U.S. Air Drive Chief of Employees Basic David Allvin on November 12 confirmed that the F-47 sixth technology fighter is meant to make its first flight in 2028, which represents essentially the most specific public reference to the fighter program’s flight timeline by officers to date. The Air Drive had beforehand acknowledged that the F-47 was anticipated to make its first flight earlier than the top of President Donald Trump’s time period in workplace on January 20, 2029. The fighter program had beforehand confronted rising uncertainty concerning its future resulting from extreme funding shortages affecting the Air Drive, earlier than the primary flights of two separate Chinese language sixth technology fighter designs in December 2024 have been credited with spurring the brand new Donald Trump administration to strongly again this system.
The F-47’s scheduled first flight in 2028 locations this system three to 4 years behind China’s personal sixth technology fighter improvement efforts. The numerous chance of additional delays to flight testing would additional widen the hole between the 2 nations packages. China’s means to deliver its first fifth technology fighter, the J-20, from its first demonstrator flight to service entry in simply six years drew a extremely unfavourable precedent when in comparison with the F-35 and F-22, which each took 15 years, and signifies that the nation may start fielding sixth technology fighters near a decade earlier than the USA. In September 2022 head of the U.S. Air Fight Command Basic Mark Kelly warned that China was effectively positioned to start doing so, with different officers having extensively made comparable warnings.
Alluding to the pace at which China is working to develop its rival fighters, Basic Allvin beforehand famous: “The adversary just isn’t taking a knee. They’re not stopping and saying, ‘effectively, possibly the U.S. slows down, we’ll decelerate too.’ Possibly we are able to take a knee, and that’s not what they’re doing.” China and the USA are at the moment the one nations to have indigenously developed fifth technology fighters, except for Russia’s Su-57 program that has produced a much less superior plane in very restricted numbers. The complexity of sixth technology applied sciences has led specialists to extensively allude to a two-horse race, with Russian and joint Japanese-British packages not anticipated to supply fighters with comparable capabilities, and being thought of to supply plane that in the very best instances could also be on par with modernised U.S. and Chinese language fifth technology designs.
The brand new assist the F-47 program gained from early 2025 has come on the expense of the parallel program being pursued by the Navy, the F/A-XX, to develop a subsequent technology fighter for its plane carriers. Whereas the Air Drive has procured F-22 and F-35 fifth technology fighters in important numbers, and is dedicated to procuring not less than 100 B-21 subsequent technology bombers, the Navy in contrast is closely reliant on F-18E/F fourth technology fighters and has ordered solely a small variety of F-35s. That is main issue making the F/A-XX arguably a way more pressing program for the service than the F-47 is for the Air Drive. The likelihood stays important that the 2 providers will likely be compelled right into a joint program, very like the F-35, in an try to scale back prices and improve commonality between them. The very restricted commonality between the 2 providers’ F-35 variants, at underneath 20 p.c, has set a detrimental precedent for joint program work. Ought to the Navy fall additional behind, it may lead to a big discrepancy rising between the capabilities of Chinese language and American service air wings favouring the previous.
