Boeing F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD)

No matter what you think of Trump, it's a piece of marketing genius to call it the F-47. Not for marketing outside of America, it's as likely to provoke derision there, but for internal marketing of the project to Congress. After all, no congresscritter is going to want to be known as the one who cancelled -47.....

As the old aphorism says, there are multiple dimensions to aircraft design: technology, cost, and politics.
 
Forest Green said:

New NGAD investment could squeeze Air Force budget under yearlong CR | InsideDefense.com

The Trump administration's decision to push forward with the F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance platform raises questions about how the major new aircraft program will be paid for, especially following Congress' recent passage of a yearlong stopgap spending bill that erodes the Pentagon's buying...
insidedefense.com insidedefense.com
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Especially with Golden Dome about to become a massive money sink
 
So China announces two new aircraft showing examples flying and the USA show some pictures even though they claim that there are flying examples.

Go explain.
 
Forest Green said:

New NGAD investment could squeeze Air Force budget under yearlong CR | InsideDefense.com

The Trump administration's decision to push forward with the F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance platform raises questions about how the major new aircraft program will be paid for, especially following Congress' recent passage of a yearlong stopgap spending bill that erodes the Pentagon's buying...
insidedefense.com insidedefense.com
Click to expand...
Combined response:
Desertfox said:
Especially with Golden Dome about to become a massive money sink
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I suspect that there may be a play to force an actual budget through Congress.
 
It sounds like there a number of F-47's already built and possibly ready for initial, limited flight testing. Now I know why all of shift and new work going on at EAFB South Base (my old B-2 home). B-21 is a Main Base not far from NASA. You have the large main hangar (you can fit quite few F-47s in there), engine run dock, another hangar across from the run dock and all new outdoor facilities/buildings. May share with the "RQ-180". We know 3 demonstrators were built and flown by Boeing, LM and NG. I doubt the demonstrators will be revealed, they may be doing additional duty for other project platforms?
 
Getting back the potential canards, I said yes previously but the photo is highly photo shopped. Retractable canards, maybe not, requires more actuation and redundancy to mitigate failure modes, maybe fixed, blended-type canards for improved performance, maybe, need better images.
 
overscan (PaulMM) said:
250321_dvids_ngad_rendering_8928540-scaled-jpg.763775

View attachment 763789
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Not the same. One is a newly revealed 6th gen. The other is 7th.
 
Hydroman said:
It sounds like there a number of F-47's already built and possibly ready for initial, limited flight testing. Now I know why all of shift and new work going on at EAFB South Base (my old B-2 home). B-21 is a Main Base not far from NASA. You have the large main hangar (you can fit quite few F-47s in there), engine run dock, another hangar across from the run dock and all new outdoor facilities/buildings. May share with the "RQ-180". We know 3 demonstrators were built and flown by Boeing, LM and NG. I doubt the demonstrators will be revealed, they may be doing additional duty for other project platforms?
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The demonstrator program (Air Dominance Initiative and Aerospace Innovation Initiative) built two X-planes, with (probably) two vehicles each. One X-plane for the Air Force, and one for the Navy.

The best information I have been able to obtain indicates that Lockheed built the Air Force demonstrators, and Boeing the Navy demonstrators. I have not found that Northrop Grumman built demonstrators under this program using DoD funding (and I should have). It's possible that they did so using their own money, some other arrangement or program, or that I am incorrect. But there is considerable evidence that only Lockheed and Boeing built (and flew) the demonstrators.
 
Hydroman said:
Getting back the potential canards, I said yes previously but the photo is highly photo shopped. Retractable canards, maybe not, requires more actuation and redundancy to mitigate failure modes, maybe fixed, blended-type canards for improved performance, maybe, need better images.
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Looking closely at the picture, they could pivot frwd. That would then closely match the 2nd picture we have. That´s why I have referenced them as Mustaches earlier on.

As a side note, the wing dihedral has a striking similarity with that Scaled Composite prototype some years ago (Model 401)...

iu
 
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Nx4eu said:
For years the J-20 has been and still is belittled to be non-stealthy due to canards being non-VLO compatible. I find the situation pretty amusing with how the same people, analysts, and journalists who expertly talked about the J-20's design will now speak on the excellent next generation all aspect stealth the F-47 will incorporate with canards.

To this day despite many Chinese sources stating that canards have a negligible impact, the J-20's stealth characteristics are still often reported to be far worse than the F-22 and F-35, with that as such a reason.
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aircraft have different requirements Stealth is only one, canards are not good for stealth but good for some performance improvement so is not that the western analysts were wrong, but an aircraft without vertical tails will lose a lot of stability, those compromises are done to fix some shortcomings of using solutions, in example lack of TVC nozzles in J-20, it is likely if it has canards F-47 they have decided the lack of vertical tails will render a tailess design not capable to fullfill some performance and control needs, Canards help pitch control up to some degree freeing the trailing edge control surfaces of the main wing from pitch control excessive deflection and allowing them their use for yaw control
 
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Nx4eu said:
For years the J-20 has been and still is belittled to be non-stealthy due to canards being non-VLO compatible. I find the situation pretty amusing with how the same people, analysts, and journalists who expertly talked about the J-20's design will now speak on the excellent next generation all aspect stealth the F-47 will incorporate with canards.

