Pentagon will ‘accelerate’ navy fighter despite early reluctance
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The White House has now green-lit a Pentagon plan to move forward with the Navy jet programme known as the “F/A-XX".
PHOTO: KENNY HOLSTON/NYTIMES
WASHINGTON – The Pentagon will accelerate development of a next-generation stealth fighter jet for the Navy after previously pushing back – a move that could benefit either Boeing Co or Northrop Grumman Corp, which are competing to build the aircraft.
The White House has now green-lit a Pentagon plan to move forward with the Navy jet programme known as the “F/A-XX,” according to a Pentagon document sent to Congress recently that was obtained by Bloomberg Government.
That’s despite Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s reluctance over concerns the defence industrial base couldn’t handle developing two so-called sixth-generation fighter jets simultaneously, with Boeing already developing the new stealth F-47 jet for the Air Force.
After the Pentagon previously slow-walked the Navy jet programme, the Defence Department sent an 85-page document to Congress spelling out how it plans to allocate almost US$152 billion (S$192.53 billion) for fiscal 2026 passed in 2025’s massive tax-and-spending package, known as reconciliation.
That’s separate from the formal US$893 billion fiscal 2026 defence spending measure Congress finally passed in January, in which the Navy requested just US$74 million for the Navy jet, down from the US$454 million it sought a year earlier.
The Pentagon told Congress it was directing US$750 million earmarked in the bill “to accelerate the F/A-XX aircraft.”
The funds will be in “support of the F/A-XX milestone decision,” that calls for selecting one of the companies to proceed into full development and production.
The funds “will support critical design, risk reduction, and technology maturation efforts toward meeting operational requirements,” according to the document.
Separately, the Defence Department intends to spend more than US$24 billion for missile defence and President Donald Trump’s so-called Golden Dome shield
According to the spending plan sent to lawmakers, that money would help to “develop and restore critical missile defence infrastructure while also assessing and deploying system level capabilities in support of Golden Dome and the services’ priorities.”
The funding allocation includes US$5.6 billion to develop, buy and field space-based and boost-phase interceptors, US$2.55 billion for military missile defence capabilities, US$2.2 billion to accelerate the development and fielding of hypersonic defence systems and US$1.975 billion for improved ground-based missile defence radars. BLOOMBERG
