The Big Story 

The Pentagon will award its next-generation Air Force fighter jet contract to Boeing, a deal initially worth more than $20 billion, President Trump announced Friday.

© Getty

The Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program, also known as the F-47 fighter jet, will replace Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor with an aircraft meant to fight alongside drones, Trump announced at the White House. 

“The F-47 will be the most advanced, most capable, most lethal aircraft ever built,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “An experimental version of the plane has secretly been flying for almost five years, and we’re confident that it massively overpowers the capabilities of any other nation.”

Boeing and Lockheed were competing for the engineering and manufacturing development phase of the contract for the sixth-generation fighter jet, a winner-take-all approach that grants the victor hundreds of billions of dollars over the program’s lifetime.

Designs from both companies for the aircraft were finalized last year.

The move is in line with the Pentagon’s new strategy focused on countering drones, or autonomous unmanned aircraft systems, which are set to dominate the battlefield in the years ahead, particularly when countering adversaries like China and Russia.

The F-47 — notably matching Trump’s position as the 47th U.S. president — will succeed the F-22, the country’s first fifth-generation fighter that entered service some 20 years ago.

Trump would not say how many jets the U.S. initially hoped to procure or how much each one would cost, but said a fleet “will be built and in the air during my administration” though initial estimates indicate the jet will not be fielded until the 2030s. 

He also floated the possibility of ally countries purchasing “toned down versions” of the jet.

The Trump administration is seeking to move the NGAD program forward after it faced delays or possible cutbacks following budget concerns and potentially shifting priorities within the Air Force

Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall last summer paused the program to review its costs and requirements, with the service conducting an internal review of the effort and calling in an outside panel of former senior officials to see if there was still a need for the aircraft. 

Both groups concluded the advanced fighter was still required, and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin reportedly pitched the program to Trump. 

Read the full report at TheHill.com.

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