The U.S. Air Force previously awarded Boeing the contract to develop the F-47. Boeing has released little information about the aircraft, and the Pentagon has said much of the program remains classified.
Sen. Eric Schmitt visited Boeing’s defense facilities in St. Louis and pointed to the program as a driver of regional defense technology growth. Schmitt, a Missouri Republican elected in 2022, said the investment would create jobs and strengthen national security.
“I think there is no reason in the world, I’ve been saying this since I got there, that St. Louis can’t be the defense tech capital of the United States of America,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt. He described the F-47 program as a catalyst for more defense technology activity in the St. Louis region.
“We need to sell ourselves better, not just to ourselves, but to the country. This is a great place to work, it’s a historic region, it’s a great American city,” said Schmitt.
Schmitt said the aircraft is being built for deterrence in the Pacific. “This great competition we have with communist China is very real; they are building their next-generation aircraft,” said Schmitt.
Schmitt described the F-47 as the most advanced fighter jet in history. He said it would fly faster and carry a larger payload than any American jet before it.
The United States is expected to spend billions of dollars annually over the next several years to develop, build and test the aircraft. Its first flight is expected in 2028.
“This is literally billions and billions of dollars worth of investment and thousands and thousands of jobs that will be dedicated because the F-47 will be built here,” said Schmitt. He said the program had faced uncertainty in 2024 before work continued to secure its future.
“Literally one of the first things I tried to work on was to talk to the President, anybody who was going to be involved in the Department of War about how important that program was going to be,” said Schmitt. He said his effort was aimed not only at preserving the program, but also ensuring the aircraft would be built in St. Louis.
Boeing site executive Dan Gillian said the company has “invested more than $2 billion” in the facility. He said the figure applies to the broader defense production complex in St. Louis, not only the F-47.
The Boeing defense campus employs more than 18,000 people. The inputs present the F-47 program as part of a wider industrial base supporting aerospace and defense jobs in the region.
At the time of the award, the Air Force said the “decision follows a fair and thorough source-selection process conducted by the Air Force, reaffirming the NGAD platform as the most capable and cost-effective solution to maintain air superiority in an increasingly complex and contested global threat environment.” The statement placed the NGAD platform at the center of future U.S. air superiority planning.
The F-47 is described as the cornerstone of the NGAD family of systems. It is designed to integrate next-generation stealth, sensor-fusion and long-range strike capabilities to counter sophisticated adversaries in contested environments.
