Key Points and Summary – The F-47 NGAD will be the most advanced U.S. fighter ever—long-range, stealthy, and teamed with drone wingmen—but its real test isn’t tech, it’s scale.
-At $300M per jet, small buys risk a hollow force: slower sortie rates, thin redundancy, and fragile sustainment.
NGAD F-47. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Shown is a graphical artist rendering of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) Platform. The rendering highlights the Air Force’s sixth generation fighter, the F-47. The NGAD Platform will bring lethal, next-generation technologies to ensure air superiority for the Joint Force in any conflict. (U.S. Air Force graphic)
-To deter—and, if needed, defeat—China across vast Pacific ranges, the U.S. must pair F-47s with swarms of CCAs and stand up industrial capacity to build both quickly.
-History warns that exquisite but tiny fleets underperform.
-The lesson: fund NGAD, fund the drone ecosystem, and fund the factories. Air dominance in the 2030s will be won by speed and numbers.
The F-47’s Success Is About More Than Just Numbers
The U.S. Air Force’s forthcoming sixth-generation fighter, known as the F-47 under the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program, has been estimated to cost around $300 million per aircraft, making it among the most expensive combat aircraft ever proposed.
And that raises a big question: will the Pentagon consider its needs over price, particularly in terms of fleet size and related investment?
Ultimately, it is not simply what the U.S. can afford, but what it must build to maintain credible air power in rivalry with the People’s Republic of China.
So, beyond unit cost, the Air Force needs to seriously consider next steps for NGAD and the force more broadly—and that means supporting the development of unmanned systems and the infrastructure required to manufacture new platforms in large quantities and and then iterating more quickly.
The F-47, Its Cost, and What History Tells Us
The F-47 is the centerpiece of the NGAD program, designed to replace platforms like the F-22 Raptor in contested-airspace operations.
The aircraft is expected to have a long combat range of over 1,000 nautical miles, feature manned-unmanned teaming capabilities that enable it to direct a team of drone wingmen, and boast advanced stealth and sensor systems.
It will be, without question, the most advanced fighter jet in history.
At roughly $300 million per unit, the F-47 would cost about three times as much as what a typical F-35 Lightning II costs today.
That should come as no surprise, of course; the F-35 is an established platform that benefits from scale savings.
The U.S. Air Force has acknowledged the high price, but the program is ultimately necessary, and the cost is therefore a price that must be paid.
That said, historically, high-cost programs have usually led to constrained production runs. That’s not just true for aircraft, but for all other military assets developed to advance American capabilities and dominance.
F-22 Raptor. This will be replaced by the F-47. Image Credit: National Security Journal.
For example, the F-22 was originally planned for 750 aircraft but was later reduced to 187 due to budget constraints, cost, and shifting priorities.
That history should serve as a caution at this point. Unmatched capability is good, but it loses its value if the platform does not encompass a sufficiently large fleet and reliable sustainment over time. The U.S. may have the most advanced fighter in the world, but without enough of them, a less advanced force with more jets to spare could easily overwhelm it.
Moreover, a tiny fleet has real consequences: slower sortie generation, lower redundancy in the face of loss or maintenance downtime, and increased stress on supply chains and aircrews. A small fleet, in some ways, isn’t even worth having.
What the Air Force Needs
What I’m about to say will come as no surprise to anybody who follows geopolitics, or to anyone more qualified than me to make this statement – but it is nonetheless true.
The modern U.S. Air Force operates globally, but its attention is, understandably, focused heavily on the Indo-Pacific. This is where it faces the most challenging demands.
The Air Force must be able to conduct persistent missions over vast distances, evade or suppress advanced air-defense networks, and sustain operations through attrition. That’s what China is preparing for, and it’s what the United States must be ready to do. It’s precisely why the F-47 platform is necessary.
The coming fighter’s long range and stealth help meet those requirements. However, even the most advanced fighter cannot be in two places at once, nor can it single-handedly carry out an entire mission in a single theater.
A fleet that is too small risks being used up or destroyed early in a conflict, leaving major coverage gaps and forcing the Air Force to rely on older, upgraded platforms that are similarly limited in number.
To address this risk, the service is also investing in unmanned platforms under the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) umbrella to accompany, assist, and augment the F-47.
This will have a multiplying effect, but there’s still more to this story. CCA will make the F-47 more potent by allowing some more dangerous tasks to be offloaded to unmanned systems. It will mean American drones facing off with adversaries’ drones.
But in the event of a conflict with China, there is one edge China could soon have over the United States —and that’s simply numbers.
China is advancing more quickly in developing next-generation platforms, closing the technological gap, and leveraging its long history of manufacturing excellence to produce advanced assets that are almost on par with those the United States can field. This gap will only close as automation improves.
With that in mind, the question isn’t necessarily just about how many F-47s America needs, but how quickly the aircraft and its wingmen can be built. A fleet of 75 jets might suffice for limited missions in one theater but would soon leave the U.S. unable to maintain commitments elsewhere.
A fleet of between 125 and 150 would improve global coverage, but at $300 million each, the fiscal, logistical, and infrastructure burdens would be substantial.
A fleet of 200 to 250 would offer even better coverage and enable sustained dual-theater operations, but would be even pricier and harder to maintain. And even then, those aircraft simply must be accompanied by a sufficient number of drones.
The lesson, then, is clear to me: the U.S. must accept that costs will be high. There is simply no way around it.
The Pentagon needs to find the money, and not only that, but also build the infrastructure around the program to ensure we keep up with China’s pace.
Anything less than that, and China will catch up.
It’s simply a matter of time.
About the Author:
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society. His latest book is The Truth Teller: RFK Jr. and the Case for a Post-Partisan Presidency.
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