Since the late 1950s, most of America’s warplanes have been given names that indicate a threat, like the F-4 Phantom and the A-6 Intruder, or animals like the F-14 Tomcat, the F-15 Eagle and the F-16 Fighting Falcon.
On Friday, the country’s 47th president, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth by his side in the Oval Office, announced that the U.S. Air Force’s newest jet would be the F-47.
What kind of moniker the F-47 will get was left unsaid.
The president said 47 was “a beautiful number,” but offered few details, other than that Boeing would make the new jet and that it would be considered a sixth-generation fighter.
Elon Musk, who is one of Mr. Trump’s closest advisers, has said the Defense Department should be buying drones instead of the potentially more expensive fighter jets.
The Air Force chief of staff, Gen. David W. Allvin, was also in the Oval Office and said later in a statement that the F-47 was “a monumental leap forward in securing America’s air superiority for decades to come.” He added that the F-47 would be “the most advanced, lethal and adaptable fighter ever developed — designed to outpace, outmaneuver, and outmatch any adversary that dares to challenge our brave airmen.”
Mr. Trump said that an experimental version of the plane had been flying for almost five years.
How advanced is it?
If the F-47 delivers on the president’s promises, it could well be the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world. Russia and China are working on their own sixth-generation warplanes, as are groups of European nations.
“We know every other plane,” Mr. Trump said. “I’ve seen every one of them and it’s not even close. This is a next level.”
“You know, level five is good,” Mr. Trump added, in apparent reference to the U.S. military’s categorization of the F-22 and F-35 as fifth-generation warplanes. “This is level six.”
In his statement, General Allvin acknowledged that the F-47 would be “the world’s first crewed sixth-generation fighter.”
How fast can it go?
Generals and admirals have long prized speed as a metric for how well their fighters perform, though stealth and the ability to fly longer distances with more fuel-efficient engines have become important factors as well.
“Its speed is top: so ‘over two,’ which is something that you don’t hear very often,” Mr. Trump said of the F-47, in an apparent reference to Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound, which U.S. military jets first achieved in 1953. The SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance plane, which began flying in the early 1960s and was retired in the 1990s, could fly in excess of Mach 3.
According to the Air Force, the twin-engine F-22 can cruise above Mach 1.5 and reach Mach 2, while the single-engine F-35 can reach Mach 1.6.
How much will it cost and how many of them will there be?
The president declined to say how much each F-47 would cost, but General Allvin’s statement indicated that it would be less expensive than the F-22 Raptor it is slated to replace, and that the Air Force planned to build more of them.
According to an Air Force fact sheet, the service has 183 Raptors, each priced at $143 million.
What about its stealthiness?
Mr. Trump said the F-47 would be “virtually unseeable.” He added that it would have “unprecedented power, it’s got the most power of any jet of its kind ever made.”
“America’s enemies will never see it coming,” he said before reporters and TV cameras.
The United States has used stealth aircraft in combat since the first Gulf War in 1991 — with the F-117 Nighthawk, which first flew in 1981, leading the attack into Baghdad.
During the NATO-led bombing campaign in the Balkans in 1999, another stealth aircraft, the B-2 Spirit bomber, saw combat for the first time. Not long after, Serb forces shot down an F-117, proving that stealth aircraft were still vulnerable.
As for the new warplane, Mr. Trump said he hoped it would never have to be used for war. “But you have to have it,” he added, “and if it ever happens, they won’t know what the hell hit them.”
What kinds of weapons will the F-47 carry?
Neither the president nor General Allvin offered any details as to the F-47’s armaments. But all of the stealth warplanes the Defense Department has put into service have a similar feature: to make them less visible to radar, they are designed to carry missiles or bombs in internal bays.
For the F-22, which was designed toward the end of the Cold War solely to shoot down Soviet jets, that has limited the number of air-to-air missiles it can carry. The Air Force later designed a small-diameter bomb weighing 250 pounds that could fit inside the Raptor, allowing it to attack targets on the ground.
The F-35 can carry a handful of missiles and bombs internally under each wing, but it can also carry them externally if maximum stealth is not necessary for the mission.
The B-2 bomber, however, can carry 40,000 pounds of bombs internally. The Air Force has not yet said how many bombs its replacement, the stealth B-21 Raider, will carry.
What does the F-47 look like?
That is unclear.
In the Oval Office on Friday, images marked “F-47” were displayed on stands on both sides of Mr. Trump’s desk.
To the president’s right, a photo showed the plane on the ground under a large U.S. flag, with a triangular and flattened nose atop its front landing gear. The cockpit was a mirrored black, and its wings appeared to be slightly upturned. The rest of the aircraft was obscured by darkness above and cinematic smoke below.
The image to Mr. Trump’s left appeared to be an artist’s rendering of an F-47 emerging from a cloud.