“A three-year delay for the Navy would effectively cancel the program as it is currently defined.”
My colleague Maya Carlin recently wrote an article for The National Interest titled “America Needs the Sixth-Generation F/A-XX Fighter More Than Ever.” Therein, Carlin pointed out that the United States Navy‘s (USN) time-honored Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet is getting long in the tooth, having made its maiden flight over thirty years ago. Yes, the USN also has the fifth-generation Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lightning II—more specifically the F-35C variant—but even that warbird is no spring chicken, having first flown fifteen years ago.
Meanwhile, as Carlin adds, China is continuing to ramp up its sixth-generation fighter capabilities, prompting the chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, Rep. Ken Calvert, to issue a dire warning about the United States lagging behind China in the sixth-generation realm.
Ergo, the notion of the F/A-XX makes plenty of sense. Alas, the F/A-XX is in danger of running afoul of a shortage of dollars and sense (cents, that is).
Budgetary Barriers to the FA/XX?
The troubling news comes to us from an anonymous report republished on MSN on or about May 15, 2025, titled “New U.S. Navy fighter jet to replace Boeing F/A-18 fleet threatened by funding dispute – Reuters.” To wit:
“The Navy had been expected to announce a winner as early as March in a deal that could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars to the winner over its lifetime, but a funding dispute threatens to derail that timeline … While the Navy wants to move forward with awarding a contract for the new carrier-based stealth fighter to be fielded in the 2030s, some Pentagon officials are seeking to delay the F/A-XX program by as much as three years due to concerns about engineering and production capacity, the report said … A three-year delay for the Navy would effectively cancel the program as it is currently defined, according to the report, because contracts and pricing would expire during that time and make a new competition almost inevitable … Delaying the program could leave the Navy without a modern fighter capable of operating from carriers in the 2030s and beyond, potentially undermining the fleet’s ability to project power in contested environments.”
Fast-forward one week, and the U.S. House of Representatives has just passed President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” An analysis by FOX 32 Chicago reports that the bill boosts defense spending by $150 billion, divvied up as follows:
- $25 billion for Trump’s “Golden Dome for America” missile defense shield
- $21 billion to restock the nation’s ammunition arsenal
- $34 billion to expand the naval fleet with more shipbuilding
- $5 billion for border security
- $9 billion for servicemember quality of life-related issues
These are all well and good, but conspicuous by its absence from the list is any mention of F/A-XX.
Additional Concerns with America’s Stealth Fighters
Meanwhile, going back to the more sophisticated warbird in the USN arsenal, namely the aforementioned F-35, it too is showing vulnerabilities. In spite of its fifth-generation stealth technologies, one of the Lightning IIs barely survived getting shot down by a Houthi surface-to-air missile (SAM), which created quite a stir, to say the least. Moreover, as stated in the title of Brandon J. Weichert’s May 20, 2025, article for The National Interest, “China and Russia Can Detect F-35 Fighters Now.”
This just goes to further underscore the need for a sixth-generation fighter jet with additional survivability capabilities that both the F-35 and the fourth-generation F/A-18 are apparently lacking.
In the Meantime
Until that funding dispute with the F/A-XX is (hopefully) resolved, the Navy will continue to play the proverbial hand it’s dealt (“Adapt, Improvise, Overcome,” as the old military mantra goes) via its Super Hornet and Lightning II arsenal. Indeed, as Jake Epstein reported this week for Business Insider, Admiral James W. Kilby, the acting chief of naval operations, announced on May 19 that the USS Harry S. Truman and its strike group “launched the largest airstrike in the history of the world — 125,000 pounds — from a single aircraft carrier into Somalia.”
About the Author: Christian D. Orr
Christian D. Orr was previously a Senior Defense Editor for National Security Journal (NSJ) and 19FortyFive. He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch, The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security, and Simple Flying. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the Naval Order of the United States (NOUS). If you’d like to pick his brain further, you can ofttimes find him at the Old Virginia Tobacco Company (OVTC) lounge in Manassas, Virginia, partaking of fine stogies and good quality human camaraderie.
Image: DVIDS.
