Next-Generation Air Dominance

Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) is a U.S. Air Force "family of systems" effort intended to maintain American air superiority into the mid-21st century. It pairs a crewed sixth-generation fighter — designated the F-47 in March 2025, when President Donald Trump announced Boeing as the prime contractor — with Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), semi-autonomous uncrewed "loyal wingman" drones, plus advanced engines, sensors, weapons, and battle-management networks.

The program traces back to studies by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Air Force around 2014–2015 aimed at successor capabilities to the F-22 Raptor, whose production was capped at 187 airframes in 2009. Then–Air Force acquisition chief Will Roper revealed in September 2020 that a full-scale NGAD demonstrator had already flown, though details remain classified.

Key features publicly attributed to NGAD include:

• Extended range, motivated by the vast distances of the Indo-Pacific theater and concerns about Chinese anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) systems.
• Adaptive-cycle propulsion, pursued under the Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) effort with GE Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney.
• Manned-unmanned teaming, with each crewed fighter directing multiple CCAs. In April 2024 the Air Force selected General Atomics and Anduril to build the first CCA increment.
• Open mission systems architecture to allow rapid software and payload upgrades.

NGAD's cost has been a recurring controversy. In 2024 then–Secretary Frank Kendall paused the crewed-aircraft contract award amid reports of unit costs approaching three times that of an F-35. The program was restructured before the 2025 Boeing announcement.

The U.S. Navy is pursuing a parallel sixth-generation effort, F/A-XX, sometimes confusingly grouped under the NGAD label. Allied sixth-generation programs — the UK-Italy-Japan GCAP/Tempest and the Franco-German-Spanish FCAS/SCAF — are conceptually similar but institutionally separate.