Boeing F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD)

[Forest Green]

Reflections Of The F-47: Looking Back At The X-36

The tailless X-36 demonstrator was one of several test planes and studies that likely paved the way for the F-47 sixth-generation stealth fighter. The tailless X-36 demonstrator was one of several test planes and studies that likely fed into the F-47 sixth-generation stealth fighter.

www.twz.com

What Cat Name Should Northrop Grumman Give Its Fighter If It Wins The Navy's F/A-XX Competition?

Not since the F-14 Tomcat has their been a 'Grumman cat,' but that could soon change.

www.twz.com

Cougar?

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH8N4smYjx4

SECAF nominee commits to increasing number of aircraft in fleet, fielding younger platforms | InsideDefense.com

Troy Meink, President Trump’s nominee to be the next Air Force secretary, today committed to adding more aircraft to the service’s aging inventory, telling lawmakers the current fleet is the oldest and smallest in the Air Force’s history.

insidedefense.com

 

[joewee]

Muradian: It is very tough to call because they're two of the Navy's favorite contractors right. Mcdonnell from Saint Louis, which was sort of the Navy fighter company, and of course, Grumman in the form of iron works, although their presence in Long Island and in Bethpage is now relatively minor.

Understatement of the year! About 200 employees are there currently, down from 22,000 when I hired in -- which followed the drawdown from about 30,000 at the post-WWII peak years developing the Lunar Module and the Tomcat.
-----
thanks quellish for the transcript.

 

[sublight_]

That sounds like a logistical nightmare. Even the "same" model of radar or engine made by different builders may have detailed differences that require unique parts or procedures. (The cost required to make them exactly identical will cut into any savings due to competition.)

If the jet is running kubernetes then you can bet your afterburner there will be a standard API for intercommunication across the devices, and a standard communications bus to connect them all. Someone here probably knows what its called, but I will call it "USB-47" in the mean time (maybe it is Ethernet?). And if the radars connect over "USB-47" then you can do real plug and play with a new device, just like your PC does now. This is the benefit of open architecture. Any new device can then be attached and controlled with a kubernetes app, which is silo'd off (virtualized) and much less likely to interfere with other apps in the case of shoddy programming.

 

[Josh_TN]

It would be colossally short sighted to go with wide and shallow IWBs bc we are being dogmatic about a primary air dominance mission when literally every Western fighter that started with an air to air role in memory has evolved a subsequent strike capability, to say nothing of lifting loads of subsystems from B-21 and F-35. But what do I know, I’m just a taxpayer.

No one seems to be lamenting the F-22 design. If the U.S. gets to the point that F-47s have nothing better to do than bomb targets, I would argue short sightedness does not matter much.

 

[Josh_TN]

Then the USAF better buy another 200x B-21s to replace Strike Eagles (roughly same bomb load, so 1:1 replacement makes sense).

But IMO it would have been a lot smarter to design NGAD to be able to hold 18" wide weapons (ie, 2000lb bombs) in the first place.

On what planet does an F-15 carry the same load as B-21?

 

[DWG]

There's ample manufacturing precedent (in broad stripes) albeit dating from the 1920s to as late as the 1940s (with the Sea Wolf; designed by Vought and manufactured by Consolidated).

Tons of RAF/FAA aircraft built on the same principle over the same period - for instance Boulton Paul lost the FAA turret fighter competition, but then did the detailed development and production of the Blackburn Roc that won. Morris Motors built Spitfires (admittedly a bit of a disaster until MAP took over Castle Bromwich). Blackburn built so many Swordfish they called them Blackfish. Fairey built Vampire and Venom post war as well as Beaufighters and Halifaxes during the war. There was even limited production of P-36 Mohawks by HAL in India.

Nowadays we'd call that Build-to-Print.

 

[kken]

The f47 may have controls and layouts that look more like the latter two

 

[starviking]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1905053757680828850

View: https://x.com/ASForcesMag/status/1905053757680828850

And the article has this interesting section at the end, which I alluded to in a post that was deleted for ‘political content’.

“ The Air Force declined to provide the designations or nomenclature for the X-planes it revealed that Boeing and Lockheed flew in the technology demonstration phase of the NGAD program, saying they remain classified . However, while Boeing’s aircraft is now called the F-47, its X-plane predecessor wasn’t the X-47 or Y-47—the service said Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin himself chose the designation.

