’s nice to have two, three or four engines, that’s why I like the [Boeing] 747, it’s got four.
Today they’re getting very big and, as a little more cost saving, they’re getting two very, very big ones. No matter how good, you know, they tell me, Larry, the engine will never go out, well, I think it goes out, on occasion, fairly rarely.
We’re going to do an F-55 and I think, if we get the right price, we have to get the right price, that will be two engines, and a super upgrade on the F-35 and then we’re going to do the F-22. I think the most beautiful fighter jet in the world is the F-22, but we’re going to do an F-22 Super, and it will be a very modern version of the F-22 fighter jet.”
The video posted by Rapid Response 47 does not include the immediae continuation of the speech, during which President Trump refers to the reports that China used stolen U.S. technology to develop the J-20 stealth fighter jet. Here is the transcript of that missing part, as posted on Facebook by Aviation Week‘s Defense Editor Stephen Trimble:
I don’t know if you know it, but did you know who copied it? China. They copied it. They say that’s the F-22, they copied our design. But they won’t be able to copy our engines to quickly or anything else. We’re going to be doing an F-22 Super.”
This is the first mention of an aircraft called F-55, which doesn’t figure in publicly released official documents, as well as the first mention of a twin-engine variant of the F-35 Lightning II. If real, it would be indeed a substantial upgrade over the F-35 as it would require an extensive re-design of the airframe to be able to host two engines, and that is highly unlikely given the complexity and costs involved. The other option would be an alternative engine, something that has already been discussed in the past.
However, it must me said that social media users are noting that the F-55 might simply be the result of a misspell while the President was talking, as something similar already happened in the past. In fact, in 2018, it was reported that Trump touted the sale of the non-existent F-52 fighter jet and the F-35 to Norway, although the likely explanation on that occasion was that the sale involved 52 F-35s.
Having considered that, we can’t exclude the F-55 from being the result of a similar situation. On the other hand, the comments about the F-35’s and F-22’s upgrades correspond to reality, as they refer to the F-35’s Block 4/Technology Refresh 3 upgrade and the F-22’s ongoing upgrades to keep it in tip-top shape until the F-47 NGAD is operational.
However, we also can’t exclude that the F-55 and its substantial upgrade over the F-35 were a reference to the ‘supercharged’ F-35 mentioned in April by Lockheed Martin’s President and Chief Executive Officer Jim Taiclet. On that occasion, Taiclet also talked about the cost advantages, and that is another aspect that was mentioned by Trump regarding the F-55.
“We are moving forward and moving out on applying all the technologies that we developed for our NGAD bid onto our embedded base of F-35 and F-22,” explained Taiclet. “I feel that we can have, again, 80% of the capability potentially at 50% of the cost per unit aircraft by taking the F-35 chassis and applying numerous advanced technologies, some of which are already in process in Block 4 and F-35.”
“So we’re basically going to take the chassis and turn it into a Ferrari. It’s like a NASCAR upgrade, so to speak,” Taiclet continues.
