No. of Recommendations: 2
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense...After months of delay, the Pentagon (Hegseth personally signed off on advancing plan last week) will select as soon as this week the defense company to design and build the Navy's next stealth fighter, a U.S. official and two people familiar with the decision said, in what will be a multibillion-dollar effort for a jet seen as central to U.S. efforts to counter China.
Boeing Co (BA.N), opens new tab and Northrop Grumman Corp (NOC.N), opens new tab are competing to be chosen to produce the aircraft, dubbed the F/A-XX. The new carrier-based jet will replace the Navy's F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fleet, which has been in service since the 1990s.
Here are the key factors influencing the F/A-XX program's cost:
Total program costs: Estimates for the entire lifespan of the program, from research and development to production and sustainment, could reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars, similar to past major fighter jet contracts.
Unit cost estimates: While a final unit cost is not available, analysts speculate it will be extremely high. The Air Force's comparable sixth-generation fighter, the F-47, is projected to have a unit cost of around $300 million. The F/A-XX, developed separately but with shared technologies, could have a similar price point, putting it in the "hundreds of millions of dollars" per aircraft category.
Historical precedent: Comparisons to other high-tech fighter programs show that costs frequently exceed initial estimates. For example, the F-35 program's lifetime cost has been referred to as a "$2 trillion fighter".
Budgetary funding: Funding has been a point of contention between the Navy and the Pentagon, and congressional intervention has been necessary to secure more money for the program. For instance, in fiscal year 2026, Congress allocated an additional $1.4 billion for F/A-XX, following a year where the Navy had to delay $1 billion in spending due to budget cuts.
Industrial capacity: Concerns have been raised about whether the defense industrial base has the capacity to simultaneously develop two different sixth-generation fighters—the F/A-XX and the Air Force's F-47—which could drive up costs.
Jeff
