{"id":52200,"date":"2025-03-22T09:51:34","date_gmt":"2025-03-22T17:51:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=52200"},"modified":"2025-03-22T09:51:34","modified_gmt":"2025-03-22T17:51:34","slug":"the-f-47-another-new-pricey-warplane-for-the-air-force","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/22\/the-f-47-another-new-pricey-warplane-for-the-air-force\/","title":{"rendered":"The F-47, Another New, Pricey, Warplane for the Air Force"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views<\/a> with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n

Recent Air Force projects have not been entirely successful, to put it gently. The F-22 Raptor was never built in the quantities the Air Force desired, nor was the B-2 stealth bomber. The F-35 has proven to be a disappointment<\/a>, an overpriced \u201cFerrari\u201d by the Air Force\u2019s own admission that spends too much time in the shop even as its price over time continues to soar. The less said about the KC-46 tanker the better<\/a>, as its future remains very much up in the air (or stuck on the ground, leaking fuel).<\/p>\n

No worries. The Air Force and Boeing have been rewarded for their stellar performance with a new jet announced by President Trump today, the F-47<\/a>. (I don\u2019t know what happened to the F-36 through 46 models.)<\/p>\n

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Look how badass that F-47 \u201cbird\u201d looks in that artist\u2019s depiction!<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Its key attribute, besides the usual hype about stealth and ultra-powerful engines and super-sensors and the like, is that it\u2019s got a human pilot in the cockpit. This wasn\u2019t a foregone conclusion, given Elon Musk\u2019s belief in drones, whether fully automated or flown by pilots on the ground, at a distance. Keeping men and women in the cockpit was, is, and will always remain the most important goal of the Air Force, built as it is around the allure of pilots as masters of the air.<\/p>\n

An interesting feature of this \u201c6th generation\u201d program is that the pilot will allegedly be able to control autonomous drones acting as \u201cloyal wingmen\u201d to the piloted F-47. That complexity should add scores of billions to the eventual price tag.<\/p>\n

Trump always likes to boast that stealth planes like the proposed F-47, which have a low RCS, or radar cross section, will literally be invisible. The enemy will never see the F-47 coming, Trump said, jumping on board the hype train. Meanwhile, Boeing, the main contractor for the F-47, is already reaping rewards as its stock price has climbed at Mach 2 in the aftermath of Trump\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n

The initial budget request of $20 billion will soon rocket skyward as the usual cost overruns kick in their afterburners. The Air Force promises the F-47 will cost less than the F-22 per unit, but if you believe that, take a look at the rising costs of the B-2, or the F-35, or the KC-46.<\/p>\n

America may be a shitstorm today, but no other country burns through money for needless warplanes than the great USA. You may have stellar bullet trains, China, but do you have invisible 6th generation air supremacy jets? I thought not. USA! USA!<\/p>\n

William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), professor of history, and a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), an organization of critical veteran military and national security professionals. His personal substack is Bracing Views<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author\u2019s permission. Recent Air Force projects have not been entirely successful, to put it gently. The F-22 Raptor was never built in the quantities the Air Force desired, nor was the B-2 stealth bomber. The F-35 has proven to be a disappointment, an overpriced \u201cFerrari\u201d by the Air Force\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[758],"class_list":["post-52200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"A Pilot in the Cockpit Is a Major Win for My Old Service"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52200"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52205,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52200\/revisions\/52205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52200"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=52200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}