During an Oval Office news conference, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth beside him, President Donald Trump publicly announced Boeing will build the world's first sixth-generation fighter jet, the F-47.
"The F-47 will be the most advanced, most capable, most lethal aircraft ever built," Trump told reporters.
President Trump said Boeing was awarded the contract after a “rigorous and thorough competition” between America's top aerospace companies.
The major competitor for the lucrative U.S. Air Force contract, who lost to Boeing, is Lockheed Martin, according to media outlets.
The project behind the F-47 is called NGAD, or Next Generation Air Dominance. The plan is for the F-47 to succeed the costly F-22 Raptor (pictured above) with a cheaper aircraft that employs emerging drone technology.
Derek Jones, executive director of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, is a retired fighter pilot with decades of experience in the cockpit of an F-16, CF-18, and F-111. He says the coming F-47 is a successor to our current cutting-edge fighters, such as the F-22 and F-35. It is also an answer to China and its “very capable” advanced aircraft that would be guarding the skies from an attack.
“We need to be able to get in, and penetrate, and get in behind,” Jones explains. “And that's what this airplane is going to be designed to do with its capability to fly drones as part of its armament. It can release those drones and then the drones can penetrate deeper using its stealth technology.”
President Trump also revealed an experimental version of the F-47 has been “secretly” flying for almost five years before it goes into production.