The Air Force has a policy governing the designation and naming of aircraft and weapons, with new systems generally going in numerical order. The policy does, however, grant leaders discretion to skip design numbers.

The F-35 was an out-of-sequence selection. Had the Air Force decided to keep going in order from there, the NGAD fighter would have been the F-36 or F-37. Had the service decided to go back to its original sequence, it wold have been F-24 or F-25, following the Lockheed YF-22 and Northrop YF-23 which competed in the Advanced Tactical Fighter Competition.

The B-21 bomber likewise was supposed to carry the nomenclature B-3, but former Air Force Secretary Deborah James opted to name it the B-21 to emphasize that it is a “21st century bomber.”

The spokesperson said Allvin chose F-47 “in consultation with the Secretary of Defense” and the nomenclature “carries multiple significant meanings. It honors the legacy of the P-47, whose contributions to air superiority during World War II remain historic.” It also “pays tribute to the founding year of the Air Force” and recognizes Trump and “the 47th President’s pivotal support for development of the world’s first sixth-generation fighter .” Honorifics have usually been applied to the nickname for an aircraft, not its nomenclature.”

Emphasis mine.

I wonder why the X-plane designations remain classified? Surely there’s no security risk in releasing a letter-number sequence…

 

[quellish]

I wonder why the X-plane designations remain classified? Surely there’s no security risk in releasing a letter-number sequence…

The designations are not classified. They were shared outside of DoD with uncleared persons through authorized disclosures.

If the Air Force said these designations are classified they are either misinformed or fabricating information, neither of which would be a surprise.

 

[lancer21]

So what are the designations then?

 

[Foo Fighter]

A lot of discussion on plans, but no plans and with the current environment. Not likely to change for a while.

From the items I have seen I am led in only one direction, pardon mois for the liberty....

High Hopes (1959)
2-23

(m) Jimmy Van Heusen (w) Sammy Cahn (I) Film: A Hole in the Head by Frank Sinatra Academy Award Winner (CR) Curran Reichert

Verse 1: Next time you’re found
With your chin on the ground,
There’s a lot to be learned, so look around.
Refrain 1: Just think what makes that little ol’ ant
Think he’ll move a rubber tree plant;
Anyone knows an ant can’t
Move a rubber tree plant.
But he’s got high hopes, he’s got high hopes.
He’s got high apple–pie–in–the–sky hopes.
So anytime you’re gettin’ low,
‘Stead of lettin’ go, just remember that ant.
Oops! There goes another rubber tree
Oops! There goes another rubber tree
Oops! There goes another rubber tree plant.
Verse 2: When troubles call, and your back’s to the wall,
There’s a lot to be learned, that wall could fall.
Refrain 2: Once there was a silly ol’ ram,
Thought he’d punch a hole in a dam.
No one could make that ram scram,
He kept a buttin’ that dam.
Cause he had high hopes, he had high hopes,
He had high apple–pie–in–the–sky hopes.
So anytime you’re feelin’ bad,
‘Stead of feelin’ sad, just remember that ram.
Oops! There goes a billion kilowatt
Oops! There goes a billion kilowatt
Oops! There goes a billion kilowatt dam.
[Repeat from the bridge:]
So keep your high hopes, keep your high hopes,
Keep your high apple–pie–in–the–sky hopes.
A problem’s just a toy balloon,
They’ll be burstin’ soon,
They’re just bound to go “Pop!”
Oops! There goes another problem ker-
Oops! There goes another problem ker-
Oops! There goes another problem ker-
Plop! Ker–plop!

Perhaps Boing had their senior execs tattoo that on their tushes?

 

[joewee]

The f47 may have controls and layouts that look more like the latter two

Innovative Control Effectors work at LM Fort Worth.

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/fate-and-ice-studies.3547/

 

[kken]

I understand it as some common pneumatic and stealth exploration, after all, Boeing also has the FATE project, I do not know whether there is a mistake.

 

[AGS-1787]

I was hopping for an upscale d x-36; that think looked very neat.

 

[NMaude]

I was hopping for an upscale d x-36; that think looked very neat.

I won't be surprised if the F-47 when fully revealed turns out to be basically a two-engine full-scale piloted X-36.

 

[Scott Kenny]

On what planet does an F-15 carry the same load as B-21?

F-15E Strike Eagle carries 23,000lbs.
B-21 is assumed to carry "one bay" worth of the B-2, ergo ~24,000lbs.

