The Navy is waiting for Pentagon leaders to pick a company to build the service’s sixth-generation F/A-XX fighter jet, now that Congress moved to restore funding, according to the service’s air boss.
“It’s going to be a very exciting aircraft. I’m looking forward to the downselect. I’ll leave it to the professional acquisition folks…but I’m looking forward to that because that sixth-generation means air superiority in that timeframe in the future, which means sea control. And as long as you have air superiority, you have sea control around the globe,” Vice Adm. Daniel Cheever, commander of Naval Air Forces, said today during a CSIS event.
In March, the Navy was reportedly close to picking a company to build F/A-XX, but an announcement never came, and the service ended up gutting funding for the aircraft in its 2026 budget request, throwing the program into limbo.
But Congress is on track to reverse those cuts: Senate appropriators added $1.4 billion to F/A-XX in their draft defense spending bill and House appropriators added $972 million to their version. Cheever’s comments today appear to confirm that F/A-XX is in fact moving ahead.
Northrop Grumman and Boeing are in the running to build the sixth-gen fighter; Lockheed dropped out in March. Boeing was selected earlier this year to build the Air Force’s sixth-gen F-47 fighter, and Pentagon leaders have expressed concern that U.S. defense companies can’t handle building two sixth-gen jets at once—a claim industry executives have refuted.
F/A-XX will operate from aircraft carriers and replace both the F/A-18 Super Hornet and EA-18 Growler. Service officials have previously indicated that they want the jet to have 25% more range than today’s jets.
Fielding a sixth-gen platform with collaborative combat aircraft alongside it will “ensure” that the Navy maintains control in the future, Cheever said.
“I’m sure that fourth, fifth, sixth generation is that mix, and then unmanned teaming is the thing that gets us there,” he said.
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