To this day despite many Chinese sources stating that canards have a negligible impact, the J-20's stealth characteristics are still often reported to be far worse than the F-22 and F-35, with that as such a reason.
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I mean, IF the canards are real-real (not disinfo/photoshop/etc.), it is quite amusing, no? My, how the tables have turned. :)
 
Rodrigo Avella said:
I don't know if I was that far away. I never imagined the canards...
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I mean, I kind of did when I first heard they were about to close the deal... It's Boeing we're talking about. Almost all of their renders of 'what a 6th gen looks like' had canards...

For me, the main surprise was the dihedral wings and canards. I had just expected them to move ahead with a more traditional configuration, just like Shenyang did with the J-50.
 
snne said:
Buddy, contrary to your belief, their track record proves that they're not at all subtle with these kinds of events (especially in this corrupt day and age)...

View: https://youtu.be/dUW_tVOCDR4?feature=shared

We're no longer living in the original Cold War era.
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I'm not sure what you're trying to compare here, when NG won the B-21 contract they showed less than what we got with the F-47 and it was years later we got anything tangible.
 
overscan (PaulMM) said:
Better OPSEC? The US has been flying their prototype for almost 5 years.
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Ironically it seems to be the U.S. that is more secretive of its weapons programs as of late. We have still have not seen an AIM-260 photographed yet, and it appears to be in LRIP. Zero pics of the B-21 until only a couple months before it flew. No idea what HACM or HAWC look like, other than presumably superficially similar to X-51.
 
Bounce said:
I'm not sure what you're trying to compare here, when NG won the B-21 contract they showed less than what we got with the F-47 and it was years later we got anything tangible.
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Not sure what he's implying either, but for what it's worth, IIRC the first official B-21 rendering was shared months after Northrop Grumman down-select / contract announcement. And even now, AF tightly controls what angles and footage it shows. Why would the AF want to share NGAD demonstrator details / pictures or videos at this time? I suspect, more detailed renderings of F-47 will be revealed as it gets closer to roll out followed by a roll out similar to the one we saw for B-21. That's going to be a few years down the road.
 
Josh_TN said:
Ironically it seems to be the U.S. that is more secretive of its weapons programs as of late. We have still have not seen an AIM-260 photographed yet, and it appears to be in LRIP. Zero pics of the B-21 until only a couple months before it flew. No idea what HACM or HAWC look like, other than presumably superficially similar to X-51.
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Same here could be said for China, so from the original statement of better OPSEC, both nations would be rather similar in this regard as China has many missiles like PL-16 that are supposedly in service but have never been seen or with aircraft like the H-20 which have been under wraps for decades.
 
Josh_TN said:
Ironically it seems to be the U.S. that is more secretive of its weapons programs as of late. We have still have not seen an AIM-260 photographed yet, and it appears to be in LRIP. Zero pics of the B-21 until only a couple months before it flew. No idea what HACM or HAWC look like, other than presumably superficially similar to X-51.
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They're only starting to become slightly more secretive than before, and even then, they're not yet even close to getting at the PLA's level of decades-long secrecy practices.

The only way for us to get new info on what the PLA(AF/NAF) is working on is either through people with a proven track record who have connections to those inside, or through grainy photos taken by citizens with 'toasters.' Even then, they all know enough from previous experiences to self-censor whatever it is they’re sharing.

Purchased satellite photos also indicate hardly anything other than continued production.
 
And if Boeing do win the Navy competition with a similar or same design, how could it not be Phantom III, because:

1. Same design serving Air Force and Navy
2. Phantom Works designed it
3. I'm biased

Or maybe the Specter? A homage to what the Phantom had once been called by the AF?
 
phantomphan said:
And if Boeing do win the Navy competition with a similar or same design, how could it not be Phantom III, because:

1. Same design serving Air Force and Navy
2. Phantom Works designed it
3. I'm biased

Or maybe the Specter? A homage to what the Phantom had once been called by the AF?
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When is a decision expected on the Navy program?
 
Rolead said:
So China announces two new aircraft showing examples flying and the USA show some pictures even though they claim that there are flying examples.

Go explain.
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Concentration of urban centres near major aircraft manufacturers.

For the time that Have Blue, Tacit Blue and the like was undergoing flight test how many people actually saw them? And even some of the later programs like NGAD itself which would surely have major risk reduction vehicles built. Where are the X-planes flying? We do know they fly, unless you're accusing service members and congress people across multiple administrations of repeating the same lie.

The "5 years" claim is also in line with previous disclosures on the program accounting for time between statement release.
 

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