Key Points and Summary – The U.S. Air Force’s next-generation F-47 fighter has been secretly flying in tests since 2020, yet the public has never seen it.
-This analysis explores why the USAF is maintaining such extreme secrecy, even releasing deliberately distorted artist renderings to keep adversaries guessing about the aircraft’s true design.
-This strategy follows a long historical playbook used for other revolutionary platforms like the F-117, B-2, and F-22.
-The secrecy aims to protect the game-changing capabilities of a “quarterback” fighter designed to command swarms of drone wingmen in contested airspace.
Why Hasn’t the F-47 Been Revealed Yet?
The Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) sixth-generation fighter, the F-47, will feature a combat radius exceeding 1,000 nautical miles, a speed surpassing Mach 2, advanced stealth capabilities, and a cost potentially around $300 million per aircraft.
The F-47 is designed to be the successor to the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor. USAF officials said they have flown experimental tests since 2020, and the service aims to field it by the end of the decade, when it will become the first US sixth-generation fighter.
But the Air Force has been quite sketchy on details about the aircraft. Releasing only a couple of purposely obscure artists’ renderings to date. The aircraft could be very different than what it has shown thus far.
Why won’t the Air Force release any photos of the aircraft? Lockheed Martin is already ramping up the production line for the F-47. China is already working on a couple of sixth-generation aircraft, with photos and videos of these aircraft leaking (purposefully?).
Are The F-47 Images Even Real?
All of the testing has been conducted at the highly secretive Edwards Air Force Base in California.
The two images showed only a small portion of the aircraft; the service wanted to keep adversaries guessing about the actual design.
One Air Force official said these images should be “taken with a large grain of salt,” adding, “We aren’t giving anything away in those pictures.”
Addressing the wait for the aircraft to be unveiled, the officer said, “You’ll have to be patient,” even mentioning, “Is there a resemblance? Maybe.”
Air & Space Forces Magazine, even before the announcement of the F-47’s selection, “Boeing artists produced images that already deliberately distorted some of the NGAD’s features.” The US Air Force later “further altered them.”
The Air Force Has Done This Drill Before
The Air Force has done this before with the B-2 bomber, the F-117 stealth fighter, and the F-22, with a fictional delta-wing aircraft with canards shown by Lockheed Martin throughout the Advanced Tactical Fighter competition.
Only in 1990, when the YF-22 was rolled out, was the real aircraft revealed to the public and unveiled as the F-22 Raptor.
The Air Force did it again with the B-21 Raider, with many aspects of the aircraft purposely obscured.
If the F-47 has been flying for five years in some capacity, it should be nearly finished testing by now.
Will Roper, then Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, announced in 2020, “We’ve already built and flown a full-scale flight demonstrator in the real world, and we broke records in doing it,” Roper said during the Air, Space, and Cyber Conference 2020.
Replacing The F-22, The NGAD’s “Certain Desirable Characteristics”
The Air Force’s requirements saw NGAD as a replacement for the F-22 Raptor, capable of “going into a dense, highly protected airspace, and being able to penetrate and being able to establish your superiority, at least temporarily within over enemy territory,” said Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall.
The requirements later included the“quarterback role,” controlling unmanned aircraft such as the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA). Kendall described the F-47’s configuration as a “pretty direct descendant of F-22.”
According to graphics displayed by Gen. Allvin, the Air Force plans to acquire at least 185 F-47s; this could provide it with enough aircraft to replace the Raptor fleet on a one-to-one basis, but that figure can be misleading.
The F-47 is designed to operate as the quarterback of several drone wingmen, with initial assessments suggesting that each new fighter would be paired with at least two, and possibly as many as five, AI-enabled drone wingmen.
However, more recent tests by Lockheed Martin have shown that the final figure could be even more, demonstrating the ability to control eight drones from a single F-35.
That means each of the 185 new F-47s should be thought of as a fighter formation unto itself, rather than as a single jet.
Why Not Release It Now?
The Pentagon has reportedly shifted resources towards the F-47, requesting $3.5 billion for Fiscal Year 2026, and, according to Aerospace America, wants to deprioritize the F/A-XX (Navy’s planned next-gen fighter) to focus on the F-47. Congress has also allocated $400 million to jumpstart F-47 production.
A significant expansion of Boeing’s St. Louis factory is underway to support full-rate F-47 production, with the first facilities expected to open in 2026 and the full expansion complete by 2030.
Once the aircraft begins to roll off the St. Louis factory lines, keeping the aircraft under wraps will become much more difficult. Would releasing photos of it earlier, with some of the more sensitive areas blurred, be on the books?
About the Author: Steve Balestrieri
Steve Balestrieri is a National Security Columnist. He served as a US Army Special Forces NCO and Warrant Officer. In addition to writing on defense, he covers the NFL for PatsFans.com and is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America (PFWA). His work was regularly featured in many military publications.
Military Affairs
China’s Stealth Air Force Has 1 Mission
Goof Guy
August 22, 2025 at 2:44 am
Why is it labeled the f47 and not sequential f36 or f37? Were there other models assigned those designations no one knows about?
joe
August 22, 2025 at 5:33 pm
nobody cares
Pingback: Administration's Defense Buildup is Highly Selective - Digital Government Institute