Boeing F-47 NGAD - Speculation and Theories

GTX said:
Discussion re some of the challenges with the F-47:
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Barring a whole host of astonishing technological and manufacturing developments this thing is not going to much resemble what many have come to think as a "fighter" class aircraft. Just think of its relative size to the B-21 alone. As of yet I haven't quite yet come to terms with the idea of these at least J-36 sized things performatively maneuvering over the Philippine and South China seas to the tune of (was it) $300k/h and whatever that is in yuan.
 
UpForce said:
Barring a whole host of astonishing technological and manufacturing developments this thing is not going to much resemble what many have come to think as a "fighter" class aircraft. Just think of its relative size to the B-21 alone. As of yet I haven't quite yet come to terms with the idea of these at least J-36 sized things performatively maneuvering over the Philippine and South China seas to the tune of (was it) $300k/h and whatever that is in yuan.
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If we assume F-47 has a F-22 style central weapon bay and nothing else, it is probably carrying 1/4 of the weapon mass and 1/5 of the bay volume of J-36. And if we assume J-36 has 50% more fuel consumption and 50% more structural weight, (ETA: than J20) especially considering the entire third engine and associated equipment and the volume/weight of three weapons bays, one of which has almost a B-2 sized bay door…F-47 could achieve similar ranges with far less weight and volume.

It seems to me F-47 could very much be fighter sized. Small bomb bay, stretched fuselage, dump the gun, side bays, and thrust vectoring to achieve a 0.40 fuel ratio. That would get you to a thousand mile combat radius more or less by itself if you used a more “normal” bypass ratio than F119 ( 0.3 : 1). Give it an adaptive engine and you could exceed that.
 
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UpForce said:
Barring a whole host of astonishing technological and manufacturing developments this thing is not going to much resemble what many have come to think as a "fighter" class aircraft. Just think of its relative size to the B-21 alone. As of yet I haven't quite yet come to terms with the idea of these at least J-36 sized things performatively maneuvering over the Philippine and South China seas to the tune of (was it) $300k/h and whatever that is in yuan.
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The current discussion for the F-47 is something that is roughly F-22 weight. That's 83klbs, and a good 20-30klbs lighter than I was expecting from the range and weapons capacity discussions. So the F-47 might be as big as 90klbs MTOW, 40-45klbs empty weight.

But when an adaptive engine burns 38% less fuel than an F135...

For that matter, the numbers I was running for FAXX made an 80klb airframe viable. An 80klb airframe carrying 28klbs of fuel, no less.

And if you can stuff an extra 10,000lbs of fuel into an F-22 "sized" (weight) airframe, you can fly a good 580nmi combat radius on F119s. (something isn't mathing, the official numbers for 26klbs fuel in 2x external tanks is 750nmi) Stick adaptive engines in that math equation and now you're over 800nmi combat radius.

So yeah, the new engines make a huge improvement...
 
News popped up today that President Trump called PM of Japan Ishiba on 23rd and said, "Buy our fighter, F-47 is a good number."
Interestingly, there were rumors that Trump doesn't like Japan's participation in GCAP few days ago.

news.yahoo.co.jp

日米電話首脳会談　トランプ大統領が次世代戦闘機F47をアピール（テレビ朝日系（ANN）） - Yahoo!ニュース

アメリカのトランプ大統領が石破総理大臣に対し、電話会談で新たに開発する次世代戦闘機「F47」などに言及し、アピールしていたことが分かりました。 　政府関係者によりますと、23日に電話で行われた日米
news.yahoo.co.jp news.yahoo.co.jp
www.asahi.com

トランプ氏「Ｆ４７、良い数字だろ」　電話協議、米国製戦闘機売り込み：朝日新聞

（１面から続く）　突然の開催となった２３日午前の日米首脳電話協議。複数の政権幹部によると、トランプ米大統領が会話の中で力を込めたのは、米国製戦闘機の売り込みだった。　両首脳の協議での話題は、トランプ…
www.asahi.com www.asahi.com
 
Ares said:
Interestingly, there were rumors that Trump doesn't like Japan's participation in GCAP few days ago.
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Of course there would be, since the end of WW2 Japan has been an established (and dependent) customer of US hardware. So of course he'd rather sell them the Export-F-47 than seeing Japan not only develop and operate a "comparable" (arguable, it's to be seen as neither aircraft has left the drawing board yet) aircraft, but also possibly offering it for export as a competitor.
 
