The fiscal year 2027 budget request from the White House affirms the Trump Administration’s commitment to fielding the US Air Force sixth-generation fighter, with Boeing to fly a prototype in 2028.
Washington is affirming its commitment to fly a sixth-generation fighter aircraft within the next two to three years.
A summary of the fiscal year 2027 US government budget request released by the White House this month confirms the Boeing F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighter is still on track to log its first flight sometime in 2028.
The Trump Administration aims to pour more resources into the project, requesting more than $5 billion from the US Congress in FY2027 to fund continued development of the F-47. That is atop the $3.4 billion allocated for the effort in FY2026.
The White House says its 2027 spending plan continues to prioritise the “rapid development and production” of the secretive fighter project, the contract for which Boeing beat out rival Lockheed Martin in 2025.
“The administration is sending a clear message to the nation’s adversaries by aggressively moving forward with the F-47 sixth-generation fighter: that the US military will secure command of the skies, deter aggression and project power anywhere on the globe,” a summary of Trump’s latest budget request says.
Emphasis on the new air force fighter comes at the expense of an equivalent carrier-based sixth-generation platform for the US Navy.
Although it faces opposition in Congress, the Trump Administration has repeatedly sought to reduce funding for the navy’s Next Generation Fighter development initiative and steer those resources toward the air force programme.
“The administration strongly supports re-evaluating the F/A-XX program due to industrial base concerns of two sixth-generation programmes occurring simultaneously,” the White House said in a 2025 memo. “Awarding the F/A-XX contract as written is likely to delay the higher-priority F-47 programme, with low likelihood of improving the timeline to field a navy sixth-generation fighter.”
The latest FY2027 budget request continues that trend, proposing that the Next Generation Fighter progamme – commonly known as F/A-XX – receive only $140 million compared to the F-47’s multi-billion dollar proposed haul.
That is a steep cut from 2026 funding levels, when congressional lawmakers circumvented the White House and Pentagon to steer nearly $1.7 billion toward the F/A-XX programme. Boeing and Northrop Grumman are believed to be finalists for the highly classified and beleaguered initiative.
Congress has ultimate approval authority over all US spending and may again override the Trump Administration’s proposed cuts to the F/A-XX budget.
The F-47 was originally envisioned as the successor to the Lockheed Martin F-22 fifth-generation air superiority fighter, although it now seems likely the two types will see a significant overlap in service.
The F-22 is set to become the first platform in the USAF inventory to be integrated with the small autonomous fighters known as Collaborative Combat Aircraft – another project into which the air force is pouring financial resources. The FY2027 budget request includes some $1.5 billion for CCA development across both the air force and navy.
Those autonomous jets are intended to support the F-22’s air superiority mission, carrying additional weapons and sensors and having ability to operate ahead of manned fighters.
While the F-47 is to make its inaugural sortie in 2028, the competitive prototypes designed and built by Boeing and Lockheed for the Next Generation Air Dominance have been flying for years, largely undetected.
When he announced Boeing’s NGAD win in 2025, then-air force chief of staff General David revealed that the two aircraft had been secretly flying since 2020, accruing “hundreds of hours” of flight time. That test campaign included development of new technologies and evaluation of concepts for employing the prototype fighters, which is now helping accelerate the F-47 rollout.
Compared to its fifth-generation predecessor, the first US sixth-generation fighter will offer both performance improvements and a larger fleet.
“We will have more of the F-47s in our inventory,” Allvin said in 2025. “The F-47 will have significantly longer range, more advanced stealth, be more sustainable [and] supportable, and have higher availability than our fifth-generation fighters.”
The USAF ended F-22 production in 2012 with only 187 jets in service, citing the high cost at a time when air superiority was not a strategic priority. Last year, the air force said it planned to field at least 185 F-47s.
Each of the next-generation Boeing fighters could cost $300 million, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.
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