President Donald Trump has tasked Boeing and the U.S. Air Force with having the first of the new F-47 fighters “built and in the air” before the end of his current administration in January 2029. The contract award for the U.S. Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program was announced on Friday, with around $20 billion in spending anticipated for initial engineering, manufacturing, and development of a platform that will include the piloted fighter and drones.

Boeing won the contract after a protracted competition with Lockheed Martin. The sixth-generation fighter is intended to be an eventual replacement for the latter company’s F-22 Raptor. The F-47 is expected to be powered by new XA102 or XA103 engines being developed by, respectively, GE Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney through the Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion program.

Speaking during an event in the White House, U.S. Air Force chief of staff General David Allvin said the interaction between the new fighter and an array of drone technology will a more modern and lethal combination than current weapons platforms. “[NGAD] is allowing us to look into the future and unlock the magic that is human-machine teaming,” he commented, adding that the structure of the program will allow the platform to be updated “at the speed of relevance and the speed of technology.”

According to the Air Force, the F-47 air superiority will cost less and be more adoptable than the F-22. It is being developed to support long-range missions to confront threats, including those from China’s military in the Indo-Pacific region.

Pentagon spending on the NGAD program is projected to rise from less than $4 billion this year to almost $9 billion in 2029. Development of the F-47 has evolved over the past five years with the Air Force and its partners having conducted hundreds of hours of flight testing with various X-plane concepts.

The NGAD contract is a welcome boost for Boeing’s military division. “We recognize the importance of designing, building and delivering a sixth-generation fighter capability for the United States Air Force,” said Steve Parker, interim president and chief executive officer for Boeing Defense, Space, and Security. “In preparation for this mission, we made the most significant investment in the history of our defense business, and we are ready to provide the most advanced and innovative NGAD aircraft needed to support the mission.”