Aircraft
U.S. Pushes For Air Dominance with F-47 Fighter Contract
$20 billion in Pentagon funding pledged to achieve first flights by 2029
Next Generation Air Dominance contract announcement
The award of the Next Generation Air Dominance contract to Boeing was announced by U.S. President Donald Trump at White House ceremony with defense secretary Pete Hegseth (right) and General David Allvin, U.S. Air Force chief of staff.

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.