The F-35A is described as “Stealth”, the F-22 is called “Stealth+, and the F-47 is called “Stealth ++”

By Jim Morris, Warrior Vice President, News

   Little by little, we are learning more about the F-47 – including the possibility that it may end up being the most stealthy fighter ever. 

   In March, President Trump announced that Boeing would build the sixth-generation warplane, known formally as the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter. At the time, Trump told reporters, “Nothing in the world comes even close to it.” 

   Now we’ve been told a little bit more. 

   Earlier this month, the Air Force chief of staff, Gen. David Allvin, published a graphic on X that looked at the service’s three generations of fighters – the F-15E (X and the F-16, the F-22 and the F-35A, and the F-47 and YFQ-42A/YFQ-44A. 

   The F-35A is described as “Stealth”, the F-22 is called “Stealth+, and the F-47 is called “Stealth ++” – a designation we haven’t seen before. 

   We also learned that the F-47’s “combat radius” – the distance it can fly before deploying its weapons and then returning to its base – is more than 1,000 miles (1,150 miles). Contrast that to the F-22, the plane the F-47 will eventually replace, with a combat radius of roughly 680 miles. 

   Meanwhile, the Air Force estimates it will buy at least 185 F-47s, the same number of F-22s in service now. But the website Sandboxx.us notes that is misleading, because the F-47 is designed to be at the center of a constellation of drone wingmen. “That means each of the 185 new F-47s should be thought of as a fighter formation unto itself, rather than as a single jet,” the site points out. 

    The F-47 came out of the billion-dollar Aerospace Innovation Initiative, a program run by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to use new technologies for a sixth-generation fighter. Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall was concerned that Lockheed Martin’s dominance with the F-22 and F-35 wasn’t healthy for the defense industry and wanted to reintroduce competition.    

   But Kendall was hampered by budget constraints and he put the project on pause for a comprehensive review, putting the decision in the lap of the incoming Trump administration. The Air Force has allocated almost $20 billion in this year’s budget for the NGAD program. 

   Now there’s speculation that the Pentagon would okay a Pacific variant of the F-47 with larger fuel tanks – a plane that could cover the long expanses of the Pacific in case of a large-scale air war with China.  

JIm Morris is Warrior Vice President, News. Morris previously worked as a senior executive, producer and editor at ABC News and Bloomberg TV