EmoBirb said:
Of course there would be, since the end of WW2 Japan has been an established (and dependent) customer of US hardware. So of course he'd rather sell them the Export-F-47 than seeing Japan not only develop and operate a "comparable" (arguable, it's to be seen as neither aircraft has left the drawing board yet) aircraft, but also possibly offering it for export as a competitor.
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I'd argue that GCAP, especially assuming the Japanese range requirements are being followed, is very much a direct competitor to the F-47. They're both designed for the same fight at this point.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I'd argue that GCAP, especially assuming the Japanese range requirements are being followed, is very much a direct competitor to the F-47. They're both designed for the same fight at this point.
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... and GCAP will be lot more affordable. Might even be produced in greater volume.
 
Ron5 said:
and GCAP will be lot more affordable
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How do you actually know this? Neither program has even put forward actual cost estimates. The same is also true for specifications and the claim that they will be similar enough to be direct competitors. While this may or may not be true, I don't think we know enough to establish that. Or for that matter whether future administrations will even make F-47 available to export. Sure, Japan may have a set of range requirements..but is that the only attribute that influences performance and/or cost? Was each program offices not interested in any other performance attribute that might introduce variability in performance and cost across multiple different customer requirements on these two programs? We have Japan, US, UK, Italy all very different air forces and user needs but seemingly converging on a very similar set of high end fighter requirements?

The little we know on F-47 is a top speed exceeding Mach 2.0 and a combat radius exceeding 1,000 nautical miles. No idea on size, IWB capacity, supercruise performance,supersonic radius, mission systems, and other capabilities. So there's very little to go by and for GCAP we don't seem to have even that much in terms of similar specs (IIRC).
 
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It is probably a decent bet the US machine will be more expensive, just tacking on the adaptive engines. But we do not know near enough about either program to even estimate cost. Production numbers are probably a big question mark as well.
 
Sundog said:
No, they've already ruled those out. They said they can get the performance required for their mission set with an advanced low-bypass ratio style military turbofan powerplant.
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That would be interesting to track in terms of efficiency, range and supercruise performance they are going to go without going the adaptive engine route.
 
bring_it_on said:
That would be interesting to track in terms of efficiency, range and supercruise performance they are going to go without going the adaptive engine route.
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They will probably have to sacrifice supercruise top speed for extra bypass/range. The Mach 1.7 of F-22 is a little overkill and the 0.3 : 1 bypass of F119 rather extreme. I assume that bypass ratio makes F119 a very thirsty engine relative to other fighter types at subsonic speeds/throttle settings.
 
I have seen absolutely nothing on supercruise being an important part of GCAP from official and informed sources and discussion. What they have been very clear on is range needing to be transformative and that ACE is a hard no. Which implies that the team is comfortable with the expected performance (and as importantly, margin) that two non adaptive cycle, but still advanced, engines will bring. Power and cooling a different matter than F-47/ACE, same with F/A-XX.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I'd argue that GCAP, especially assuming the Japanese range requirements are being followed, is very much a direct competitor to the F-47. They're both designed for the same fight at this point.
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I left the potential aspect of competition deliberately vague because I personally assume (that was the disclaimer) that GCAP won't be as capable as the F-47A of the USAF, and possibly not even the export version.
 

