전투기 Re: F-47 NGAD; 220대~250대 조달? NGAD 1대 - CCA 2대 팀업?

[위종민]

Air & Space Forces Magazine과 The Strategist에 Bill Sweetman이 쓴 기사들입니다. 

ASFM의 기사엔 미공군이 비공식적으로 220대~250대 가량의 전력을 논의하는 등 F-22보다 많이 생산할 예정이고, (외부 연료탱크 장착시 1,850마일인) F-22보다 항속거리가 더 길며, 모듈식 설계를 갖췄다고 합니다. 스텔스성 유지를 위해 많은 유지보수가 필요한 이전의 스텔스기에 비해 B-21은  역시 Daily Flyer이며 F-47 역시 동일한 원칙이 적용됐을 거라고 합니다. 

인도태평양 전구용의 대형, 유럽 전구용 소형의 별도 개발 가능성도 검토했었네요. 

Bill Sweetman의 기사에선 F-47이 CCA 2기 이상과 팀을 이룰 것이라고 합니다. CCA Increment 1(YFQ-42, YFQ-44)는 공대공 미사일 캐리어, CCA Increment 2는 무인/유인 Wild Weasel 임무용이라고 하네요. F-35용으로 개발된 XA-100과 XA-101은 추력 45,000lb급입니다만, 코어가 좀 더 작아진 모델이 F-47에 적용될 예정이라 최대 엔진 추력은 35,000lb, 만재중량 45톤 정도로 추정합니다. 

Air Force Chief: How the New F-47 Will Improve on the F-22

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Air Force Chief: How the New F-47 Will Improve on the F-22

March 21, 2025 | By John A. Tirpak

The Air Force is promising upgrades in range, stealth, schedule, cost, and number of airframes for its Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter—newly christened the F-47—compared to the F-22 aircraft it is succeeding.

Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin, who joined President Donald Trump at the White House on March 21 to unveil the new air superiority fighter, released a statement after the announcement that offered many new details on NGAD, which has been shrouded in secrecy for years.

“Despite what our adversaries claim, the F-47 is truly the world’s first crewed sixth-generation fighter,” Allvin said—an apparent dig at China, which recently revealed several new stealthy-looking combat aircraft types.

The F-47 will join the B-21 bomber in the Air Force’s sixth-gen fleet—Allvin said this new generation of aircraft will have “next-generation stealth, sensor fusion, and long-range strike capabilities to counter the most sophisticated adversaries in contested environments.”

Renderings of the F-47 supplied by the Air Force—which intentionally conceal many of its features—show distinct differences from fifth-generation aircraft like the F-22 and F-35. While the images show a conventionally stealthy nose and bubble canopy with a chiseled chine and a flattened overall fuselage shape, they also reveal both canards and wings with a distinctive upward angle, features that aren’t typical of previous stealth designs.  

The F-47 will also have ”significantly longer range” than the F-22, Allvin claimed. The F-22 has a range of more than 1,850 miles with two external wing fuel tanks before it needs to be refueled. Air Force leaders have discussed the possibility that the NGAD would be built in two variants—a larger one with greater range to cope with the great distances of the Pacific theater—and a smaller aircraft more suited to the shorter flying distances between military targets in the European theater.

All told, the Air Force said in a release that the F-47 “represents a significant advancement over the F-22,” and has a modular design that will allow it to be “a dominant platform for decades to come.”

An artist’s rendering of the new F-47 fighter, top, compared to an F-22, below. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Lauren Cobin/USAF graphic

Allvin said X-planes have been testing NGAD technologies for the last five years, “flying hundreds of hours, testing cutting-edge concepts, and proving that we can push the edge of technology with confidence.” The flying campaign has been “accelerating the technology, refining our operational concepts, and proving that we can field this capability faster than ever before. Because of this, this fighter will fly during President Trump’s administration,” he said.

The Trump administration will last until January 2029, less than four years from now. By comparison, the F-22 went from being selected the winner of the Advanced Tactical Fighter contest in 1991 to first flight of a production model in six years.

Air Force officials first made reference to flying NGAD prototypes in 2020, and former Secretary Frank Kendall later revealed that X-plane prototypes flew even earlier than that, in the mid-2010s.

Allvin also promised that the F-47 “will cost less and be more adaptable to future threats—and we will have more of the F-47s in our inventory.”

