it is my understanding that the USAF intends to recompete primes for future F-47 increments and the same might be true for F/A-XX.
Five to seven years is how long it probably takes to stand up the full suite of manufacturing, coating and testing facilities for fighter sized aircraft. If NG hits it out of the park with Raider and then builds out capacity for something much smaller than Raider but much bigger than Talon Blue, I could see them being extremely formidable competitors.
That is the theory but the practical aspects of that already don't make a lot of sense. Both F-47 and F/A-XX each have $20 billion plus EMD contracts which translates to not just building and testing the airframe but also establishing the production facilities required. Boeing has built out a new facility for production, initially funded themselves but that cost comes back to them via the initial production contracts.. Unless the USAF funds a new facility for another prime, including establishing the production infrastructure to switch production to that prime, it seems highly unlikely a different vendor can compete on a new production award nor could they justify that business case to make the investments required without certainty on winning a production contract.
Where a different prime comes in could be on integrating new systems onto the jets, replacing engines and radars and other systems, but even that seems unlikely given Boeing will already have the established EMD flight test trained staff and processes to validate those changes.
There hasn't been any indication that the USAF will also build F-47 to be that rapidly replaced hardware 10 year service life max jet the way the DCS was originally implied, with design houses competing for new designs and separate production primes building the airframes.
I don't expect F/A-XX is trying to follow the same digital century series production philosophy. Yes it will probably have the same open architecture and allow rapid mission system and some hardware changes but I cannot see the USN looking to recontract out production to a different prime.
Boeing would have to really screw up both programs for them to not win all production on both jets going forward. (the exception probably being a global conflict that necessitates production volumes far in excess of current plans for either airframe).
On the other hand, if both entries meet all the primary requirements at rough parity, there's nothing stopping leadership from making the final decision based on whatever subjective criteria they choose.
How likely do you think that would be to happen though? From the comments the designs sound different enough that some subjectivity would be required.
On the other hand, in case of parity, a logic mind would choose the company with the best recent record of respecting budget and timelines.
Agree and contractor performance probably would already have been a factor in the evaluation, just that the weighting was so small it would have made little impact on the overall result.