Interview: Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg Opens Up | Aviation Week Network

The CEO talks about his plans for a turnaround, Boeing’s future in space, when it might launch a new airliner and the huge F-47 fighter win.
aviationweek.com aviationweek.com

AW&ST: The big story for Boeing this year is your win of the U.S. Air Force’s F-47 fighter contract. Congratulations.
It’s the single largest investment we’ve ever made in a defense program. We’ve been investing for years. This was a well-run competition, and I think we did an excellent job in putting an offer forward that was superior to the competition. We invested in prototype aircraft and facilities, and I think that investment has paid off. So, a huge win for us, because we don’t have a position in the current fifth-generation fighter. To have this sixth generation really sets the stage for our St. Louis fighter operations. We still have the F-15 and F/A-18 programs, but they’re reaching end of life, particularly the F/A-18. So this is going to be really important for us for decades to come.

Before Boeing won the F-47, its defense business was widely viewed as floundering. There were even questions about who would want it if you tried to spin it off.
It resets the stage for our future in the fighter business. We’ve got the T-7 [trainer] franchise, which is just coming in. We’ve got continuation of the [KC-46] tanker franchise. So this was an important element in several ways. It’s the first sixth-generation program, and we had the technology ready to do that. I think a lot of people were probably surprised at that. What we’ve been doing in the dark cloud in investment for that program really paid off. I’m pleased to say we have what it takes to be providing state-of-the-art, next-generation capability. And some of those things from the defense business will help us as we think about our next commercial platforms as well. So we’ve got what it takes to recover this business. I’m not worried that we’ve lost a step and can’t recover. We’ve just got to execute better.

You’ve been big on program execution. What is Boeing doing differently on the F-47?
Much more rigorous baseline management, making sure we have our supply chain aligned with the contract. Some of the large fixed-price contracts that we’ve had in the past have been problematic because we didn’t have back-to-back alignment with our supply chain, and that got us into real challenges. So we’ve focused on making sure we’ve got that understood, and we’ve invested heavily to reduce the risk. We’re at a very mature stage for a program of this nature. We’re going to be able to go faster and not incur those risks in the middle of the development program.
 
EmoBirb said:
I left the potential aspect of competition deliberately vague because I personally assume (that was the disclaimer) that GCAP won't be as capable as the F-47A of the USAF, and possibly not even the export version.
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I'd be very surprised if there is an export version of the F-47. Crud, the FAXX is more likely exportable than the F-47 is!

But like I said, the F-47 and GCAP are getting designed around a Pacific fight, so they will end up being comparable in a lot of aspects.
 
Josh_TN said:
I rather doubt F-47 will be exportable anyway, particularly as two of countries with the most likelihood of being allowed to buy it are part of GCAP.
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Australia might be an option but I wonder if the likely longer ranged GCAP might be a better prospect.
 
Ozair said:
Australia might be an option but I wonder if the likely longer ranged GCAP might be a better prospect.
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I think that would be the only likely market, assuming F-47 was exported at all. Too early to tell; we know almost nothing about either aircraft and god knows what the political situation will be a decade from now.
 
bring_it_on said:
How do you actually know this? Neither program has even put forward actual cost estimates. The same is also true for specifications and the claim that they will be similar enough to be direct competitors. While this may or may not be true, I don't think we know enough to establish that. Or for that matter whether future administrations will even make F-47 available to export. Sure, Japan may have a set of range requirements..but is that the only attribute that influences performance and/or cost? Was each program offices not interested in any other performance attribute that might introduce variability in performance and cost across multiple different customer requirements on these two programs? We have Japan, US, UK, Italy all very different air forces and user needs but seemingly converging on a very similar set of high end fighter requirements?

The little we know on F-47 is a top speed exceeding Mach 2.0 and a combat radius exceeding 1,000 nautical miles. No idea on size, IWB capacity, supercruise performance,supersonic radius, mission systems, and other capabilities. So there's very little to go by and for GCAP we don't seem to have even that much in terms of similar specs (IIRC).
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Because none of the GCAP member nations can afford USAF prices. It has to be more affordable and will be.

And GCAP doesn't need to be superior to the F-47, does it?
 
We do not know the full specifications to the GCAPs technologies yet so I would not like to speculate on them, whether they are superior to the F-47 or like wise.
 
