The Pentagon’s F/A-XX Fighter ‘Surrender by Spreadsheet’ Mistake

PUBLISHED on August 7, 2025, 2:09 PM EDT – Key Points and Summary – The Pentagon’s decision to defund the Navy’s F/A-XX sixth-generation fighter program is a catastrophic mistake that threatens to render the new $13 billion Ford-class aircraft carriers strategically irrelevant.

-The entire concept of these supercarriers was predicated on a next-generation air wing, led by the F/A-XX, with the range and stealth needed to counter threats like China’s “carrier killer” missiles.

F/A-XX Fighter. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

-Without this crucial fighter, the carriers become expensive liabilities unable to project power into contested airspace, in what amounts to a “surrender by spreadsheet” that endangers American maritime primacy.

The F/A-XX Problem Could Endanger the Power of U.S. Navy Aircraft Carriers

Unless you’re in the Navy or defense industry, you probably haven’t heard of the F/A‑XX.

Understandable. The Navy’s not set to award the critical Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) contract, which formally initiates detailed design and prototyping work, until fiscal year 2028, and the last publicly available data on the fighter is now more than six years old. But if you are in naval aviation, you know what’s up. The F/A‑XX is on life support.

The much-revised Fiscal Year 2026 budget took out money for the program, forcing the Navy to move the $1.4 billion funding request for the “F/A-XX” to its unfunded priorities list—not a promising sign for those who wish to keep the program afloat. Against this backdrop, advocates inside and outside the Pentagon are frantically working to secure the cash needed to bridge to the EMD phase. Still, the political deck is stacked against them.

Unless the program can cobble together an FY 2027 supplemental in an election year, we’ll be watching the final days of the F/A‑XX.

If that happens, it won’t just be the industrial base that bleeds out. The big casualty will be the Ford-class aircraft carrier. The $13 billion, 110,000-ton supercarriers that were to be the culmination of American seapower are already half a dozen hulls deep into production. They only make strategic sense if the air wing the Navy loads onto those decks can credibly fight the kinds of conflicts that America could face in the 2030s. Without the F/A-XX, the Ford-class is a strategic dead end.

Budgetary concerns aside, the doctrinal case for the F/A-XX is just as urgent. The Gerald R. Ford herself is a technological tour de force: dual A1B reactors making nearly triple the juice of the Nimitz-class; EMALS catapults that put a lighter landing on the decks; better arresting gear; a shorter island for improved flow on deck; and an entirely digital backbone scalable to decades of growth. If those features can’t project lethal force into denied airspace, that ship is an expensive liability.

Everything about the Ford-class was predicated on the F/A-XX. The air wing of the future wasn’t an upgrade on what’s in the air today. It was supposed to have much greater reach and survivability, which in manned-unmanned teaming lingo means a jet with more range, reduced signature, and unmanned integration—far more than just an enhanced F-35C, but a different plane. The F/A-XX is designed for at least 25 percent greater combat radius than the Super Hornet, carries modular payload bays, and can command and control autonomous wingmen. Without that plane, carrier strike credibility decays rapidly.

Design work is already underway for the F/A-XX, but its Air Force cousin, the F-47, is in full funding. If the Navy’s version of next-generation fighter makes it out of design, it will be delayed, diluted, and likely dead. Navy officials quietly acknowledge to Congress the program’s at risk of extinction if Congress doesn’t cough up $1.4 billion from the Unfunded Priorities List. If that fails, the F/A-XX is stalled before it can hit prototyping.

F/A-XX U.S. Navy Fighter. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

Compare the Navy’s efforts to the Air Force’s NGAD effort. The Air Force has the force of both political and industrial alignment and a budget to match. The Navy is trolling for change to stay alive. If the F/A-XX goes, the Ford-class goes with it—not to the scrapyard, but to irrelevance. A carrier with no deep-strike, stealthy fighter that can integrate autonomous aircraft is no longer a force multiplier in the 2030s. It is a relic, not a weapon.