 

[Josh_TN]

F-15E Strike Eagle carries 23,000lbs.
B-21 is assumed to carry "one bay" worth of the B-2, ergo ~24,000lbs.

Source for 24,000 lb figure?

In any case, in actual practice the B-21 is going to have a larger number of bombs of most any size, even if we use a single B-2 bay as the baseline. And in fact the bay is longer, so alternate bomb loads might have been adopted.

 

[ncc81701]

It is kinda sad the public perception of canards is more than 2 decades out of touch

Because everything on the internet has to be hyperbole to get attention. To the internet it is Min/Max, all or nothing, choice between stealth and not stealth. In the real world of engineering, a world where most in public sphere doesn’t understand, performance metrics are tradeoffs and the min/maxing we actually do is what is the maximum RCS I can get away with and still meet the design requirements and what is the minimum I can do to get there.

 

[kapakilla6]

Does anyone have the boeing study pdf that includes this? I can't find it in my personal archive at the moment.

 

[paralay]

F-15E Strike Eagle carries 23,000lbs.

The maximum combat load with which the F-15E flew was about six tons, 13000 lbs, the rest was suspended and conformal fuel tanks.
B-21 - 13500 kg / 30000 lbs

 

[flateric]

Does anyone have the boeing study pdf that includes this? I can't find it in my personal archive at the moment.
View attachment 764863

Not Boeing though.

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/mcdd-impact-of-agility-requirements-on-configuration-synthesis-study-1994.45200/

 

[Moose]

TWZ covering Vago's interview with Frank Kendall and Andrew Hunter:

Major F-47 Revelations Were Just Dropped By Former Air Force Secretary

We now have a fuller picture of how the Air Force arrived at the F-47, and the potential for future next-generation fighter "increments."

www.twz.com

• He also said that there was no indication that the core design of the F-47 had changed in any fundamental way from what it had been prior to the pause.

 

[quellish]

The entire point of adopting a penetrating bomber vice cruise missile platform was to 1) have more munitions per aircraft and 2) retain a hardened burried target capability.

Not really. The weapon(s) replacing the GBU-57 for HDBT Is sized to fit an F-35 weapons bay.

 

[Josh_TN]

Not really. The weapon(s) replacing the GBU-57 for HDBT Is sized to fit an F-35 weapons bay.

That does not help a standoff cruise missile platform hit deeply buried targets; they are limited to whatever the cruise missile de jour can handle. There are other penetration options outside GBU-57 that still are significantly superior to AGM-158.

 

[quellish]

That does not help a standoff cruise missile platform hit deeply buried targets; they are limited to whatever the cruise missile de jour can handle. There are other penetration options outside GBU-57 that still are significantly superior to AGM-158.

The “point” of the penetrating bomber is not the HDBT mission.

 

[Josh_TN]

The “point” of the penetrating bomber is not the HDBT mission.

That paper ‘The bomber Will Always Get Through’ stated that was indeed one of the main two drivers of the decision for LRSO to be penetrating, though I did not review their sources.

ETA: the goal seemed to be penetration in general and not specifically GBU-57.

 

[Forest Green]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1905755811479007723

View: https://x.com/AirPowerNEW1/status/1905755811479007723

 

[quellish]

That paper ‘The bomber Will Always Get Through’ stated that was indeed one of the main two drivers of the decision for LRSO to be penetrating, though I did not review their sources.

ETA: the goal seemed to be penetration in general and not specifically GBU-57.

The only portion of that paper that could possibly be what you are referring to is:

A 40,000 lb payload might have made sense in the late 1970s, so as to ensure a high probability of hit with multiple dumb bombs, but
precision weapons meant that such redundancy was no longer required. But even so, the SWG had to decide whether the new bomber would be capable of carrying weapons such as the 30,000 lb Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), the so-called bunker busting bomb.771 It also had to account for STRATCOM’s desire to have the new bomber be capable of launching cruise missiles.772 Like its range specifications, the bomber’s payload has not yet been publicly released, but it is clear that the SWG once again believed they had achieved the right balance between cost and capability.

The author STRATCOM would not support the Air Force buying a new bomber that could not carry cruise missiles. The paper does not mention LRSO at all, much less a LRSO hard target capability.

