Washington:
US President Donald Trump announced Friday that Boeing has been awarded a major contract for the Air Force’s high-tech next-generation F-47 fighter plane.
The contract is aimed at continuing the development of the replacement for the F-22 stealth warplane — which has been in operation for some two decades — with a new, more advanced aircraft that will be able to operate alongside uncrewed drones.
“After a rigorous and thorough competition between some of America’s top aerospace companies, the Air Force is going to be awarding the contract for the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) platform to Boeing,” Trump told reporters at the Oval Office.
He said the price of the contract could not be revealed for security reasons.
“Nothing in the world comes even close to it, and it’ll be known as the F-47, the generals picked a title, and it’s a beautiful number, F-47,” said Trump, who is the 47th president of the United States.
The announcement is a boon for Boeing, which faced a difficult last year in which it struggled with a lengthy labor strike and safety problems.
The NGAD effort was paused in 2024 over cost concerns — a major focus of the Trump administration, which has tasked billionaire donor Elon Musk with slashing government spending through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2018 that the NGAD airframe could cost up to $300 million apiece — significantly more than various other aircraft currently in the US inventory.
A senior Air Force officer said earlier this month that the service conducted a study following the pause last year, which concluded that “not only in the past, not only in the present but in the future, air superiority matters.”
“What this study told us is we tried a whole bunch of different options and there is no more viable option than NGAD to achieve air superiority in this highly contested environment,” Major General Joseph Kunkel told a symposium in Colorado.
The F-47 will replace the F-22 Raptor aircraft, the development of which dates to the 1980s.
The F-22 features stealth technology, a high degree of maneuverability and the ability to supercruise, or maintain supersonic flight without afterburners.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
