U.S. President Donald Trump announced the selection of Boeing as the supplier of the NGAD fighter jet, with the fighter receiving the designation F-47.
The president personally announced the winner of the NGAD in his office, revealing that the demonstrator has been flying for five years.
The timing for the disclosure of the demonstrator’s testing would be more than a coincidence, considering China's reveal of its own triple-engine next-generation fighter jet not too long ago. Trump added that the order has been placed for the next-generation fighters.
Additionally, a teaser of how the F-47 will look is seen in the announcement footage. The fighter adopts a tailless design that has been shown in early concept arts to reduce the RCS from body axis aspects.
While the features have not been announced yet it is known that the new fighter to succeed F-22 will have improved low observability, sensors, operational radius, and weapons capacity.
The fighter is expected to be powered by adaptive cycle turbofan engines, which adjust the bypass ratio based on the operating speed to ensure efficiency. Higher bypass ratios provide higher efficiencies at lower speeds and vice versa. This will be among the main contributing factors to the range.
The weaponry in the near term might include the new AIM-260 JATM BVRAAM, to has a longer range than AIM-120D AMRAAM, and some of the newer air-to-surface munitions like GBU-53 SDB II. New munition programmes are more than likely to be initiated for the capability jumps in F-47.
Considering the ongoing CCA programme with two prototypes from GA-ASI and Anduril having received their designations as unmanned fighters, the F-47 will have MUM-T capabilities from the get-go when it enters service, unlike the existing fighters.
