By Brett Rowland | The Center Square
(Worthy News) – President Donald Trump unveiled a next-generation stealth fighter that can fly alongside drones.
Trump showcased the F-47 during an Oval Office meeting Friday with top Pentagon leaders and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The president said his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, tried to scrap the program. The plane has been flying secretly for four years.
“America is going to have generations – in the future – of air dominance because of this sixth-generation fighter,” Hegseth said.
Trump said the U.S. Air Force is moving ahead with the F-47 program, which Hegseth called the “Next Generation of Air Dominance.”
“Nothing in the world comes even close to it,” Trump said. “It’s something the likes of which nobody has seen before in terms of all of the attributes of the fighter jet. There’s never been anything close to it from speed to maneuverability to what it can have for payload.”
The president said U.S. Generals picked the name of the plane. Trump returned to the White House in 2025 to become the 47th president.
The Air Force picked Boeing to build the sixth-generation fighter after a competitive bidding process, Trump said.
“The F-47 will be the most advanced, most capable, most lethal aircraft ever built,” the president said. “An experimental version of the plane has secretly been flying for almost five years and we’re confident that it massively overpowers the capabilities of any other nation.”
Trump said the cost of the Next Generation of Air Dominance platform would be kept secret. He also said he wouldn’t reveal how many planes the Air Force had ordered from Boeing.
“We can’t tell you the price” Trump said because it would give away details about the technology used to build it and and details about the size of the plane.
Trump said Boeing has already starting building the fleet.
“A new fleet of these magnificent planes will be built and in the air during my administration,” the president said.
Trump said the contract represents “a historic investment” in the nation’s defense industrial base.
Trump said U.S. allies have already started calling to see if they can get the plane. Trump said he may share it with allies, but likely a “toned down” version with lesser capabilities.
Before Friday’s announcement, the F-35 stealth fighter had been the top fighter jet and the Department of Defense’s most costly aircraft platform.
Tesla boss Elon Musk, who is heading Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, has been critical of the F-35. In November 2024, days after Trump’s election win, Musk called the F-35 “obsolete.” The Pentagon declined to comment on Musk’s remarks at the time.
“The F-35 design was broken at the requirements level, because it was required to be too many things to too many people,” Musk wrote on X. “This made it an expensive & complex jack of all trades, master of none. Success was never in the set of possible outcomes. And manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway. Will just get pilots killed.”
Last May, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found the cost of the F-35 program was projected to increase by more than 40% despite plans to use the stealth fighter less, in part because of reliability issues. The U.S. Department of Defense’s F-35 Lightning II is the most advanced and costly weapon system in the U.S. arsenal. It’s a joint, multinational program that includes the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, seven international partners and foreign military sales customers. The Pentagon has about 630 F-35s. It plans to buy about 1,800 more. And it intends to use them through 2088. DOD estimates the F-35 program will cost over $2 trillion to buy, operate, and sustain over its lifetime.
The GAO report found the F-35 program fell short of its goals.
“The F-35 fleet is not meeting most of its performance goals, including those for availability and for reliability and maintainability, according to DOD and contractor data,” according to the report. “We have consistently found that the F-35 fleet is not meeting its availability goals, which are measured by mission capable rates despite increasing projected costs.”
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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