The Boeing F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) is facing headwinds just a few months after officially kicking off. From competing budget priorities to technological hurdles, the first sixth-generation fighter in the history of the United States Air Force and the world is not going to have an easy path to production. The crux of the issue lies in the first-of-their-kind variable-cycle jet engines that are still being developed.

There are sure to be many other potential roadblocks ahead as the F-47 is expected to be armed with a host of never-before-seen tech. At this time, the main hurdle lies with the engines, which are currently scheduled for 2030. Despite the challenges, the program has been fast-tracked since Boeing was officially awarded the contract in March 2025, with the first aircraft reportedly already in production. Its first flight is optimistically anticipated by the end of 2028.

The reason some expert analyses, such as in the National Security Journal, posits that the F-47 project is as much as 4 years behind is that they claim it is lagging the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) development pace . When the USAF and Lockheed Martin developed the world’s first fifth-generation stealth fighter, the F-22 Raptor, it took 15 years to go from prototype to production. By comparison, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) developed the Chengdu J-20 Mighty Dragon in just six years.

The Chinese industrial base is capable of rapid prototyping, a capability not seen in the United States for many years. The drawdown of defense budgets following the end of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, is responsible not only for the stagnation of military technology in the United States but also for the shrinking capacity of the companies that support it.

In the PRC, prototype sixth-generation fighters have been spotted on Chinese social media since 2024. They have been referred to as the Chengdu J-36 and the Shenyang J-50/XD. Another testbed has also been recorded in flight, the H-20 stealth bomber. It appears to be a knockoff of the B-2 Spirit 5th-Gen stealth bomber made by Northrop Grumman. There have even been sightings of what may be an analogue to the next-gen drone in development by the US, the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA).

The unit cost of the F-22 and the B-2 famously skyrocketed to astronomical levels never seen before. The Raptor hit around $350 million per jet, leaving the fleet at just under 200 units. The spirit was even more notorious, as the dramatically reduced contract from hundreds of planes to just two dozen led to a unit cost of over $2 billion per aircraft.

The sky-high prices for these “exquisite” weapon systems left a bad taste in Congress’ mouth, with no clear adversary on the horizon. Since then, essentially the only significant progress on similar programs has been made on the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II. That aircraft experienced prolonged development and has had a less-than-perfect production run so far.

Fortunately, the PLAAF is only just now reaching 200 units of the J-20, and its other aircraft remain theoretical, with the quality of the spotted prototypes remaining dubious. Even as American platforms remain superior technically and numerically, the PRC has shown a capacity to move from the drawing board to the assembly line that the American defense industry currently cannot match.

Engine Development Delays

One of the primary issues with the F-47 program is the Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) program. This predates the start of the NGAD program, but the development of the advanced, variable-cycle engines is now anticipated to be two years behind schedule. Two companies are competing for this contract: GE Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney.

Variable-cycle engines, a revolutionary step in jet propulsion, are designed to adjust their airflow characteristics dynamically during flight. This is achieved through a third stream of cooled air that can be opened or closed based on mission needs. The third stream of air opens to maximize fuel efficiency and, in theory, doubles the range of the F-47 compared to the F-22. It is closed for maximum airflow and high thrust, up to over Mach 2, to fly a supercruise profile.

The Air Force has stated that the GE XA102 and P&W XA103 engines are expected to be behind schedule due to supply chain constraints. That is not a complex claim to believe, given the bottlenecks companies have faced in their commercial ventures since the end of the coronavirus pandemic. On the other hand, there have been instances in which companies have claimed they are executing their contracts as planned and believe they will meet the original timeline.

Cost And Funding Issues

The DoD has faced internal disagreements regarding air power development priorities, with the Navy’s separate F/A-XX program being seen as potentially straining the industrial base. The projected high cost of the aircraft, estimated at around $300 million per unit, led to a temporary « pause » in the contract award process in mid-2024 by then-Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall.

GE Aerospace CEO Lawrence Culp urged the Pentagon to press on with the Navy F/A-XX fighter program earlier this year, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. The NGAD and F/A-XXprograms overlap in numerous areas of technological development; there is even speculation that a variant of the F-47 may become the F/A-XX.

“We stand ready to encourage the Pentagon to move forward with this important program [F/A-XX] that Congress has already funded.”

