Boeing F-47 NGAD - Speculation and Theories

I don't mean to offend anyone, but as @joshjosh pointed out, this is clearly AI generated.

And it's not even well done...besides the typical nonsense of flashy/cool AI pics, taking a bit of time to really look at how this thing is "built", makes it kinda obvious.
HN5toj_bUAAxLMA.jpg
 
CiTrus90 said:
I don't mean to offend anyone, but as @joshjosh pointed out, this is clearly AI generated.

And it's not even well done...besides the typical nonsense of flashy/cool AI pics, taking a bit of time to really look at how this thing is "built", makes it kinda obvious.
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We dont know what F-47 will look like , all is possibility, and may be the plane seen near the Area51 have nothing to see with the final F-47
 
https://breakingdefense.com/2026/07/air-force-eyes-next-gen-engine-integration-by-2030/
It is good news that options such as the F119 and X101/102 engines can be ruled out.

“Snedden stated that the new NGAP engine ‘could potentially’ be installed on the F-47 fighter, though he emphasized that no decision has been made yet. However, he also stressed that NGAP is ‘essentially a suite of technologies’ that can be retrofitted into existing designs.”
 

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wtna7 said:
https://breakingdefense.com/2026/07/air-force-eyes-next-gen-engine-integration-by-2030/
It is good news that options such as the F119 and X101/102 engines can be ruled out.

“Snedden stated that the new NGAP engine ‘could potentially’ be installed on the F-47 fighter, though he emphasized that no decision has been made yet. However, he also stressed that NGAP is ‘essentially a suite of technologies’ that can be retrofitted into existing designs.”
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F-119 is still not in production.
 
wtna7 said:
https://breakingdefense.com/2026/07/air-force-eyes-next-gen-engine-integration-by-2030/
It is good news that options such as the F119 and X101/102 engines can be ruled out.

“Snedden stated that the new NGAP engine ‘could potentially’ be installed on the F-47 fighter, though he emphasized that no decision has been made yet. However, he also stressed that NGAP is ‘essentially a suite of technologies’ that can be retrofitted into existing designs.”
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That sounds like weasel words for, "we don't have an engine".
 
Sferrin said:
That sounds like weasel words for, "we don't have an engine".
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They kinda state it directly in the article

“The last non-derivative fighter engine that we pressed forward was in the 1990s,” Sneden said. “If you want to stay ahead of our competitors, then you have to lean into this technology now.”
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But from how it reads, this feels like an entire family of engine designs coming and will be retrofitted to more than one platform. Not necessarily a bad thing.
 
dark sidius said:
F-119 is still not in production.
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But the USAF can take a handful of F119s from the F-22 spare engine fleet to support initial F-47 flight test airworthiness and envelope expansion. A lot depends on whether the F119 nozzle is usable on the F-47 or if a different nozzle configuration is needed. And if a different nozzle is needed, do you pay to develop an interim engine nozzle configuration to support initial flight test, whether that interim engine is F119 or F110.
 
dark sidius said:
Where this picture come from ?
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The one in Fightingirish's post from the previous page here?
It comes from this post on Twitter made by International Defence Analysis.

dark sidius said:
We dont know what F-47 will look like , all is possibility, and may be the plane seen near the Area51 have nothing to see with the final F-47
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While I agree that the plane seen in ProjectFear's video is not the F-47, but rather what I believe to be Boeing AII-X demonstrator, and that we don't yet know what the F-47 will look like, I'd be willing to bet money that it won't look anything like that AI generated picture.
 
Sferrin said:
Which part? I read the article and all I saw was a bunch of hand waving. Is it GE, P&W or both? Have they built an engine? Have they run it?
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The DDR for XA102 was completed in early 25, followed by XA103. Assembly readiness review occurred earlier this year. Getting a full part set for such an engine is probably a two year effort, even if we don’t assume extra lead time for more exotic bits and bobs that enable these next gen engines.

