Key Points and Summary – The U.S. Navy’s F/A-XX sixth-generation fighter program, once nearly dead and starved of funds in favor of the Air Force’s F-47, has been potentially resurrected.
-A surprise move by the Senate Appropriations Committee restored over $1.4 billion to the program.
-Although it is far from being passed, it prompted top Navy officials to signal that they are now ready to select a prime contractor.
-This sudden reversal has breathed new life into the critical effort to replace the aging F/A-18 fleet.
-However, it also creates complex industrial questions, including the potential for a forced partnership between rivals Boeing and Lockheed Martin to build the jet.
The F/A-XX Fighter Might Make a Comeback
WARSAW, POLAND – According to developments early this week, the US Navy’s aviation forces are now preparing for what is rumoured to be an F/A-XX down select. Should the decision be made in the near term, some counterintuitive teaming agreements may develop among the major prime contractors.
A decision on this program was thought to be two years or more into the future. The previous rationale for advancing the US Air Force (USAF) F-47 and the F/A-XX simultaneously was that it was inadvisable due to industry constraints.
The argument has been that the US aerospace industry lacks the number of experienced and qualified engineering and design personnel—and overall capacity in general—to address the arduous task of tackling both programs simultaneously.
The reality is that one of the platforms will be a land-based aircraft built to USAF requirements, and the other will be a carrier-capable aircraft optimized for the US Navy, capable of countering the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the Indo-Pacific theater.
According to the argument, there is insufficient overlap between the two design requirements, so the necessary personnel and resources are simply not available.
Despite all the arguments for pausing the F/A-XX until the F-47 begins to take shape, there may be some movement towards the naming of a winner anyway.
This advancement marks a significant shift from the status quo, which had been in place for months, where the program had been in a state of near inactivity and funding for its development had been minimal.
Resurrection
The Navy is now waiting for the Pentagon to select a prime contractor for the F/A-XX, but what has moved the dial is that Congress has moved to restore funding for the program.
Up to this point, the aircraft had been at the top of the service’s Unfunded Priorities List (UPL), a wishlist that the service submits to legislators when requesting additional funding.
Usually, unfunded programs have a low survival rate; however, in early August, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved its fiscal 2026 Defense Appropriations Bills. These included a $1.4 billion plus-up for the F/A-XX program and $647 million for the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail airborne early warning aircraft.
This budget line item had prompted Vice Adm. Daniel Cheever, Naval Air Forces commander, to comment during an event at the Washington, DC, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) that the F/A-XX is “going to be a very exciting aircraft. I’m looking forward to the down select.”
“I’ll leave it to the professional acquisition folks,” he continued. “But I’m looking forward to that because the 6th-generation means air superiority in that timeframe in the future, which means sea control. And as long as you have air superiority, you have sea control around the globe.” Vice Adm. Daniel Cheever, commander of Naval Air Forces, said today at the CSIS forum.
Partnerships and F/A-XX
For the down select, only Boeing and Northrop Grumman are left in the running to develop and build the F/A-XX.
Northrop seems like a long shot as they are heavily engaged on the B-21 program.
The USAF is now discussing increasing the number to be produced from 100 to 145, or possibly even more. This leaves little to no bandwidth for a program with the challenges associated with the F/A-XX.
If the program were given to Boeing, there is the possibility that the F/A-XX and F-47 developmental efforts would end up being merged into a single effort with two “streams.”
An article published by Axios had suggested in this event “the Navy could end up with a tailored version of the F-47 [as its new F/A-XX] instead” of what the service wants.
What they want is an entirely different F/A-XX design that a different company would develop.
The only problem with this scenario is that this would be a repeat of how the F-35 was born. The service’s experience with F-35 has made the concept of one aircraft built in three variants precisely what the Navy wants to avoid.
This leaves the possibility that, in the event of a Boeing win, the company would be forced to consider a partnership with Lockheed Martin (LM)—bringing on the stealth planemaker as a subcontractor.
Given the enmity between the two companies, it seems like an unlikely partnership at best, but stranger things have happened, as they say.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the US Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
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