It is yet to be determined which company will develop the Navy’s 6th-Gen fighter. Funding did appear to be reallocated before the final round of 2026 defense budget negotiations to keep the industrial base stable and support both programs, as drawing down funding for one would also harm the other, given the many shared resources between the two.

This could be a case of miscommunication between the Department of Defense and its contractors, or simply mixed signals to the public, given the early nature of the project and the complexity of the program. Regardless, these power plants represent the greatest opportunity to either make up time or lose time toward the F-47 overall program schedule.

Evolving Requirements

The public appearance of advanced Chinese prototypes in late 2024 was a major factor in the Trump administration’s decision to fast-track the F-47 program and move it from a « pause » to full production. China’s focus on anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities has directly shaped the F-47’s design and role. China’s expanding A2/AD envelope, with systems such as stealth aircraft and long-range missiles, pushes US support assets, such as tankers, further back from the frontline in a potential conflict.

The DoD has emphasized that NGAD is a « family of systems, » including uncrewed Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs). The Air Force has repeatedly reevaluated the F-47’s design and requirements in response to evolving threats, the development of new technologies such as AI-enabled Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs), and the need for a different operational range in the Indo-Pacific theater.

The Department of Defense (DoD) is accelerating development of the F-47 program and its broader air dominance strategy using advanced digital engineering and rapid prototyping. Simultaneously, the development of unmanned aircraft and upgrades to legacy 4th-Gen fleets like the Boeing F-15 Eagle, B-52 Stratofortress, and Lockheed F-16 Viper are also being accelerated. Lockheed’s F-22 is even getting a “Super Raptor” upgrade program to bridge the gap until the F-47 can answer the fleet, making it the first 5th-Gen-Plus aircraft ever built.

Industrial Capacity Concerns

The US Aerospace industry suffered significant capacity shrinkage during the coronavirus pandemic, just as the commercial industry in the US and around the world did. Since then, it has not truly returned to full capacity as seen in the pre-COVID-19 era. In addition to that, the development of programs for simultaneous next-gen tech like the CCA, B-21, F-47, and F/A-XX has not been seen on an equivalent scale since the end of the Cold War.

Department of Defense officials, as well as White House cabinet members, have expressed concern that having the two programs compete will simply limit the pool of highly specialized engineers and technicians, as well as critical, advanced materials available for each project. The 2026 defense budget initially sidelined the Navy’s F/A-XX to minimal development funding, allocating the maximum resources to the F-47.

This is not simply institutional bias towards the US Air Force, but rather a lesson learned from the pitfalls of past programs like the F-35, F-22, and B-2. Each of these programs faced significant cost overruns, schedule delays, and production hiccups because the Advanced Technologies were not fully mature by the time production and manufacturing began at full rate capacity.

And on top of that, the prime contractor for the F-47 is Boeing, which has seen a shocking number of major quality-control issues over the past several years. The company is even undergoing a strike at its primary defense production facilities in St Louis, Missouri, at this very moment.

The Boeing 737 MAX suffered the worst entry into service of any commercial airliner. Two aircraft crashed within months of each other and killed nearly 350 people, resulting in the largest-scale and longest-lasting global fleet grounding in aviation history. Boeing’s long-awaited next-generation widebody, the 777x, is also at least half a decade behind schedule. The same goes for its flagship defense project, the next-generation Air Force One, which the company claims is losing billions of dollars and is years behind schedule as well.

Innovation Versus Replication

It’s easy to look at all the issues in the American defense industry and point to failure left and right. That is largely due to the transparency of the US government and its military-industrial complex by comparison to the highly secretive PRC. The US remains the world’s leading center of innovation in technology, especially in aerospace defense. On the other hand, virtually every breakthrough made by the PRC is derivative or reverse engineering, or obtained through espionage and other illegal means.

At least one former US Marine aviator has been tried and prosecuted for training Chinese naval aviators. Meanwhile, a Northrop Grumman engineer was arrested and convicted for leaking information about the B-2 program to the PRC. He is currently serving a 32-year prison sentence for assisting China and developing stealth technology in 2003, according to the BBC. He was also found to be guilty of providing classified information regarding American stealth technology to individuals in Germany, Israel, and Switzerland.

Ultimately, it is too early to tell the actual status of the F-47 program. We will have to wait and see what happens in the coming months. Speculation about the momentum of the American 6th-generation fighter program is equally based on thin information, as is the guessing game surrounding the PRC’s efforts.