The flyaway cost of the F-22—which only includes the cost of materials to build one aircraft, and does not include research and development, military construction, or any other non-recurring engineering—was about $140 million. Including those other elements raises the F-22’s cost to about $350 million; higher than expected because the Air Force had structured the program to produce more than 400 airframes, which would have spread out development and nonrecurring expenses.

The F-22 program was terminated at 186 production aircraft. Air Force officials have privately discussed an NGAD force numbering between 220 and 250 aircraft.

At the White House, Trump said “we can’t tell you the price, because it would give away some of the technology and some of the size of the plane; [it’s a] good-sized plane.”

Allvin said the F-47 will also be “more sustainable, supportable, and have higher availability than our fifth-generation fighters.” These are likely references to the hardiness of the jet’s low-observable surface treatments; in the early days of stealth, such treatments—including tape and caulk—had to be laboriously applied by hand to aircraft seams, and this process consumed many hours of maintenance time between flights.

In contrast, the sixth-gen B-21 has been described by the company as a “daily flyer,” with the explanation that this is due to more resilient and contiguous stealth surfaces and the inclusion of Air Force maintainers in many design choices regarding how that aircraft is serviced. The same principles were likely applied in the design of the F-47.

The F-47 was also designed with a “built to adapt” mindset, Allvin said, a likely reference to digital design and an open-systems architecture that will allow frequent changeouts of software, sensors and other mission gear. He also said the fighter will “take significantly less manpower and infrastructure to deploy,” suggesting a reduced dependence on ground equipment and more maintenance-friendly components.

The contract awarded to Boeing today “funds the engineering and manufacturing development phase, which includes maturing, integrating, and testing all aspects of the NGAD platform,” the Air Force said in a release. “This phase will produce a small number of test aircraft for eval‎uation. The contract also includes competitively priced options for low-rate initial production,” an approach similar to that taken with the B-21 bomber.  

“Future basing decisions and additional program elements will be determined in the coming years as the Air Force advances the F-47 toward operational deployment,” the service said.

Steve Parker, interim president and chief executive officer of Boeing Defense, Space and Security, said “we recognize the importance of designing, building, and delivering a sixth-generation fighter capability for the United States Air Force. In preparation for this mission, we made the most significant investment in the history of our defense business, and we are ready to provide the most advanced and innovative NGAD aircraft needed to support the mission.”

Boeing said that the F-47 will build on “Boeing’s fighter legacy” which includes the P-51 Mustang, F-4 Phantom, F-15 Eagle, F/A-18 Hornet, and EA-18 Growler.

The Air Force did not immediate offer reasons as to why Boeing was selected over Lockheed. Boeing has dealt with a string of programmatic missteps with its KC-46 tanker, T-7 trainer, and VC-25B presidential transport, collectively costing the company nearly $10 billion in overrun costs, due to the fixed-price structure of those contracts. The contractor has also had a series of accidents and serious quality escapes on its commercial airliners.

Lockheed, meanwhile, has faced a yearlong delivery hold on F-35 fighters due to delays with testing the jet’s Technology Refresh 3 upgrade, as well as chronic issues with sustainment costs of that fighter. However, it has been advancing the capabilities of the F-22 to maintain its combat capability as the NGAD is developed.

Boeing said that “technical and programmatic details [on the F-47] remain classified under United States national security and export laws.” In a statement, Lockheed said it is “disappointed with this outcome” and “we will await further discussions with the U.S. Air Force.”

Allvin offered a striking description of the jet’s overall capability.

“With the F-47, we will strengthen our global position, keeping our enemies off-balance and at bay,” he said. “And when they look up, they will see nothing but the certain defeat that awaits those who dare to challenge us.”

Bolt from the blue: what we know (and don’t know) about the US’s powerful F-47 fighter | The Strategist

Bolt from the blue: what we know (and don’t know) about the US’s powerful F-47 fighter | The Strategist

Bolt from the blue: what we know (and don’t know) about the US’s powerful F-47 fighter

24 Mar 2025|Bill Sweetman

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When the F-47 enters service, at a date to be disclosed, it will be a new factor in US air warfare.

A decision to proceed with development, deferred since July, was unexpectedly announced on 21 March. Boeing will be the prime contractor.

The design will have much more range than earlier fighters, both at supersonic and subsonic speed. But it is not even a fighter as it is generally understood. It will be more stealthy. It will be larger, trading dogfight manoeuvrability for reach, and it will be designed to work within a family of systems, many of them unmanned.

