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Boeing (rendering above) is competing against Northrop Grumman to provide the F/A-XX future fighter to the U.S. Navy.
RENO, Nevada—The U.S. Navy’s aviation forces are gearing up for an F/A-XX downselect and preparing to get going on the program, which had appeared to be in limbo in recent weeks.
The need for the fighter remains and the service is ready to move forward on the program, the commander of Naval Air Forces tells Aviation Week in an interview. Although the choice of prime contractor to build the fighter still awaits approval at senior levels of the Pentagon and the White House, the service is ready to get going now, he notes.
“We’re awaiting downselect of which prime is going to win the contract and that kind of stuff,” Vice Adm. Daniel Cheever, Naval Air Forces commander, said on the sidelines of the Tailhook Symposium here. “That’s a pretty high-up decision, there’s a lot of stakeholders,” he adds, while stressing, “We’re excited, once they do down select, to move out on it.”
The comments come amid renewed momentum for the multi-billion-dollar decision, after Pentagon officials in the rollout of the fiscal 2026 budget request appeared to slow down the program.
In a June briefing, a senior defense official told reporters that the Pentagon’s fiscal 2026 request included just $74 million for F/A-XX to complete the design of the aircraft as a way of “maintaining the option for F/A-XX in the future.” At the same time, the Pentagon was going “all in” on the U.S. Air Force’s Boeing F-47. Defense and Navy civilian leaders have voiced concern about industry’s ability to build both the F-47 and F/A-XX simultaneously, though companies have rejected the idea.
Since the budget’s unveiling, some senior Navy uniformed officials have pressed to continue the F/A-XX at pace. The service has a “validated requirement for carrier-based sixth-generation aircraft,” Adm. Daryl Caudle, the nominee to be the next chief of naval operations, said during a July 24 Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing.
“It is critical that we field that capability as quickly as possible to give our warfighters the capabilities they need to win against a myriad of emerging threats,” Caudle said in submitted testimony.
Continuing F/A-XX was a central theme of Tailhook, the annual gathering of naval aviators. At the event, Cheever tells Aviation Week that “the case is simple” that sixth-generation aircraft are needed to meet the threats on a timeline that the Defense Department needs.
“If you have air superiority, then you have sea control. Those things go together,” Cheever says. “So, you need that fourth-, fifth-, sixth-generation mix. And as fourth-generation comes down in numbers, then you need that … fifth-, sixth-generation mix. And I think the Navy’s done it well with the fourth-, fifth-, sixth-generation mix of what’s coming.”
Boeing and Northrop Grumman are in the running to develop and build the F/A-XX.
The Navy is prioritizing range and survivability for the aircraft. The service has said F/A-XX targets about a 25% increase in range for the aircraft, which is expected to be larger than other carrier-based fighters. The aircraft will be powered by a derivative of existing engines, with both GE Aerospace and RTX’s Pratt & Whitney in the running to provide the powerplant.
The F/A-XX is the nearest high-priority acquisition program for the Navy’s aviation forces, but not the only one. The service wants to move quickly to replace the T-45 trainer with the Undergraduate Jet Training System, and it is looking at a longer-term plan to replace the Lockheed Martin MH-60R/S helicopters.
Cheever says he has become “pretty excited” with how the administration of President Donald Trump and Defense Department leadership is looking at acquisition.
“I think we’re on the cusp of moving with more speed, more purpose, more focus, more priorities for what’s needed, when it’s needed,” he says. “And also, if you move faster, sometimes your costs actually go down because you move at speed instead of stretching these things out longer and longer.
“So there’s excitement there, or at least there’s excitement for me for what we can do in the future, and in the next, literally, year to months.”
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