Immediately, it emerged that Boeing has received its bid to provide the US Air Pressure with its subsequent jet fighter. As with the final fighter plane design procurement in latest occasions, the Division of Protection was confronted with a alternative between awarding Boeing or Lockheed the contract for the Subsequent Technology Air Dominance program, which is able to exchange the Lockheed F-22 Raptor someday within the 2030s.
Little or no is thought concerning the NGAD, which the Air Pressure really refers to as a “household of programs,” as its objective of proudly owning the skies requires greater than only a fancy airplane. This system has been underway for a decade, and a prototype designed by the Air Pressure first flew in 2020, breaking data within the course of (though what data and by how a lot was not disclosed).
Final summer season, the Pentagon paused this system because it reevaluated whether or not the NGAD would nonetheless meet its wants and whether or not it may afford to pay for the aircraft, in addition to a brand new bomber, a brand new early warning plane, a brand new coach, and a brand new ICBM, all on the identical time. However in late December, it concluded that, sure, a crewed substitute for the F-22 was within the nationwide curiosity.
Whereas no photos have ever been made public, then-Air Pressure Secretary Frank Kendall mentioned in 2024 that “it is an F-22 substitute. You can also make some inferences from that.”
The choice is sweet information for Boeing’s plant in St. Louis, which is scheduled to finish manufacturing of the F/A-18 Tremendous Hornet in 2027. Boeing misplaced its final bid to construct a fighter jet when its X-32 misplaced out to Lockheed’s X-35 within the Joint Strike Fighter competitors in 2001.
A separate effort to award a contract for the NGAD’s engine, known as the Subsequent Technology Adaptive Propulsion, is underway between Pratt & Whitney and GE Aerospace, with a further program aiming to develop “drone wingmen” additionally within the works between Normal Atomics and Anduril.