I think there may be some confusion here. When referencing "penetrating" in the context of LRSO this means penetrating denied airspace, not penetrating the earth. LRSO has no earth penetrating capability. It does not have a warhead capable of surviving the acceleration loads and does not have a strong casing for the warhead or fuse.

To get back on topic:

 

[snne]

View attachment 764823
The f47 may have controls and layouts that look more like the latter two

It would be pretty amazing if both the SHENGAD and the F-47 (or F/A-XX) ended up using swiveling outer wingtips as a solution to the same problem, clearly without direct influence from each other.

 

[jaehaerys48]

It is kinda sad the public perception of canards is more than 2 decades out of touch

To be honest, American pop defense industry analysts kind of made this bed by trashing European and Chinese planes for having canards when American ones didn't.

 

[4decaa]

To be honest, American pop defense industry analysts kind of made this bed by trashing European and Chinese planes for having canards when American ones didn't.

 

[Shaman Harris]

Wolf warrior diplomacy is kinda over.Chinese game devs are not really ultranationalists as far as I am concerned.

 

[Shaman Harris]

Some vids on bilibili mocked the caret intakes of Kızılelma ,bruh

 

[In_A_Dream]

Does anyone have a guess at what the internal weapons store will be for the F-47 given that it's expected to be part of the Air Superiority kill chain? We haven't even seen glimpses of the upper-tier CCA components that are expected to operate with it It's not just the F-47 that'll be rolling out for NGAD.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Does anyone have a guess at what the internal weapons store will be for the F-47 given that it's expected to be part of the Air Superiority kill chain? We haven't even seen glimpses of the upper-tier CCA components that are expected to operate with it It's not just the F-47 that'll be rolling out for NGAD.

I'm expecting 8-10x AMRAAM/AIM260s internally. Maybe even 12x. Not sure about any AIM9s, but will admit they're possible.

That's more for the big cruiser NGAD concepts, it may be less for the F-47. Gotta wait till we see the rollout and can get a better guess on how big it is.

 

[Ainen]

I'm expecting 8-10x AMRAAM/AIM260s internally. Maybe even 12x. Not sure about any AIM9s, but will admit they're possible.

Let me be boring and bet on 4-6 MRAAMs.
It's a plane smaller than F-22/23, that is also supposed to carry more fuel. I don't think volume logic changed somehow significantly.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Let me be boring and bet on 4-6 MRAAMs.
It's a plane smaller than F-22/23, that is also supposed to carry more fuel. I don't think volume logic changed somehow significantly.

Hanging out in the combat zone and quarterbacking multiple drones that would come in and out of the zone as their payloads are expended suggests a larger weapons load to defend itself.

 

[TomcatViP]

IMOHO, we should not expect cavernous wb. Weapons will be carried very shallow in the structure, privileging tank capacity, large surface, natural load alleviation (for a light weight structure) and supersonic launch.
Most of the bombing missions, if any, will be done with an adjunct, either a CCA or an other carrier, including non-stealth assets with a long range weapon.

I think Scott assumption of 10 to 12 missiles is correct.

 

[MihoshiK]

IMOHO, we should not expect cavernous wb. Weapons will be carried very shallow in the structure, privileging tank capacity, large surface, natural load alleviation (for a light weight structure) and supersonic launch.
Most of the bombing missions, if any, will be done with an adjunct, either a CCA or an other carrier, including non-stealth assets with a long range weapon.

I think Scott assumption of 10 to 12 missiles is correct.

Yeah, if the F-47 really is a pure air to air F-22 follow-up combat monster, then everything else flows from there, including shallow bays optimized for AA missiles and bombs as a second thought at best.

 

[TAOG]

It seems like the NGAD design from Boeing is superior than LM:

• Hunter described both designs as “quite creative.”
• Hunter, speaking generally, also noted that incumbent contractors (understood in this case to be Lockheed Martin given its previous win in the Joint Strike Fighter competition) can often come across as more risk averse while challengers are often willing to risk more.
• Kendall said more bluntly that the “incentives may have been stronger for Boeing. In some ways, they needed to win this one more than Lockheed did.”

—————-

Also, remember what Vago disclosed on 2023?

“…On the Next Generation Air Dominance #NGAD program, it is claimed that USAF prefers Boeing over Lockheed's design. Vago Muradian reports that LM has pursued an "evolutionary" capability building on its F22 & F35 prgms, while Boeing has pursued a more ambitious "fresher" approach. …”