Why the Urgently Needed F/A-XX Sixth Generation Naval Fighter is Being Defunded

The U.S. Department of Defence will significantly reduce its funding for the development of the F/A-XX sixth generation fighter for the U.S. Navy, with a senior U.S. military official confirming that under the proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2026 the program “will maintain minimal development funding to preserve the ability to leverage F-47 work while preventing over-subscription of qualified defence industrial base engineers.” Another official confirmed that funding would be restricted to just $74 million, or just one fiftieth of the $3.5 billion funding being allocated to the separateBoeing F-47 sixth generation fighter program being developed for the Air Force. This minimal funding would be allocated to complete design work for the aircraft, which was intended to allow for “maintaining the option for F/A-XX in the future.” The extreme cuts were justified “due to our belief that the industrial base can only handle going fast on one program at this time, and the presidential priority to go all in on F-47, and get that program right,” leaving open the possibility that the F/A-XX could subsequently receive funding at a much later stage. Analysts have widely posited that it appears more likely the program will be cancelled entirely.

The Navy has continued to warn that the development of the F/A-XX is an urgent priority particularly for its ability to contribute to operations in the Pacific theatre, where not only do the short ranges of its current F-35C and F-18E/F fighters seriously limit their utility, but China’s new sixth generation fighters expected to enter service around 2030s also leave them at risk of being left increasingly obsolete. Acting Chief of Naval Operations Admiral James W. Kilby recently specifically cited Chinese capabilities to warn regarding the need for sixth generation figures: “The sixth-gen fighter has some capabilities that we need to counter” the People’s Liberation Army Navy. “Those are signatures, those are range, those are different engines. Those are all the things that will make it survivable. The Air Force and Navy have different missions, but we’re going against the same threat,” he added. Unlike the Air Force, which has invested heavily in procuring F-35A fifth generation fighters, the Navy’s continued reliance on an overwhelmingly fourth generation fleet of F-18s, and small scale of procurements of F-35C fighters, has long appeared to leave it more urgently in need of a new sixth generation fighter class.

Claims that the American defence industrial base will be unable to handle two simultaneous sixth generation programs have raised concerns regarding the standing of the country’s combat aviation sector. It has drawn a particularly unfavourable comparison to Chinese industry, which recently became the first in the world to simultaneously serially produce two separate classes of fifth generation fighter. China’s two sixth generation fighters are currently being developed in parallel, and are expected to enter service without a significant gap between them. Nevertheless, claims that the American defence sector cannot handle two parallel sixth generation fighters has been seriously questioned, including earlier in June by Boeing Defence and Space CEO Steve Parker. An alternative explanation for the defunding of the F/A-XX is that the Pentagon is struggling to afford both sixth generation programs, which are expected to be among the most costly to develop in history potentially eclipsing the development costs of the F-35. The costs of the F-47 alone led to its future being widely questioned in 2024, as the Air Force appeared to face increasing pressure from its limited budgets to abandon it, before the new Donald Trump administration made work on the aircraft a priority. While the Navy had appeared to be in a much stronger position to complete development of its sixth generation fighter than the Air Force had before the new year, the prioritisation of the F-47 appears set to come at the expense of the F/A-XX.