What Boeing’s F/A-XX win means for the company, and what challenges come next
The US Navy has picked Boeing over Northrop Grumman to build F/A-XX, its sixth-generation carrier strike fighter, with a full-scale development contract valued at more than $20 billion. The deal covers multiple test aircraft for ground, airworthiness, systems, and weapons integration testing, and the jet will augment and eventually replace the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler from the 2030s. Navy officials have said it should offer about 25% more range than the F-35C, stronger jamming than the Growler, and control of Collaborative Combat Aircraft from the outset. Technical details remain classified, and Boeing's renders show only a broad, tailless, single-seat design with a clear family resemblance to the F-47.
The Read: With the F-47 and F/A-XX, Boeing now builds both US crewed sixth-generation fighters, shutting Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman out of that market for years. It's a sharp reversal for a company that in early 2025 faced the end of its fighter business. On the same day, the Navy paid Boeing about $16.7 million to plan the shutdown of the Super Hornet and Growler lines. The open questions are capacity and commonality. Pentagon leaders have already flagged concern about running both programs in parallel, and how much F-47 hardware and software carries over will decide whether this is two jets or one family.
Artist's rendering of Boeing's F/A-XX on a carrier deck \\ Source: NAVAIR via Boeing
\\ Signal Watch
Blackbeard Hypersonic Missile Seen Flying On F/A-18 Super Hornet For The First Time \\ TWZ
A defense startup's hypersonic missile is now flying on frontline Navy jets. New Navy footage shows two of Castelion's Blackbeard missiles carried by an F/A-18E/F Super Hornet during flight testing, which TWZ says shows the air-launched version is deep in testing, though no live launch has been shown. The bigger story is cost: FlightGlobal reports a $200 million production contract for nearly 500 of the Mach 5-class weapons, roughly $400,000 per missile on those figures, compared with the multimillion-dollar price tags of earlier US hypersonic programs. Castelion has also won several multimillion-dollar contracts this year for Super Hornet integration, while most performance details remain undisclosed. If the price holds, it shifts hypersonic strike from a handful of exquisite shots to a magazine-depth weapon.
Castelion Blackbeard missiles under an F/A-18F Super Hornet during flight testing \\ Source: U.S. Navy (NAVAIR), Image from video
\\ Quick Links
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