America's Talking - Air Force Options Plentiful for Basing of New F-47 Fighter

Episode Date: March 29, 2025

(The Center Square) – Boeing earned a contract to build the U.S. Air Force's top air dominance fighter, the F-47 and the service has plenty of options to base operational squadrons both in the U.S. and overseas. The sixth-generation aircraft is intended to replace the Air Force's existing top fighter, the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and will work with uncrewed aerial vehicles. The service says the aircraft will fly by the end of the decade. Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxx Read more: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_4e604ad8-703e-4914-9cba-5eca6b07fdea.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to American Focus. I'm Eliana Kernodle. Boeing is going to build the next generation of fighter for the U.S. Air Force. Joining me with more on this story is the Center Square's regional editor, Steve Wilson. Steve, can you tell us more about this Boeing contract and what exactly it is that they'll be building? So what the Air Force is trying to do here is they're trying to replace their air dominance fighter, the F-22, which has been around since 2004. That is what they call a fifth generation airplane.

Where that differs from the previous, like the F-15, the F-16, the now-retired F-14, those are fourth-gen fighters. What this plane did and why it was a revolution, it had stealth, it had what they call sensor fusion. Whereas with the fourth-gen planes, if you wanted to look at your radar display, you looked at what is called a multifunction display, and you had that.

Then you had the imagery for maybe a targeting pod with an infrared camera. Then you might have another display for your electronic warfare system where you can find out if another plane is tracking you with their radar. And the interesting thing is sensor fusion takes all of that, and the computer in the airplane actually spits it out into one display where the pilot can see, okay, I've been locked on to. There's this airplane coming out. after me. And it's great for pilots because when they're up in the jet, I remember there was a

great documentary that Mel Gibson did about carriers. And one of the pilots, the naval aviators said, you lose half of your brain power when you get in the jet. And you want to do what they call reduce the workload, make it easy on the pilot to go out there and kill things. And the thing that this new plane's going to do better than the F-22 is it's going to have better sensor fusion, where it's easier for the pilot to find targets. It's also going to be a quarterback for what they call U-Cavs, which are unmanned combat air vehicles, which can carry more missiles and act as a magazine

or even seek out their own targets. Of course, the pilot in the new F-47 will be directing those. So it'll be like an army with maybe an F-47 and maybe five or six or maybe more drones. But the big thing that's going to happen with this fight, that I believe, and they've alluded to, is they're going to have a lot more range. Because, see, the planning is we might have to fight the Chinese. You see the distances in the Pacific are ridiculous.

There's not a lot of bases. You need to have as much gas on that airframe as you can get on there to give it more range. The F-22, unfortunately, is very short-legged. It doesn't have the range of the airplane. and it replaced the F-15 Eagle, because you can't hang drop tanks on it because tanks are unstealthy. And one of the interesting things is the Chinese have made it a point where they're building these long-range air-to-air missiles that are designed to shoot down our tankers and our flying radar stations called AWACs, the E3. So what's the best way to deal with that? You have a plane that, A, they can't see.

B is not as dependent on tankers and has the support of UCabs, which is a huge thing. And you mentioned the Chinese. Do they have, you know, any of these sixth generation aircraft? I am glad you asked that question. They flew, I think it was about a couple months ago, two different prototypes. A bigger one that had three engines and a smaller one than I think just had two. But the interesting thing is, is these planes were tailless. No vertical tails.

They were just basically a delta-shaped flying wing. I called them flying Doritos because they look like a Dorito. They're a big triangle. But the Chinese definitely flexed on us with this. And I'm sure, like, the Pentagon is actually looking at possibly dropping this program, which is called the N-GAD, which is the next-generation air dominance system. And it's not just an airplane. It's U-Cavs, it's this airplane.

It's all of these different things all put together that's going to be one system. And they were thinking about getting rid of it. The people in the Pentagon, when they saw that, they had to do it now. So then when these are built, where are they likely to be stationed? How is that going to work? Well, usually the Air Force, when they come out, the new air dominance fighter. They usually base it first in Virginia at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, the first fighter wing. They were the first F-15 operator that was operational. They were the first

F-22 wing that was operational. So that's a place. Then you've got you've got jets out in Alaska and you've got a squadron out in Hawaii. And so you're going to get those airplanes place. But the interesting thing from the announcement was they said they're going to buy more than the F-22. See, what happened with the F-22, we were fighting in Afghanistan, we were fighting in Iraq at this point. The Obama administration scrapped the plane and ended production in 187 planes. Now, that sounds like a lot, but it's not. When you think about you've got planes in deep depot maintenance where they're just getting basically torn down to the studs and rebuild. And they come out, it's a new airplane.

Well, you might have 20 or 30 airplanes that are in the depot. So you've got 150. Then you've got to have probably 40 or 50 that are just strictly for training new pilots. So you're looking at 100. That's not very many. So what they're going to try to do with this airplane is have a lot more of these. So what I think you're going to do is you're going to see some wings that we're supposed to get the F-22 that did not, this time around, they'll get the 6-Gen plane, like there's a wing in

Cadina, which is in Okinawa. Also, there's Eglin Air Force Base in northwest Florida, I vacation over there. Love that area, beautiful beaches. But they had a wing called the 33rd fighter wing that was the top scoring wing in the Persian Gulf War in 90. Well, they got turned into a training wing for the F-35, which didn't sit well with a lot of veterans that served with that unit. You could bring them back because you've already got a lot of squadrons training aviators on the F-35, which is still going to be an important part of our air power. But if you bring that back, I mean, you're looking at, you're looking at a lot more jets, and that's going to be good for America's air dominance.

And when do they expect these to be ready? It's going to take a while. From what I've read, kind of reading between the lines, they've already had what are called X planes, which are, you get, it's a, it's a prototype, a kind of a technology demonstrator flying probably at a Groom Lake, which is the famous Area 51. And they've already had some flying. So what they're going to do is the actual prototype of the production airplane is going to fly supposedly by the end of the decade. and it's probably going to take four or five years after that to feel that hopefully there's no delays. Well, Steve, thank you so much for your reporting on this and for sharing that with us. You can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com.