Key Points and Summary – The U.S. Navy’s F/A-XX sixth-generation fighter program is facing a major setback, with the Pentagon’s 2026 budget proposal effectively putting the project on hold for at least two years.
-Citing a strained defense industrial base that can only “go fast on one program at this time,” the DoD is prioritizing funding for the Air Force’s F-47 NGAD fighter, which will receive $3.5 billion.
-The F/A-XX will maintain only minimal development funding.
-This decision, which follows cuts to F-35 procurement, puts the Navy in a difficult position as it seeks to replace its aging F/A-18 Super Hornets.
US Navy’s F/A-XX Program Losing Budget Battle
In the race between which of the two United States military’s 6th-generation fighter programs—the US Air Force (USAF) Boeing F-47 fighter seems to be far ahead of the US Navy’s (USN) F/A-XX program.
The latter is still in development, and no contractor has been selected to produce the final design and prototype of this aircraft.
Once in service, it will replace the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet as the primary tactical fighter and attack platform to operate from the US Navy’s Gerald Ford-class carriers.
This competition is largely because if there were a “who can grab the most from the budget” contest to support their program, the USAF has clearly won.
The Department of Defense budget request for 2026 is now projected to move forward with full-on funding for the F-47’s full-scale development.
However, at the same time, the F/A-XX is currently set to receive such a low level of funding that it effectively means suspending the program in mid-air for at least two years.
In the meantime, the two prime contractors, Northrop Grumman and Boeing, are supposed to maintain their design and development efforts for the aircraft contract.
This requirement puts the Navy in a difficult position. It is receiving new carriers, but Super Hornet production had been planned to close down this year. It has since been extended until 2027, but at such a low rate of production that Boeing is now transitioning part of the aircraft’s workforce to other programs. And there is no precise date for when the US Navy will have its next-generation fighter.
Why The Delay on F/A-XX?
“F-47, the first crewed sixth-generation fighter, is moving forward with $3.5 billion in funding following President Trump’s March 2025 decision to proceed with Boeing’s development,” a senior US military official was quoted as saying in explanatory comments following the news about the budget request.
“The Navy’s FA-XX program will maintain minimal development funding to preserve the ability to leverage F-47 work while preventing over-subscription of qualified defense industrial base engineers.”
The latter phrase, say US officials speaking on condition of anonymity, is plain English for deferring a decision on the F/A-XX is borne out of the fear that the US defense industrial base has contracted far more than anticipated in this century. There are not enough qualified and experienced personnel to develop two highly advanced stealth fighter aircraft in parallel, according to the current thinking within the Pentagon.
This decision is “due to our belief that the industrial base can only handle going fast on one program at this time, and the presidential priority to go all in on F-47, and get that program right,” said the same military official.
“We are maintaining a request of $74 million for the F/A-XX program in this budget to complete the design of that aircraft. We did make a strategic decision to go all in on F-47,” another US defense official explained on the day of the budget announcement.
Funding Reductions and Industrial Capacity
There are also reshuffling and realignment efforts taking place as a result of these decisions. One decision is that planned procurements of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will be reduced by more than half the original numbers. Those funds are being reprogrammed to cover future upgrades and the ongoing sustainment of existing aircraft.
Senior US officials who spoke to the media stated that “F-35 procurement is reduced from 74 to 47 aircraft,” without specifying which variants were seeing their production orders cancelled. A previous unconfirmed report indicated that only the USAF F-35A variants would be cut from the buy.
But at Le Bourget last month, Boeing’s Defense and Space CEO Steve Parker had publicly disputed the notion that the US defense industrial base was not capable of developing designs for the F-47 and F/A-XX in parallel. Northrop Grumman has been one of the prospective bidders for the F/A-XX. The company was reportedly focusing its efforts solely on this USN program after withdrawing from the USAF NGAD project in 2023.
What Lockheed Is Saying
In March, Lockheed Martin was reportedly rejected for the F/A-XX effort by the US Navy. But industry officials familiar with the program tell National Security Journal that it was LM that declined to continue with bidding into the source selection phase. LM, they stated, decided it would never be tapped by the Navy for the F/A-XX and instead put all of its resources into NGAD.
In any event, the F/A-XX program has been moving into a second-tier status for some months.
F/A-XX Slowly Fading Away?
There were several reports that the F/A-XX winner would be decided shortly after the F-47 was awarded to Boeing. Still, the US Navy’s major defense expo in Washington, the Sea Air Space trade show in April, came and went with no announcement.
Then, in June, Bloomberg News reported that the DoD was reprogramming $500 million from the F/A-XX to the F-47 program and once again used the “our industrial base can handle no more than one super stealth aircraft in development at a time” argument.
For its part, the US Navy has made it clear in the past that it is not interested in being involved in another F-35-type program, in which the two services buy different versions of the same basic aircraft design.
But in response to questions about whether or not a carrier variant of the F-47 for the USN was out of the question, another unnamed US defense official was quoted as saying, “At this time, I would say pretty much everything is under consideration to get the TACAIR capability that our warfighters need as quickly as possible. That’s really what we’re looking at the most, is the schedule of all these programs,” he said.
Clear indications that the fight for the Navy’s goal for its own next-generation carrier aircraft, designed to its requirements alone, is a long way from being over.
About the Author:
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs and Director of the Asian Research Centre with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments, and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
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