Range and speed are defensive attributes, allowing the aircraft to be based farther from Chinese air and missile bases and keeping tankers at a greater distance from interceptors: the air force has backed away from trying to make a more survivable tanker. But range and speed are offensive characteristics, too: while no aircraft can be in two places at once, fast and long-range aircraft can cover a wide area and sustain high sortie rates.

The F-47 is the centrepiece of the US Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) effort. The intended fighter design, now the F-47, has also been called NGAD. And the name Penetrating Counter-Air has been attached to it, too.

Former secretary of the air force Frank Kendall characterised NGAD as large and costly, and the F-47 will have retained these attributes. Although Kendall and USAF chief of staff General Dave Allvin raised the idea of a less costly NGAD last year, it never got near the stage of an amendment to the initial request for proposals that was issued in 2023.

Stealth: the F-22 and F-35 are classic applications of bowtie stealth design, their vertical tails causing stronger radar reflections when viewed from the side than from in front or behind. (A graph of this looks like a bowtie.) The problem in the Western Pacific is China’s numerous long-range airborne radars and air-warfare destroyers, which make it next to impossible to avoid being illuminated from all angles.

Expanding the envelope of tailless flight in terms of speed and manoeuvrability was almost certainly a focus of the classified Aerospace Innovation Initiative (AII) demonstration program that led to Boeing and Lockheed Martin AII-X prototypes. (AII was run by the Aerospace Projects Office, specially established within the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.)

The USAF sees a program for fighter-like drones, the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), as an integral part of NGAD, with two or more uncrewed aircraft teamed with each F-47. The Increment 1 CCAs (the General Atomics YFQ-42 and Anduril YFQ-44) are being used to eval‎uate their role as air-to-air missile carriers, augmenting the F-47’s weapon capability and taking close-range shots; Increment 2 will be designed to target surface emitters—making it an unmanned and attritable wild weasel, a traditional category of aircraft assigned to dealing with air defences. As reported earlier, simulation tests are showing that pilots can manage more than two CCAs.

USAF Lieutenant General Alex ‘Grinch’ Grynkewich, in 2015 and 2016 led the service’s Air Superiority 2030 study that defined NGAD as what was called a Penetrating Counter-Air aircraft. He discussed the reasoning behind Penetrating Counter Air (what’s become the F-47) in a public essay in 2017, by which time AII had been under way for two years.

Grynkewich’s team had started with a range of options, including reliance on standoff weapons and what he termed a ‘Gen6’ concept with F-22-like fighter attributes—which turned out to be far too expensive. The Penetrating Counter Air identity, Grynkewich wrote, avoided both ‘Gen6’ and ‘fighter’ which presupposed ‘a short-range, highly manoeuvrable, supersonic, manned aircraft, typically armed with a limited number of missiles and a gun’.

We know something about the F-47’s size from open-source discussion of its engines.  A 2018 presentation includes a slide outlining the goals of the USAF’s variable-cycle engine program, and it makes a clear distinction between engines of the 200 kilonewton (45,000 lb) thrust class (the General Electric XA100 and Pratt & Whitney XA101) sized for the F-35, smaller ‘scaled core’ engines for what has become the F-47—engines now known as GE XA102 and P&W XA103—and a derivative for retrofit to F-15s and F-16s.

That implies a maximum thrust around 160 kilonewtons (35,000 lb) for the F-47 engine. Given a requirement for less manoeuvre and more range, that points to an aircraft with a loaded weight of about 45 tonnes (much like an F-111, which will please some Australian readers.) But the importance of the adaptive engine is that it allows a supersonic-cruise aircraft to minimise the use of afterburning, even for transonic acceleration, while still being efficient in subsonic flight.

Legions of would-be R. V. Joneses have spent the weekend poring over the F-47 artwork released by the Pentagon. I would advise caution: what we don’t know about its shape is still more important than what we do know, even before we take account of what we do know for certain but ain’t so.

But there are aspects of the artwork that call to mind the work of the late Alan Wiechman, who joined McDonnell Douglas from the Lockheed Skunk Works in the mid-1980s and headed the company’s stealth work until his retirement in 2014. His work included the X-36 tailless prototype, and the Bird Of Prey, demonstrating optical and radar stealth. His obituary in 2023 noted that he had ‘most recently’ been an adviser on stealth to the USAF Rapid Capabilities Office.

