President Donald Trump Friday announced the sixth generation fighter jet which will be known as F-47. 47 in the name of the new jet is apparently an approval for himself as the 47th president. “It’s a beautiful number, F-47. It’s something the likes of which nobody has seen before. In terms of all of the attributes of a fighter jet, there’s never been anything even close to it, from speed to manoeuvrability to what it can have for payload,” Trump said. Trump said Boeing will build this next-generation air dominance fighter jet that will replace F-22 Raptor, which was the world’s first fifth-generation fighter jet.
“Nothing in the world comes even close to it,” the president said in the Oval Office.
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth said the announcement of F-47 is a big day for the warfighters. “We’ve had the F-15. We’ve had F-16, the F-18, the F-22, the F-35. Now we have the F-47,” he said. “It sends a very direct, clear message to our allies that we’re not going anywhere, and to our enemies that we can, we will be able to project power around the globe unimpeded for generations to come.”
The program is considered a “family of systems” and is expected to work with uncrewed Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) that function as semiautonomous “loyal wingmen” for the new aircraft, Business Insider reported.
According to reports, Boeing and Lockheed Martin were engaged in a tough race to build the new aircraft that is meant to be the center of the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance.(NGAD) The Air Force wanted a new aircraft with the range, speed and stealth to operate over the Indo-Pacific region and against some of China’s most advanced weapon systems.
In fact, the development of the NGAD is aimed at China which has also fielded capable fifth-generation fighters and flown what seem to be 6th gen fighter prototypes.