Immediately, it emerged that Boeing has received its bid to produce the US Air Power with its subsequent jet fighter. As with the final fighter plane design procurement in latest occasions, the Division of Protection was confronted with a selection between awarding Boeing or Lockheed the contract for the Subsequent Technology Air Dominance program, which can substitute the Lockheed F-22 Raptor someday within the 2030s.
Little or no is understood concerning the NGAD, which the Air Power really refers to as a “household of programs,” as its aim 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 Power first flew in 2020, breaking data within the course of (though what data and by how a lot was not disclosed).
Final summer time, the Pentagon paused the program because it reevaluated whether or not the NGAD would nonetheless meet its wants and whether or not it might afford to pay for the airplane, 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, yes, a crewed alternative for the F-22 was within the nationwide curiosity.
Whereas no pictures have ever been made public, then-Air Power Secretary Frank Kendall mentioned in 2024 that “it is an F-22 alternative. 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 an extra program aiming to develop “drone wingmen” additionally within the works between Normal Atomics and Anduril.