So they have not built either, much less flown. Still much work to be done; as someone much smarter than me told me, early casting yields are ugly and the US isn’t exactly swimming in free forging slots.
 
The answer to your question (*):
dark sidius said:
This picture could be the FA/XX Boeing project ?
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... can be deduced from this:
CiTrus90 said:
And it's not even well done...besides the typical nonsense of flashy/cool AI pics, taking a bit of time to really look at how this thing is "built", makes it kinda obvious.
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... and is in fact spelled out here:
CiTrus90 said:
While I agree that the plane seen in ProjectFear's video is not the F-47, but rather what I believe to be Boeing AII-X demonstrator, and that we don't yet know what the F-47 will look like, I'd be willing to bet money that it won't look anything like that AI generated picture.
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... so the answer to your question (*) was provided before - "no, Boeing AII-X demonstrator or Boeing F-47 is unlikely to look like that AI generated picture".
I urge you to take note of the in-picture captions.
 
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Training_Dummy said:
So they have not built either, much less flown. Still much work to be done; as someone much smarter than me told me, early casting yields are ugly and the US isn’t exactly swimming in free forging slots.
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Exactly
 
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I guess the silver lining of all this uncertainty about what engine will eventually go into the F-47 (and the implication that it may start with a more conventional engine before upgrading to an adaptive flow engine down the line), is that it may end up with oversized engine bays like the F-14, which could make later engine upgrades easier.
 
JS23 said:
I guess the silver lining of all this uncertainty about what engine will eventually go into the F-47 (and the implication that it may start with a more conventional engine before upgrading to an adaptive flow engine down the line), is that it may end up with oversized engine bays like the F-14, which could make later engine upgrades easier.
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Or it could get stuck with TF30s for the majority of its career.
 
TF-30s? The engine that plauged the F-14 for most of it's early career Sferrin? I would not touch it with a barge poll.
 
And probably not a terribly likely outcome of falling to the same fate.

That is unless the entire goal of constantly re-competing and replacing parts of the plane is left wholly unmet.
 
F119Doctor said:
But the USAF can take a handful of F119s from the F-22 spare engine fleet to support initial F-47 flight test airworthiness and envelope expansion. A lot depends on whether the F119 nozzle is usable on the F-47 or if a different nozzle configuration is needed. And if a different nozzle is needed, do you pay to develop an interim engine nozzle configuration to support initial flight test, whether that interim engine is F119 or F110.
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The AF could have delayed F-47 and wait for the engine if it was that critical. The DFE back in the day is was pretty much plug and play at least for the F-16. There were minor differences in the F100/F110 versions of the fighter such as the big mouth intake for the F110.

I am curious to how critical is NGAP to F-47? If they alway intended to use it for NGAD at some point they became aware that they would need an interim engine and would need to incur addition cost for engineering and testing. I doubt there is an advanced undisclosed engine as the AF was having difficulty carrying two different designs through EMD for NGAP.

There is the possibility that the interim engine for F-47 is a derivative of an engine that is in production which is also going to power F/A-XX? Also, are the performance parameters the AF announced for F-47 for the adaptive cycle engine version of the fighter or the interim version?
 
I'm curious how critical supercruise is to the designed mission set(s). I would assume that a interim engine would not provide that capability unless they put the F119 back into production which strikes me as wasteful.
 
B2Blain said:
I doubt there is an advanced undisclosed engine as the AF was having difficulty carrying two different designs through EMD for NGAP.
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Firstly:
Air Force officials have previously said NGAP is designed to be platform agnostic, meaning the engine architecture could serve various propulsion needs
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And regarding two different designs:
Sneden acknowledged NGAP’s schedule has slipped and said it was because the program wanted to keep working with two viable vendors who could provide advanced propulsion technology. With a fixed budget, he said that meant splitting resources between two vendors instead of one.
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They are looking to build multiple different engines and possibly for multiple different platforms going forward.

