When it comes to warfare, owning the skies is tantamount to winning. This is why, even as far back as the 1940s, Winston Churchill said that if a country doesn’t have an adequate air force, it’s “compromising the foundations of its own freedom and independence.”
Since World War II, the United States enjoyed the benefit of air superiority in virtually every conflict it has been involved in. But to maintain that advantage in the decades ahead, the U.S. Air Force needs a new fighter.
The F-47: America’s next-generation fighter
In March, President Donald Trump gave the green light for the Air Force to proceed with plans to build its Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, fighter. Boeing beat out Lockheed Martin for the rights to build it.
Now dubbed the F-47, the super-stealthy plane is envisioned as the centerpiece of a new family of systems the Air Force is creating under the umbrella of the Next Generation Air Dominance program, also called NGAD.
However, aside from a few artist renderings of the craft, the world at large still knows very little about the plane. That’s intentional. The U.S. doesn’t need its adversaries pouring over images on classified programs.
Our @usairforce will continue to be the world’s best example of speed, agility, and lethality. Modernization means fielding a collection of assets that provide unique dilemmas for adversaries—matching capabilities to threats—while keeping us on the right side of the cost curve. pic.twitter.com/vqjxCdBYid
— General David Allvin (@OfficialCSAF) May 13, 2025
What will be the cost of fielding another air dominance fighter?
One of the biggest intel dumps on the project came when Air Force Chief of Staff General David Allvin posted an infographic to social media. According to the post, the NGAD will have a range of approximately 1,000 nautical miles, a top speed exceeding Mach 2 and is expected to be operational by 2029. At least 185 planes are planned for production. That plane count matches the number of F-22s currently in the Air Force fleet.
Originally, the NGAD fighter was pitched as a 1:1 replacement for the F-22, but the Air Force was repeatedly criticized for limiting its F-22 fleet to just 185 craft, so it’s worth pointing out Allvin’s infographic did say “185+”, indicating the service may opt for more F-47s.
“This is a generational investment,” Dr. Sheldon Jacobson said. He’s a computer science professor at the University of Illinois with decades of experience researching aviation technology, including work with the Air Force’s Office of Scientific Research. “Any time the military is going to add a piece of technology as sophisticated as a new fighter plane, this is not something that is taken lightly.”
As Jacobson explained during a virtual interview with Straight Arrow News, the global security landscape has undergone significant changes over the past several decades.
“Right now, our near-peer adversary is China, and China is investing tremendously in technologies, in their weaponry, ultimately to catch up with us,” Jacobson said. “Intelligence suggests, and this is all public knowledge, that they’re getting closer. As a result, that next quantum leap up in technology is critical so that we move to the next generation of fighter plane and capability. Which is really the most important thing so that the United States can stay ahead.”
Staying ahead, however, is going to cost money. Lots of it. In 2024, the Air Force paused the NGAD program after the price per plane topped $300 million. If the Air Force buys at least 185 like it says it wants to, then the overall price tag of the NGAD program quickly balloons to well over $55 billion.
The future of air combat
So, what will the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter be able to do? For starters, it will allow pilots to worry less about flying and focus more on battle management. That’s a concept already familiar to F-35 pilots.
Matthew ‘Whiz’ Buckley is a former naval aviator and top gun graduate.
“I have buddies that fly the F-35 that flew the hornet with me that are like, ‘Dude, I’m tech support. I’m a systems monitor,’” Whiz said to SAN. “I mean, hell, even landing aboard the boat (aircraft carrier) is push a button, you know? If you’re landing aboard the boat manually in these airplanes, it’s an emergency.”
‘Whiz’ said that if the technology on today’s fifth-generation fighters makes his F-18 Hornet look dated, the tech on the F-47 will make it look downright prehistoric. That’s because NGAD is less about the individual pilot and more about how the pilot can be a “quarterback in the sky” to a team of smaller, unmanned drones known as Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA).
CCAs will undertake a number of different missions. They could forward deploy as advanced sensor stations, send out fake signals as a diversion, or fly as munitions mules and carry extra firepower for the human pilot. Anduril and General Atomics ASI were both selected to field models of CCA for testing.
“So with the F-47, if you come into the merge with an enemy aircraft, everything went wrong,” Whiz said.
The term “merge” is used by pilots to describe the moment when two or more aircraft begin engaging in close-range aerial combat, also known as dogfighting. This typically happens when aircraft are within visual range during modern engagements.
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The Next Generation Air Dominance program plans to commission upwards of 185 F-47 aircraft for the U.S. Air force, rivalling the 185 F-22’s currently in service.
Whiz said, “With this type of technology, we know when the enemy pilots wake up, what time their alarm was set for, what they ate for breakfast and when they’re taxiing for takeoff. With the F-47, the enemy pilots or targets should be dead and not even know they’re dead.”
“I’m excited that the nation’s investing in our dominance and giving the next generation the same opportunities I had,” said Chris Gentile, the general manager of tactical autonomy for Merlin Labs.
Gentile flew F-22 Raptors for the Air Force before finding his way to Merlin, where he now helps develop some of the autonomy the F-47 and its CCAs may eventually use.
“What I see about the whole industry, whether it’s autonomy, the F-47 or similar, it just represents a commitment to the way America wants to project power and deter conflict,” Gentile said. “We’re going to be responsible about fielding autonomy, things like CCAs. That means there’s going to have to be humans close enough to exercise control over these assets. And we want those humans to be as survivable, as informed, as capable as possible. I think sitting in the cockpit of an F-47 is a good start to that.”
As previously mentioned, many of the characteristics of the NGAD remain unknown. Will it be tailless? Will it be a delta-wing design? Will it have canards? No one outside of a handful of folks at Boeing and the Air Force really knows.
Regardless of what it looks like, Whiz, Gentile and Dr. Jacobson all said the Air Force needs to build enough F-47s to matter. In Gentile’s words, “four of anything at a time doesn’t win the war. You’ve got to bring the quantity with the quality.”
contributed to this report.
