Boeing wins F-47 fighter contract, heads explode

The competition between Boeing and Lockheed Martin for the Next Generation Air Dominance Fighter (NGAD) is over, with Boeing taking first prize.

During the Oval Office announcement ceremony, Trump displayed a poster showing the first glimpse of the F-47 design, revealing a forward fuselage and sharply swept back wings but no further design features.

The Air Force wants a new aircraft with the range, speed and stealth to operate effectively over the vast Indo-Pacific region and against some of China’s most advanced weapons systems, including current and future stealth fighters and surface-to-air missile systems. The requirements dictate an aircraft with performance that defies familiar categories for combat aircraft, such as a fighter or bomber. But Boeing’s future aircraft is expected to feature supersonic speed and perhaps a lack of vertical control surfaces, along with a large structure to carry all fuel, sensors and weapons internally.

Sounds like it will resemble the prototype China has been flying, designated the J-36 Chengdu (it’s built by Chengdu Aircraft in Chengdu…what else ya gonna call it?) It is whacking big, its hangar area looks about 50% larger than most (see photography here at  The War Zone.)

The cost-plus contract award for NGAD also offers a reprieve for a defense and space business within Boeing that has reported over $18 billion in reach-forward losses on fixed-price military and NASA programs since 2014, including $5 billion in new charges from 2024 alone. Despite the losses, Boeing invested heavily to win the NGAD contract, including starting construction nearly two years ago on a new factory in St. Louis to produce the aircraft. Aviation Week

One suspects that will be at the former McDonnell-Douglas plant by Lambert International…used to be a primo spot to watch Phantoms take off at night with afterburners cookin’.  Seemed like a 50 yard plume of flame from the exhaust… and the noise was the sweetest noise this side of Johnny Winter, and just as raw.

President Trump said Friday the Air Force picked the model number. Some Air Force spox said the number was a tribute to the Air Force’s founding in 1947 and to the P-47 Thunderbolt formerly made by Republic – and some articles, such as in the oh-so-dignified(!) New York Post  said as a tribute to Trump as the 47th President.  Fighters don’t get numbered in numerical order, and depending on how many XF-prototype numbers in between (there were at least three I know of, from Boeing, Lockheed, and Fairchild, and if they all had three between the 2014 start in DARPA, we could easily have gone from XF-36 through XF-46 without doing more than throwing a kazillion bucks at it.

Or, maybe someone high-ranking said “y’know, we are almost at 47 anyway, we will need at least one more proto, and we could suck up to the President at the same time.” I know, the Air Force doesn’t have sycophants, or “all the ferrets, all the loggers, all the finks, all the commex, even the mineez, “* who would do that. Do they?

But commentary is just silly, insisting that Trump named it himself and that they skipped all the way to that number just to feed his ego.  Me, I don’t know…but tend to think 47 was the next in line. YMMV

(Now, if anyone recognizes that quote WITHOUT GOOGLING OR LOOKING IT UP, you will truly earn my respect. No cheating.)

Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Air Force, Science and Technology