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/u...ting-ahead-of-2030-integration-onto-aircraft/
 
Reddington777 said:
That is unless the entire goal of constantly re-competing and replacing parts of the plane is left wholly unmet.
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I'd argue that we're more likely to see this fail. The last time the US accepted an aircraft with an interim engine was the F-14. And the US was still flying the interim-engined Tomcats at type retirement!
 
Scott Kenny said:
I'd argue that we're more likely to see this fail. The last time the US accepted an aircraft with an interim engine was the F-14. And the US was still flying the interim-engined Tomcats at type retirement!
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It's about time that a new family of engines were developed. F119 at this point is 30ish years old. F135 is still a derivative of the F119 family. From the way it's being described, this sounds a lot less like "we don't have engines" and more like "we'd like this technology to port to a number of different platforms and use cases". I'd even argue that NGAP and the surrounding set of engine technology has been fairly consistent in it's goal since their inception - developing a particular set of engine technology portable to a number of different platforms of which the F-47 is one of them.

Times are different. Use cases are different. Even the technological and geopolitical environment is very different now than it was back then. Using the F-14's engine problems as a predictor really doesn't fit how things look. Besides - not sure how they will get that 1000NM+ range on an F-22 sized fighter running F110s.
 
Reddington777 said:
Firstly:

And regarding two different designs:

They are looking to build multiple different engines and possibly for multiple different platforms going forward.

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/u...ting-ahead-of-2030-integration-onto-aircraft/
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Not exactly.

NEXT GENERATION ADAPTIVE PROPULSION

Maintaining competition in the Next Generation Adaptive
Propulsion (NGAP) program remains a priority to spur
innovation and sustain a healthy industrial base. The
agreement encourages the Secretary of the Air Force to
maintain the NGAP competition until two fully developed and
tested prototypes are presented to the Air Force for
evaluation.
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quellish said:
Not exactly.
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I assumed that's what they meant with this little bit:
“We built NGAP as essentially an agnostic system,” Sneden said. “It was, build the system first, open up options for the future, and then when those options come to the forefront, we’ll be able to take advantage of it. You have to lean into propulsion technology first.”
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It sounds more like it's a set of technologies surrounding adaptive cycling engines that's being designed / matured and then possibly used for different platforms but maybe that's not what that means? That's what I meant with it being used for other engines going forward.
 
Reddington777 said:
I assumed that's what they meant with this little bit:

It sounds more like it's a set of technologies surrounding adaptive cycling engines that's being designed / matured and then possibly used for different platforms but maybe that's not what that means? That's what I meant with it being used for other engines going forward.
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Congressional “encouragement” to keep 2 or more engine contractors until the engines are fully developed.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I'd argue that we're more likely to see this fail. The last time the US accepted an aircraft with an interim engine was the F-14. And the US was still flying the interim-engined Tomcats at type retirement!
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A possibility that is being overlooked is that from the get-go the baseline design and performance is based on and designed around an already available engine for the sake of schedule, risk, and reliability. Even an upgraded version of a current engine could be sufficient enough to meet or even exceed the performance values the AF was looking for.

Given how handily BA seems to have won the contract, one could assume the design was plenty capable in its baseline design. The AF doesn't seem all that stressed about getting it into the F-47.

This doesn't rule out NGAP as a future possibility, but it comes down to whether the envelopes are similar enough to integrate it without significant changes to the platform.
 
FighterJock said:
TF-30s? The engine that plauged the F-14 for most of it's early career Sferrin? I would not touch it with a barge poll.
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Meaning NGAP seems to be well behind the curve (it may not be but what's being said doesn't inspire confidence). Maybe, like the Tomcat, the "interim" engine is the one the vast majority of F-47s are stuck with. "Back in the day", there were pictures of the PW5000 with TVC running on test stands before we even knew what the YF-22/23 looked like. Where is NGAP? Who is building it?
 
That is the million dollar question Sferrin, I would think that the obvious choice would be to go with Pratt and Whitney the main reason being is that they have two engines powering the F-22 and F-35.
 