As with anything in the United States these days, there is much uncertainty ahead for the F-47. Boeing’s bid was submitted well before new CEO Kelly Ortberg joined, and the company has a painful history of low bidding and poor performance. The requirement may be sound and the technology may be good, but the F-47 is another pull on an overstressed air force budget, and by the time it enters service (not in Trump’s second term) it will face challenges, including whatever F-35X ideas emerge from Fort Worth.

But let’s get back to that surprise announcement on Friday by   President Donald Trump. It came as a surprise for good reasons.

Defying decades of practice, the F-47 was launched by an empty Pentagon C-suite: nominees for the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), Air Force secretary, and undersecretaries for acquisition, and research and engineering, are all awaiting confirmation. Defense secretary, infantry major and TV host Pete Hegseth was the sole source selection authority.

Air force leaders had lobbied Trump personally to get his approval for the project, which Kendall put on hold in July. With no CJCS, the lead defense adviser to Hegseth is the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appointed last May: Grynkewich, the author of that NGAD-defining Air Superiority 2030 study.

Was this a Machiavellian plan by Kendall? Delaying the NGAD decision last year looks like a coup, allowing the air force to dazzle the president with secret technology, while talking up the threat of China’s new J-36 to inspire a sense of urgency, permitting Trump to present it as his own idea and calling it F-47. Conveniently, the sceptical Elon Musk, usually omnipresent at big occasions, was busy at a briefing at the Pentagon.

[백선호]

45톤이면 60톤 넘던 YF-12A와 30톤 정도였던 F-111B의 중간이네요.

https://cafe.daum.net/NTDS/515G/4369

[위종민]

F-35가 30톤에 43,000lb 짜리 F135 단발인데 45톤에 35,000lb 쌍발이네요. F-22가 38톤에 35,000lb 쌍발인데, 기체는 더 커지고 가변 사이클 엔진이니 항속거리는 많이 길어지겠습니다.

아, 최대이륙중량이 아니라 Gross Weight이려나요? Gross Weight면 F-35는 22.4톤 - 43,000 단발, F-22는 29.4톤 - 35,000lb 쌍발인데... 항속거리는 길어진 대신 휙휙 도는 능력은 많이 모자랄 수도 있겠습니다.

[위종민]

"That implies a maximum thrust around 160 kilonewtons (35,000 lb) for the F-47 engine. Given a requirement for less manoeuvre and more range, that points to an aircraft with a loaded weight of about 45 tonnes (much like an F-111, which will please some Australian readers.)"

만재중량 45톤으로 F-111과 비슷한 크기 같네요 ㅎㅎㅎ F-111B의 만재중량은 39.9톤이었네요. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Dynamics%E2%80%93Grumman_F-111B#Specifications_(F-111B_pre-production)

만재 기준으로는 F-35A가 29.9톤 , F-22A가 38톤이네요.

[강준구]

F-22 보다는 더 많은 숫자가 생산되네요. 꽤나 커다랗고 필요 이상으로 항속거리가 긴 기체라면, 해외 수출 허가 여부를 떠나서, 구매할 국가도 적어 보입니다. 잘해야 캐나다, 호주, 일본 정도?
결국 F/A-XX가 더 큰 시장성을 갖게 되지 않을까요? 항모 탑재용이니 F/A-18E/F 사이즈에서 크게 벗어나기 힘들 것 같습니다.

[위종민]

아무도 모르는 게 전투기 팔자긴 하지만 저렇게 큼지막한 전투기라면 말씀하신 나라들 말고는 필요로 할 만한 나라들이 별로 없을 것 같습니다. 게다가 4년 사이에 캐나다-호주-일본과 미국 사이에 얼마나 큰 균열이 생길지도 예상이 어렵고..

[강준구]

캐나다는 F-35 도입을 재검토한다는 말도 있고, 일본은 우선 GCAP을 진행 중이기도 해서, 그나마 호주 외에는 한동안은 어렵지 않을까 합니다.
일본과 호주는 F-35와 F-15 혹은 F/A-18E까지 있으니 캐나다가 제일 급할텐데.. 트뤼도는 F-35 도입을 재검토한다는 말도 있고, 일본은 우선 GCAP을 진행 중이기도 해서, 그나마 호주 외에는 한동안은 어렵지 않을까 합니다.
일본과 호주는 F-35와 F-15 혹은 F/A-18E까지 있으니 캐나다가 제일 급할텐데.. 탈냉전 이후 캐나다는 유럽과 비슷하게 너무 전력 대체를 안하고 있었네요...