The ‘Next Generation Air Dominance’ (NGAD) sixth-generation combat aircraft program appears to be back on track. As per a Reuters report, Boeing has been awarded the contract to build the most advanced combat aircraft for the US Air Force (USAF).
As the centerpiece of the NGAD effort, the new crewed sixth-generation stealth combat jet now designated the F-47, is set to change air combat forever, which the Air Force hopes to begin fielding in the next decade.
Trump, the 47th president, announced the new jet’s name, the F-47.
“We’ve given an order for a lot. We can’t tell you the price,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “Our allies are calling constantly,” Trump added, saying foreign sales could be an option. “They want to buy them also.”
Despite the budgetary constraints that led to the NGAD’s pausing, the engineering and manufacturing development contract worth more than $20 billion was awarded to the US aerospace giant on March 21.
Following the development, Boeing’s shares registered a 5% uptick, whereas Lockheed’s shares fell 6%.
The NGAD, the sixth-generation air superiority aircraft of the US Air Force (USAF), which is set to replace the F-22 Raptor, has been in the works for over a decade. By 2023, three major aerospace manufacturers, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, had all developed NGAD demonstrators.
The USAF released its classified request for proposals (RFP) for the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) platform in 2023. After Northrop Grumman withdrew from the contest, only two contenders remained: Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
The contest has been keenly watched as Lockheed Martin, which has also developed the F-35 and F-22 stealth fighter, withdrew from the US Navy’s next-generation F/A-XX fighter jet program earlier this month.
While the two American aerospace giants are competitors in general, having participated in neck-to-neck contests over the years, the NGAD contest was their second biggest face-off against one another in recent times. Boeing had to concede to Lockheed Martin in the Joint Strike Fighter contest, which led to the development of the F-35 Lightning II.
If confirmed by the Pentagon, this could be an incredible win for Boeing, whose fortunes have declined in the past year owing to financial difficulties, technical issues, and cost overruns on fixed-price contracts.
Nonetheless, the losing company (probably Lockheed in this case) could possibly find opportunities within the broader NGAD program, with their technology potentially finding applications in other subsystems of the sixth-generation aircraft. However, with F/A-XX and NGAD both lost, its future remains uncertain for now.
The news of the contract comes after the US President was briefed by the US Air Force (USAF) and the US Navy (USN) on the next-generation fighter programs, as recently reported by the Air and Space Forces Magazine. The report stated that the services asked to proceed with their programs in their present form.
Though the US Navy’s next-gen fighter program (the F/A-XX) has largely remained on track, the NGAD was paused in July 2024 and put under reconsideration, as former US Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall announced. The decision was attributed to the program’s high cost, with one unit of NGAD expected to cost US$250 million to US$300 million—nearly three times more than the fifth-generation F-35.
At the time, the officials questioned whether the Air Force could afford to develop the NGAD along with strategic programs like the B-21 Raider bomber and the LGM-35 Sentinel.
While a host of other ideas were proposed, including disaggregating capabilities into multiple platforms like drones, an internal Air Force investigation and a blue-ribbon commission of stealth experts determined that NGAD capabilities were necessary despite exorbitant costs, particularly in the event of a conflict with China.
The service has initially planned to award the NGAD contract before the end of 2024. However, in December 2024, the Pentagon stated that the Trump administration would decide the program’s fate.
The USAF allocated US$19.6 billion for NGAD investment over the next five years in its 2025 budget request, making it the most costly program in the service’s R&D budget. Though the aircraft was postponed, it was never dead.
Speaking at the McAleese annual Defense Program Conference on March 18, 2025, Lt. Gen. Dale R. White, the Air Force’s senior uniformed acquisition official, said, “While the NGAD decision was put on hold, we did not pause the approach and strategy and the things we’re doing to make sure we have the technology.”
USAF officials have constantly argued that they need a next-generation manned aircraft supplemented by drones to defeat the combat threats of the future, particularly from China. Intriguingly, the awarding of the contract would come days after China flew its sixth-generation fighter jet prototype—the J-36—for the second time earlier this week.
NGAD Is Coming To Counter China Threat
The Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program will replace Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor. Though the aircraft’s design remains cloaked in secrecy, it is expected to prioritize stealth, sophisticated sensors, and state-of-the-art engines. Much more than a ‘new fighter,’ NGAD is a broad initiative to create a ‘system of systems’ that will include unmanned drones, manned jets, and a new generation of networking technologies.
The sixth-generation crewed aircraft will operate alongside drones or CCAs in a manned-unmanned teaming (MUMT) configuration. Kendall earlier described the initiative, saying, “NGAD must be more than just the next crewed fighter jet. It’s a program that will include a crewed platform teamed with much less expensive autonomous un-crewed combat aircraft, employing a distributed, tailorable mix of sensors, weapons, and other mission equipment operating as a team or formation.”
Additionally, the USAF’s 2025 budget request enumerates key NGAD attributes such as enhanced survivability, lethality, persistence, interoperability across a range of military operations, and crewed/uncrewed teaming as its key features.
Previously, while testifying before the House Armed Services Committee, former Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. argued that there could be two variants of NGAD: one with long range and payload for the Indo-Pacific and one lighter variety more oriented to the relatively short ranges between possible battle areas in Europe.
The awarding of the NGAD contract comes as the USAF risks losing its air superiority against its biggest adversary and rival, China. At the end of 2024, China unveiled two fighter jets, the J-36 and J-50, shocking the world. The USAF, which flew an NGAD demonstrator in 2020, has not been oblivious to the need to up its game.
Speaking at the Air and Space Forces Association (ASA) 2025 Warfare Symposium in Colorado in early March, a senior USAF official, General Kenneth Wilsbach, head of Air Combat Command, which manages the USAF’s fighter, reconnaissance, and electronic warfare fleets, said the Chinese sixth-generation fighter is designed for air superiority roles.
“Sixth-gen aircraft are for air superiority,” Wilsbach said, referring to the photos of the Chinese sixth-generation aircraft that surfaced in December 2024. “We know what that’s for. What are we going to do about it? I don’t believe nothing is an option.”
Although the role of the J-36, which flew once again this month, cannot be independently verified, control of the skies has always been believed to be crucial in warfare. For instance, the Russia-Ukraine war dragged on for more than three years because neither side was able to establish air superiority, which is often considered to be decisive on the battlefield.
Maj. Gen. Joseph D. Kunkel, the Air Force’s director of force design, integration, and wargaming, said at the ASA 2025 Warfare Symposium: “Many of you know, we put a pause on NGAD, and we put a pause on NGAD to reflect, and we did a study on it.” “We tried a whole bunch of different options, and there was no more vital option than NGAD to achieve air superiority in this highly contested environment.”
The NGAD’s strategic importance for the USAF and the country’s security cannot be overstated in the prevailing threat environment, particularly as a war with China has been flagged as a real possibility in the future.
More importantly, the NGAD is going forward even though the tech billionaire Elon Musk, who is also a special appointee in the Trump administration, has advocated against crewed fighter jets and called for the development of drones and artificial intelligence for fighting future wars.
With the contract now reportedly awarded, both NGAD and Boeing have made a super comeback that few anticipated.
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