Boeing’s Mysterious F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance Fighter

Written by Chriss W. Street

The F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance Stealth Fighter is a radical departure from prior Air Force initiatives, because it is designed to be deploy with multiple high autonomy Collaborative Combat Aircraftdrones.

Boeing was awarded the Engineering and Manufacturing Development contract worth approximately $20 billion, but at about $300 millionper plane, the lifetime contract will be worth about $1 trillion.

NGAD terminology is frequently used to refer to the crewed combat jet that will be at the center of the effort, the program of the same name is a much broader initiative. It includes the development of Collaborative Combat Aircraft drones with high degrees of autonomy, as well as new jet engines, weapons, electronic warfare suites, sensors, networking ecosystems, and battle management abilities.

Unlike past fighters, the F-47 NGAD design competition between Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman has been rigidly cloaked in secrecy. Although all three companies have been flying prototypes since 2020, there have been very few confirmed sighting and no good photos.

The most distinct feature of the 6^th Generation F-47 is the broad, shovel-like nose, which may house an exceptionally large radar array and a large bubble canopy. It is unknown if the plane will feature a crew of one or two.

Boeing has suffered severe setbacks in both its commercial and defense businesses, with Donald Trump pounding the company for massively being over budget on the contract to build two new Air Force Oneplanes.

Boeing literally bet their entire future as a fighter-builder on winning the F-47, which are running behind schedule. Boeing announced in 2023 that they were shutting down the F-18E/F Super Hornet lines to focus exclusively on 6^th Generation combat jets.

Boeing invested heavily on its St. Louis, Missouri, facility to prepare it for sixth-generation fighter production. Boeing is currently building F-15 Advanced Eagles and the Air Force’s T-7 jet trainer at other facilities.

Lockheed Martin is already highly active in the fighter business, with its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in production for three U.S. services and multiple foreign countries. The company is moving forward with producing Block 70/72 versions of the F-16, and continues to support the F-22 Raptor.

F-47 award was fascinating, given the disgraceful findings of Elon Musk’s DOGE teams, as they try to slash tens of billions of dollars of waste, fraud and abuse. The whispers claim the rising risk of a future Indo-Pacific conflict forced the military to deploy the sixth-generation fighter against a Chinese or Russian peer competitor airframe.

Air Force Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel, director of Force Design, Integration, and Wargaming told the War Zone Wire: “We tried a whole bunch of different options, and there was no more viable option than NGAD to achieve air superiority in this highly contested environment.”

Boeing was hyper-competitive on the fighter contract based on its significant range and payload capabilities, but the win is being credited with fielding broadband stealth, advanced electronic, and other ‘spectral’ warfare capabilities within the broader air combat ‘ecosystem.’

F-47’s multi-scale drone management is a new dimension for manned aircraft, with each F-47 motherserving as a forward controller with up to 6 large-scale fighter drone siblings.

As shown below, General Atomics and Anduril are both in the first phase, referred to as or Increment 1, of developing Collaborative Combat Aircraft

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