{"id":167844,"date":"2025-03-24T07:00:45","date_gmt":"2025-03-24T11:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=167844"},"modified":"2025-03-23T22:27:00","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T02:27:00","slug":"boeing-wins-f-47-fighter-contract-heads-explode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=167844","title":{"rendered":"Boeing wins F-47 fighter contract, heads explode"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The competition between Boeing and Lockheed Martin for the Next Generation Air Dominance Fighter (NGAD) is over, with Boeing taking first prize.<\/p>\n

During the Oval Office announcement ceremony, Trump displayed a poster showing the first glimpse of the F-47 design, revealing a forward fuselage and sharply swept back wings but no further design features.<\/p>\n

The Air Force wants a new aircraft with the range, speed and stealth to operate effectively over the vast Indo-Pacific region and against some of China\u2019s most advanced weapons systems, including current and future stealth fighters and surface-to-air missile systems. The requirements dictate an aircraft with performance that defies familiar categories for combat aircraft, such as a fighter or bomber. But Boeing<\/a>\u2019s future aircraft is expected to feature supersonic speed and perhaps a lack of vertical control surfaces, along with a large structure to carry all fuel, sensors and weapons internally.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sounds like it will resemble the prototype China has been flying, designated the J-36 Chengdu (it’s built by Chengdu Aircraft in Chengdu…what else ya gonna call it?) It is whacking big, its hangar area looks about 50% larger than most (see photography here at\u00a0 The War Zone<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The cost-plus contract award for NGAD also offers a reprieve for a defense and space business within Boeing that has reported over $18 billion in reach-forward losses on fixed-price military and NASA programs since 2014, including $5 billion in new charges from 2024 alone. Despite the losses, Boeing invested heavily to win the NGAD contract, including starting construction nearly two years ago on a new factory in St. Louis to produce the aircraft. Aviation Week<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One suspects that will be at the former McDonnell-Douglas plant by Lambert International…used to be a primo spot to watch Phantoms take off at night with afterburners cookin’.\u00a0 Seemed like a 50 yard plume of flame from the exhaust… and the noise was the sweetest noise this side of Johnny Winter, and just as raw.<\/p>\n

President Trump said Friday the Air Force picked the model number. Some Air Force spox said the number was a tribute to the Air Force’s founding in 1947 and to the P-47 Thunderbolt formerly made by Republic – and some articles, such as in the oh-so-dignified(!) New York Post\u00a0 said as a tribute to Trump as the 47th President.\u00a0 Fighters don’t get numbered in numerical order, and depending on how many XF-prototype numbers in between (there were at least three I know of, from Boeing, Lockheed, and Fairchild, and if they all had three between the 2014 start in DARPA, we could easily have gone from XF-36 through XF-46 without doing more than throwing a kazillion bucks at it.<\/p>\n

Or, maybe someone high-ranking said “y’know, we are almost at 47 anyway, we will need at least one more proto, and we could suck up to the President at the same time.” I know, the Air Force doesn’t have sycophants, or “all the ferrets, all the loggers, all the finks, all the commex, even the mineez, “* who would do that. Do they?<\/p>\n

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But commentary is just silly, insisting that Trump named it himself and that they skipped all the way to that number just to feed his ego.\u00a0 Me, I don’t know…but tend to think 47 was the next in line. YMMV<\/p>\n

(Now, if anyone recognizes that quote WITHOUT GOOGLING OR LOOKING IT UP, you will truly earn my respect. No cheating.)<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The competition between Boeing and Lockheed Martin for the Next Generation Air Dominance Fighter (NGAD) is … Boeing wins F-47 fighter contract, heads explode<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":668,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[213,187,503],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-your-tax-dollars-at-work","category-air-force","category-science-and-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=167844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167844\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=167844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=167844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=167844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}