Ron5 said:
Because none of the GCAP member nations can afford USAF prices. It has to be more affordable and will be.

And GCAP doesn't need to be superior to the F-47, does it?
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There were two claims made here on this page. One trying to place GCAP and F-47 into the same performance bucket and the other defining cost. We certainly do not yet know what either will cost and we don't know performance specs either to establish those comparisons. I think its a bit premature to claim either though I do tend to agree GCAP will likely be cheaper but probably still the most expensive next generation aircraft actually available in the export market.
 
I'm not shocked at GCAP not having adaptive engines. Before Japan joined the program, they were more concerned with Time On Station, loiter capability, than supercruise. They want an aircraft that can basically orbit over or near JAPAN for long periods of time, because they found one of their greatest vulnerabilities to be a missile attack from China while they're aircraft were on the ground, being rearmed and refueled. They need GCAP in the air mainly to down incoming missiles. I assume they're mainly concerned with cruise missiles, although it will probably be able to intercept some medium range ballistic missiles if it's close enough to shoot them.
 
Japan is mainly trying to defend South China Sea islands and enforce their ADIZ that could be assaulted/violated while CAP are refueling or transiting from/to Japan. This is why initially they were looking at something with capabilities beyong whatvtheir F-15 can offer.
 
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Sundog said:
I'm not shocked at GCAP not having adaptive engines. Before Japan joined the program, they were more concerned with Time On Station, loiter capability, than supercruise. They want an aircraft that can basically orbit over or near JAPAN for long periods of time, because they found one of their greatest vulnerabilities to be a missile attack from China while they're aircraft were on the ground, being rearmed and refueled. They need GCAP in the air mainly to down incoming missiles. I assume they're mainly concerned with cruise missiles, although it will probably be able to intercept some medium range ballistic missiles if it's close enough to shoot them.
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How do those balance with requirements from the other partners? Or is the program structured to basically design to the highest requirements of a single major partner..or is it too early to tell?
 
bring_it_on said:
How do those balance with requirements from the other partners? Or is the program structured to basically design to the highest requirements of a single major partner..or is it too early to tell?
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Well, the UK wanted something that could go to the edge of the ADIZ or beyond (200+nmi) and loiter there for a significant time. Japan wanted the same thing, possibly with more emphasis on the "beyond" part due to the distance from their airbases to the edges of Japanese territory. Italy gets more loiter and/or the ability to reach well into Africa.

I know if I was laying out the program, I'd set it up so that whichever partner had the highest requirements for any given performance specification, that would be the program requirement.
 
Scott Kenny said:
Well, the UK wanted something that could go to the edge of the ADIZ or beyond (200+nmi) and loiter there for a significant time. Japan wanted the same thing, possibly with more emphasis on the "beyond" part due to the distance from their airbases to the edges of Japanese territory. Italy gets more loiter and/or the ability to reach well into Africa.

I know if I was laying out the program, I'd set it up so that whichever partner had the highest requirements for any given performance specification, that would be the program requirement.
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Yeah but it can get really expensive. One partner wants a 1500+ km radius, the other wants a top speed of Mach 2+ ..the third wants a Mach 1.5 supercruise performance...and you want it to offer a significant leap in VLO / signature reduction over say F-22/F35..then someone wants it to carry very large missiles in bays...Before you know it you have a fighter that's sitting at an APUC that's 2-3x that of say the F-35A (or Typhoon for that matter) which probably none of them want. If indeed that happens, I don't see how GCAP becomes any different than the F-47 in terms of cost and complexity. Unless they manage requirements and expectations down in areas that tend to drive cost (signature, propulsion,speed, size etc).
 
