The Pentagon has described the sixth-generation fighter as essential for maintaining U.S. air superiority. But do the promised benefits outweigh the projected cost?
The F-47, the planned next-generation U.S. stealth fighter jet, will be built to evade adversaries’ air defenses and have a combat radius of 1,000 nautical miles, farther than any other jet in America’s air-fighting arsenal.
These are some of the limited details the Pentagon has released about the highly classified platform since March, when President Donald Trump, the 47th president, announced that Boeing would receive the contract to build the fighter jet.
“Nothing in the world comes even close to it,” Trump said at the time.
The Pentagon has confirmed it is going “all in” on the stealth fighter, requesting $3.5 billion for fiscal year 2026. Congress is still considering legislation for next year’s defense spending, although the sprawling spending and tax bill that Trump signed earlier this month allocates $400 million to jumpstart the F-47’s production. In written testimony to Congress about the 2026 budget request, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promised the F-47 will be the “most advanced, lethal, and adaptable fighter ever developed, with state-of-the-art stealth technologies to stay one step ahead of America’s adversaries.”
The F-47 represents a sizable investment in the U.S.’s air dominance, one that could ultimately cost tens of billions of dollars and potentially take years to test and manufacture. That will require tradeoffs in America’s military investments, decisions based on the Pentagon’s current best assessments of what a future U.S. war might look like. Already, the Pentagon has said it wants to deprioritize the F/A-XX, the Navy’s planned six-generation stealth fighter, to focus on the F-47.
“We did make a strategic decision to go all in on F-47,” an unnamed senior defense official told reporters during a June background briefing on the budget request, “due to our belief that the industrial base can only handle going fast on one program at this time.” This would allow the Pentagon to “get that [F-47] program right while maintaining the option for F/A-XX in the future.”
Congress will ultimately determine which programs are funded and at what levels, but the push for the F-47 appears to very much have China in mind. That large planned combat radius — how far the fighter jet can fly after it takes off, completes its mission, and safely returns to base — might come in handy in, say, a Taiwan contingency, where the U.S. needs to fly long distances in the Pacific. In December, China debuted its next-generation stealth fighter, the Chengdu J-36, which the Air Force assessed was intended for air superiority.
According to Boeing, the F-47 “will usher in a new generation of fighter jets that brings leap-ahead capability in range, survivability, lethality and adaptability.” When it comes to survivability — things like speed, maneuverability, stealth, connectivity — the F-47 will build on fifth-generation designs, specifically the F-22 Raptor, which the F-47 is to eventually replace.
Bert Chapman, a professor at Purdue University who wrote a book about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, said he “suspects stealth would be a continued emphasis” for next-generation fighters. Above all, the F-47 will be designed to achieve air superiority — the ability to penetrate an enemy’s air defenses and control the contested airspace. The F-22 also does this, but it has a combat radius of 590 nautical miles, a little more than half of what the F-47 promises to reach.
“The F-47 promises right now to give us an advantage in the air and save people’s lives,” said retired Brig. Gen. Houston Cantwell, a former command pilot who’s now a senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
He added: “It’s a huge investment, but it’s exactly what America needs to do if you want to maintain that advantage.”
Exactly how huge an investment is still unclear. Boeing’s contract award is reportedly estimated at $20 billion, but neither the White House nor the Pentagon has confirmed that figure. The F-22 program ultimately cost $67 billion for a fleet of about 185 jets. In March, Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. David Allvin said in a statement that the F-47 “will cost less and be more adaptable to future threats” compared to the F-22, though he did not offer more detail as to how. That also contradicts a previous estimate by the Congressional Budget Office that a next-generation fighter would cost about $300 million per jet. The Trump administration has indicated that it plans to acquire at least 185 F-47s.
Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall wrestled with the F-47’s price tag when he was deciding whether to commit to the then-unnamed fighter during his tenure during the Biden administration.
“This is a lot of money, and what’s the opportunity cost for this $20, $30, $40, $100 million, a billion dollars, ultimately, that we won’t be able to buy because we bought this?” Kendall told me in an interview.
He pointed to counter-space capabilities and hardening U.S. air bases against missile threats as what he saw as potentially higher priorities with limited resources. “If we don’t make our air bases more secure, more better protected, none of our airplanes are going to get in the air,” Kendall said.
As secretary, Kendall also championed Collaborative Combat Aircraft, an envisioned class of uncrewed, artificial intelligence-enabled vehicles with jet engines. These CCAs would operate as “wingmen” to human-piloted fighters and assist with everything from combat to reconnaissance missions.
The Trump administration is also investing heavily in CCAs, with plans to acquire 1,000 of them. As Trump said in March, the F-47 “flies with many drones, as many as you want, and that’s something that no other plane can do.”
The first CCAs are currently in ground testing, according to Anduril and General Atomics, two of the contracted companies, with flight tests to begin sometime in the coming months. The Trump administration has said CCAs will be operational between 2025 and 2029. The Air Force proposed a similar timeline for the F-47, insisting the stealth fighters will fly during Trump’s term.
“The really interesting debate is: can the rather remarkable claims and early availability for the [F-]47 be realized?” said Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory, a Michigan-based consultancy. That ambitious timeline might suggest that the Air Force has done more work on the F-47 than it has publicly revealed.
“If we’re looking toward the end of the decade,” Aboulafia added, “that’s no wait at all.”
Opener image: An artist rendering of the F-47. Credit: U.S. Air Force
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