You might say, why not just buy more F-35Cs? The problem is mismatch. The F-35C is no substitute for the F/A-XX. It just doesn’t have the range, the internal payload capacity, or survivability in a high-end contested fight to dominate the battlespace the way its makers promised. It’s a useful complement to a high-end joint air group, but not a substitute.

The Navy knows this. That’s why they’re investing in MQ-25 Stingray refueling drones, loyal wingman concepts, and other ways to extend the range of the manned F-35C. But none of that stuff solves the problem. It extends the manned fighter; it doesn’t replace it. Autonomy without a lead node is fragmentation. Fragmentation at the tip of the spear is a recipe for failure. The Navy’s unmanned efforts only work if they have a commanding fighter in the lead. That’s what the F/A-XX was meant to do.

Worse still, time is running out. The delays will likely kill the current contract structure, which would require a full re-compete and send shockwaves through the already brittle naval aviation industrial base. Meanwhile, the Air Force’s F-47 is on glidepath to operational capability, and the Chinese sixth-generation effort is already underway. If China’s or anybody else’s platform matures ahead of ours, the Navy’s air wing will find itself flying fifth-gen aircraft into next-gen air denial bubbles.

It’s not just the aircraft that are struggling. The Ford-class itself has been plagued by delays. The USS Gerald R. Ford made a graceless initial deployment years behind schedule. The USS John F. Kennedy was due for delivery in 2024. Now it looks unlikely to make it to the sea before 2027. The same fate threatens the other members of the class. Why invest in increasingly complex and expensive warships if we’re not going to fund the fighters they’re designed to carry?

It’s not sentiment. It’s strategy. The aircraft carrier is not obsolete, but it will become irrelevant if it cannot project force into contested environments. You cannot separate the platform from its payload. The Ford-class is still the most flexible, forward-deployable ultimate demonstration of American hard power. But if we refuse to arm those ships with the right aircraft, we’re simply making that platform a hostage to geography.

Our adversaries understand that. The Chinese A2/AD strategy is all about boxing out U.S. carrier strike groups. Long-range missiles and drones, quiet submarines and sensor networks, it’s all about making that carrier a blunt instrument. The F/A-XX was meant to cut through that logic: to strike from outside the threat ring, to control unmanned systems, and to restore that edge in offense. If we walk away from that vision, we do their work for them.

Abandoning the F/A-XX will not just be a procurement failure. It will be a failure of strategic imagination. A failure to match means to ends. A failure to prepare for the world we’re actually entering. Most dangerously, a failure to preserve American maritime primacy in the era of renewed great power competition.

What Happens Next?

Congress can still step in to fund the F/A-XX. The Navy can accelerate into prototyping. The Pentagon can prioritize naval aviation and stop treating it as a second tier. This isn’t about preserving a single program; it’s about protecting a doctrine.

If we build the F/A-XX on time and in full, we give the Ford-class its sword. We preserve the logic of forward naval defense. We keep the carrier relevant not just for America but for our allies who rely on American sea power to stabilize the global system.

We signal to our competitors and adversaries: We’re not fading away. We’re still here.

But if we let it wither, through subcommittee edits and midnight amendments and the slow bleed of bureaucratic indecision, we won’t just cripple a fighter program. We’ll send $13 billion warships into the world half-armed, with impossible missions, tethered to legacy fifth-generation airframes in a sixth-generation battlespace.

That’s not strategy. That’s surrender by spreadsheet.

The adversaries we’re trying to deter won’t wait for us to get our act together. They are building, flying, and fielding the future right now. Suppose we fail to match purpose with capability, platform with payload, ambition with investment. In that case, we will wake one day to find the age of the American supercarrier ended—not in flames, but in silence. The future is not inevitable. It must be chosen—and built.

And when it comes to carrier-based aviation, the U.S. must choose – and build – wisely. And that means it must choose and build the F/A-XX – now.

About the Author: Dr. Andrew Latham

Andrew Latham is a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities and a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. You can follow him on X: @aakatham. He writes a daily column for National Security Journal.

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