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bring_it_on said:
Yeah but it can get really expensive. One partner wants a 1500+ km radius, the other wants a top speed of Mach 2+ ..the third wants a Mach 1.5 supercruise performance...and you want it to offer a significant leap in VLO / signature reduction over say F-22/F35..then someone wants it to carry very large missiles in bays...Before you know it you have a fighter that's sitting at an APUC that's 2-3x that of say the F-35A (or Typhoon for that matter) which probably none of them want. If indeed that happens, I don't see how GCAP becomes any different than the F-47 in terms of cost and complexity. Unless they manage requirements and expectations down in areas that tend to drive cost (signature, propulsion,speed, size etc).
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It already sounds like at least RollsRoyce is talking about a conventional turbofan instead of a 3-stream adaptive engine.
 
Scott Kenny said:
It already sounds like at least RollsRoyce is talking about a conventional turbofan instead of a 3-stream adaptive engine.
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Right that was confirmed by other users (lack of adaptive engine)..but then what about requirements adjusting around superruise, supersonic performance (top speed etc), payload etc..all those things are impacted if you are not going with adaptive engines and the added efficiency in the supersonic and subsonic regime that they provide. In the absence of that you either adjust requirements or you end up needing to make other design trades that could drive up cost.
 
bring_it_on said:
There were two claims made here on this page. One trying to place GCAP and F-47 into the same performance bucket and the other defining cost. We certainly do not yet know what either will cost and we don't know performance specs either to establish those comparisons. I think its a bit premature to claim either though I do tend to agree GCAP will likely be cheaper but probably still the most expensive next generation aircraft actually available in the export market.
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More expensive than FCAS from France & Germany?
 
Well, the money spend on FCAS have been rather piece meal: 65M for phase 1A; 3.2B for phase 1B so far (36 months). Cost is projected to reach 8B for phase 2. This seems to cover all or almost all of the R&D cost.

While for GCAP the UK projects 53 billion pounds or ~71.55 B USD spend on the UK until 2070; Italy has allocated 8.8B and Japan likely as much as the UK. So ~150B for about 200+100+200 fighters that's 300M a piece same as NGAD at 3x 100M F35.

Typhoon was 20B R&D and 150B total or so. It seems both are going to cost about the same as the Typhoon program.
 
How long will it take for the F-47 to become operational, given that next year will mark 10 years since the T-7A first flew and the IOC deadline has been set for fiscal year 2027 after many delays (and will likely be postponed again)?
 
Seragina said:
Well, the money spend on FCAS have been rather piece meal: 65M for phase 1A; 3.2B for phase 1B so far (36 months). Cost is projected to reach 8B for phase 2. This seems to cover all or almost all of the R&D cost.

While for GCAP the UK projects 53 billion pounds or ~71.55 B USD spend on the UK until 2070; Italy has allocated 8.8B and Japan likely as much as the UK. So ~150B for about 200+100+200 fighters that's 300M a piece same as NGAD at 3x 100M F35.

Typhoon was 20B R&D and 150B total or so. It seems both are going to cost about the same as the Typhoon program.
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I think there might be some confusion here: R&D costs vs. fly-away costs vs. life-cycle costs.

If the F-47 is just the fly-away cost, but the FCAS/GCAP is all costs other than life-cycle costs, then the F-47 would still be much more expensive.
 
European fighters are more expensive.
Rafale $131 million for the French Air Force or $5,347 kg, Typhoon $154 million or $7,300 kg. Grippen 60 million dollars or $4810 kg
F-35A $3087 kg
F-47 $7036 kg
 
paralay said:
European fighters are more expensive.
Rafale $131 million for the French Air Force or $5,347 kg, Typhoon $154 million or $7,300 kg. Grippen 60 million dollars or $4810 kg
F-35A $3087 kg
F-47 $7036 kg
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I'm not sure this is the best measure. Fighters at empty weight are more expensive, and a fighter with lead bricks in it would be the cheapest fighter ever.
 
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paralay said:
European fighters are more expensive.
Rafale $131 million for the French Air Force or $5,347 kg, Typhoon $154 million or $7,300 kg. Grippen 60 million dollars or $4810 kg
F-35A $3087 kg
F-47 $7036 kg
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How about replacing a hypothetical price for the F-47 with a real price for the F-22 and get back to us. It might just turn your argument upside down.
 

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