US President Donald Trump awarded Boeing yesterday the contract to build the US Air Force’s most sophisticated fighter jet yet, dubbed the F-47, handing the company a much-needed win.
The Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) programme will replace Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor with a crewed aircraft built to enter combat alongside drones.
Trump, the 47th president, announced the new jet’s name, the F-47.
“We’ve given an order for a lot. We can’t tell you the price,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“Our allies are calling constantly,” Trump added, saying foreign sales could be an option. “They want to buy them also.”
For Boeing, the win marks a reversal of fortune for a company that has struggled on both the commercial and defence sides of its business. It is a major boost for its St Louis, Missouri, fighter jet production business.
The engineering and manufacturing development contract is worth more than $20 billion. Boeing’s win means it will make the jet fighter and receive orders worth hundreds of billions of dollars over the contract’s multi-decade lifetime.
Shares of Boeing rose nearly five per cent after the US company beat out Lockheed Martin for the deal. Lockheed’s shares fell nearly 7pc.
The plane’s design remains a closely held secret, but would likely include stealth, advanced sensors, and cutting-edge engines.
“Compared to the F-22, the F-47 will cost less and be more adaptable to future threats – and we will have more of the F-47s in our inventory,” said Chief of Staff of the Air Force, General David Allvin.
NGAD was conceived as a “family of systems” centred around a sixth-generation fighter to counter adversaries such as China and Russia.
Allvin added the F-47 will have significantly longer range, more advanced stealth, and will be more sustainable and more easily supported than the F-22.
“The win is a major boost for the company, which has struggled with cost overruns, schedule delays and execution on other DoD programmes,” said Roman Schweizer, an analyst at TD Cowen.
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