President Donald Trump announced Friday that the Air Force is “moving forward” with the plan to acquire the “world’s first sixth-generation fighter jet,” named the F-47.
Trump said Boeing beat out Lockheed Martin for the multibillion-dollar contract to build the next-generation fighting aircraft in what was a winner-take-all approach that granted the winner hundreds of billions of dollars in the long run.
“The F-47 will be the most advanced, most capable, most lethal aircraft ever built,” Trump said in the Oval Office alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Air Force chief of staff Gen. David W. Allvin.
“An experimental version of the plane has secretly been flying for almost five years, and we’re confident that it massively overpowers capabilities of any other nation,” the president said.
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The sixth-generation fighter jet, known as the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter, had been in question following former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s decision to pause the program last summer to review its costs and requirements.
“This is a historic investment in the American military, in the American industrial base, in American industry that will help revive the warrior ethos inside our military, which we’re doing, rebuild our military, which the previous administration did not,” Hegseth added. “They paused this program and were prepared to potentially scrap it.”
Shares of Boeing were up 5% after the news, while Lockheed’s shares fell more than 6%.
The decision is welcome news for Boeing, which has faced allegations of cutting corners on quality control by multiple whistleblowers that could have contributed to midair incidents. One of the whistleblowers committed suicide before he could give testimony against Boeing.
Trump has said recently that he’s unhappy with Boeing over delays in the delivery of two new Air Force One airplanes.
“I’m not happy with Boeing,” Trump said in late February. “It takes them a long time to do, you know, Air Force One. We gave that contract out a long time ago as a fixed-price contract, and I’m not happy with the fact that it’s taking so long, and we may do something else.”