Sferrin said:
Maybe, like the Tomcat, the "interim" engine is the one the vast majority of F-47s are stuck with. "Back in the day", there were pictures of the PW5000 with TVC running on test stands before we even knew what the YF-22/23 looked like. Where is NGAP? Who is building it?
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@quellish did say that one of the demonstrators were already flying with an engine that may or may not be in serial production (though i could be misrepresenting his words here with a lack of understanding).

I think people have to realize that while the F-14 problem was problematic for its mission performance, the politics of the time was not helpful in getting the new engines installed. Post nam drawdowns, the thawing of relations with the USSR really didnt do well to give the navy urgency. Added to that, with the hornet eventually set to replace the F-14 in all its roles, there simply wasnt any steam left to warrant the reolacement of the whole fleets engines by the time of retirement.

The air force isnt in the same position. While there may be problems in development, the funding, planning and political issues surrounding the rollout just doesnt exist. There is no plane to replace the F-47. There is no credible alternative either in CCAs, UCAVs or the F-35. We are also in the middle of a major revitalization and modernization effort across all three branches. I dont see that changing in the next decade or two.

While this is my subjective opinion, I believe I do see some urgency across the governmental + industry even if that urgency in some cases is just spawning confusion. Thats why I said - there are technical challenges but there are also political reasons that makes this fairly different than the F-14 problem.
 
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Reddington777 said:
@quellish did say that one of the demonstrators were already flying with an engine that may or may not be in serial production (though i could be misrepresenting his words here with a lack of understanding).

I think people have to realize that while the F-14 problem was problematic for its mission performance, the politics of the time was not helpful in getting the new engines installed. Post nam drawdowns, the thawing of relations with the USSR really didnt do well to give the navy urgency. Added to that, with the hornet eventually set to replace the F-14 in all its roles, there simply wasnt any steam left to warrant the reolacement of the whole fleets engines by the time of retirement.
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It flew for 20 years before it got the engine upgrade, with most never getting it. Now if it were an A-12 situation, where it flew with J75s while they finished up the J58s, that would be a different thing.
 
Sferrin said:
It flew for 20 years before it got the engine upgrade, with most never getting it. Now if it were an A-12 situation, where it flew with J75s while they finished up the J58s, that would be a different thing.
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The F401 engine failed because it was a little too ambitious and it was to be fielded on a compressed schedule.

NGAP and the technologies behind it have been researched and matured for nearly 20 years (and more if you count the YF120). Its already produced capable prototypes that would have gone into the F-35.

Just as the F-14 engine history didnt become that way ONLY due to the interim engine plan, there are many many levers pulled and yet to be pulled in both the airframe design and the engine design. There are much more simulation and devlopment tools available now to make changes like this work. There are also levers going forward in how the eventual retrofitting is conducted that can make this go very differently than the F401 debacle.

If I read correctly, the A12 was designed around the J58 while flying with the J75 engine, and while delays also happened, the airframe eas modified to fly J75s under a limited envelope. Not sure how people here know that this isnt the same path the F-47 is taking when theres been nothing but speculation based on more speculation. We dont even know which interim engine itll fly with or what the airframe looks like let alone make predictikns about how well or unwell the airframe would fly with interim engines and exactly what kind of envelope it can handle.

So it seems to me that its much too early to get all pessimistic about engine and F-47 programs especially when this has already been done across the pond for both the J-20 and the J-36, the latter which has seen iterations of airframe features and possibly different engines installed across the first few airframes. CCA types have also undergone some pretty dramatic airframe changes that didnt take 30 years to complete thanks to new simulation and design tools available.The point is that these problems can be planned for and worked around to minimize risk of failure and we dont even have an idea of how these things are being undertaken and how the end results interact let alone make these...knee jerk conclusions.
 
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What don't you like about the F135?
The thrust class is the same, the fuselage layout is the same, and the fuel consumption is more or less the same
 

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