August 1, 2025: The decision to build the U.S. Air Force’s F-47 sixth-generation stealth fighter means cancelling the Navy’s F/A-XX combat. The United States could not afford both aircraft and selected the F-47 because it was most likely to be built and heavily used in any future war. F-47 is a sixth-generation fighter, and is moving forward with $3.5 billion to complete development of the aircraft.

F-47 specifications are unknown. No data has been released on how much it weighs, what weapons it carries, max altitude or much else besides a top speed of Mach 2 and a range of 1,900 kilometers. The air force plans to buy up to 200 aircraft that will enter service before 2029. The F-47 will cost three times as much as the F-35.

The military has reduced planned purchases of F-35s from 74 to 47 aircraft. The F-35 Block 4 upgrade provides many improvements for all variants of the F-35, including a new radar, improved electronic warfare capabilities, and an expanded arsenal. There have also been delays and cost growth. F-35s also need an additional set of hardware and software updates, called Technology Refresh 3/TR-3, to even be able to accept the planned Block 4 upgrades, work on which also encountered significant difficulties. The U.S. military went so far as to stop accepting deliveries of new F-35s for roughly a year due to issues with TR-3. Lockheed Martin have been publicly saying that their position is that the development of TR-3 is now complete, though the U.S. military had yet to formally sign off on that as of earlier this month.

Spare parts shortages, coupled with other maintenance and supply chain problems, have been long standing issues for the F-35 program. These problems, collectively, have been a major contributor to low readiness rates for all U.S. F-35 fleets for years.

The current American warplanes, the F-22 and F-35, are often called 5th generation fighters. This leaves many readers wondering what the other generations were. The first generation of jet fighters were developed during and right after World War II/German Me-262, British Meteor, U.S. F-80, Russian MiG-15. These aircraft were, even by the standards of the time, difficult to fly and unreliable, especially the engines. The 1950s 2nd generation included more reliable, but still dangerous to operate, aircraft like the F-104 and MiG-21. The 1960s 3rd generation included F-4 and MiG-23. The 1970s 4th generation included F-16 and MiG-29. Each generation has been about twice as expensive, on average, in constant dollars, as the previous one. But each generation is also about twice as safe to fly and cheaper to operate. Naturally, each generation is more than twice as effective as the previous one. The Russian 5th generation consisted of the 35-ton Su-57, which is the most expensive ever. This aircraft has not been used in Ukraine lest its new technology fall into Ukrainian and American hands. If that happens, the discovery will be found less impressive than expected.

One of the reasons the Soviet Union collapsed was the realization that they could not afford to develop 5th generation warplanes to stay competitive with America. The Russians had a lot of interesting ideas on the drawing board and in development. The bankruptcy of most of their military aviation industry during the 1990s has left them scrambling to put it back together ever since. Now, the Russians are thinking of making a run for the 6th generation warplanes, which will likely be unmanned and largely robotic. This project may have to wait until the 2030s to start, because of industrial chaos and cash shortage created by the Ukraine War.

Meanwhile the Chinese J-36 sixth-generation stealth fighter is already flying. The first flight was in late 2024. It has a two-man crew, three engines, diamond-shaped wings and is tailless. The stretched diamond double-delta wing provides reduced supersonic drag. This means all sensors and weapons are inside the aircraft. The J-36 appears to be about 24 meters long and weighs about 50 tons. The aircraft is powered by three WS-15 jet engines. The internal weapons bay appears to be 7.5 meters long, which means it could carry the PL-17 long range missile that is like the American AMRAAM. The main weapons bay is flanked by two smaller bays. This arrangement indicates that the aircraft will be used to carry out ground attacks using guided missiles and bombs.

At the same time another Chinese sixth-generation stealth fighter, the J-50 has also been seen in the air. This aircraft has a single pilot and a cranked arrow configuration with sharply swept lambda wings and articulating, swivelable wing tip control surfaces. The J-50 was designed to operate from China’s growing fleet of aircraft carriers.

The Chinese aircraft will enter service before the F-47 and provide serious competition for the F-47. There will be about twice as many Chinese stealth fighters as the American F-47. It appears that nearly a century of American aerial domination is coming to an end, with China the new master of the air.

The Chinese have another problem to overcome, pilot quality. Only a few pilots have any combat experience. Going up against American pilots with substantial experience would not end well for the Chinese. Efforts increase Chinese pilot time in the air and use of dissimilar training exercises helps. The dissimilar training involves Chinese pretending to be U.S. pilots flying in American aircraft. Using American tactics, Chinese pilots train against the American facsimiles and get to know what it would be like. Not all Chinese pilots get this training and the quality of the training varies.

To test these aircraft China needs targets. The Chinese have taken some older aircraft and converted them to unmanned aircraft for use as realistic target drones. These are used for training pilots and testing air-to-air missiles. The first of these appeared in the 1950s using Russian MiG-15s. China built its own copies of later Russian aircraft, often improving them and using them long after Russia had stopped production. These included the J5/MiG-17, J6/MiG 19 and J7/MiG-21. China also built higher performance target drones using original designs. Again, this was similar to designs pioneered by the United States. In some cases, China obtained the wreckage of American target drones and reverse-engineered the tech. Recently, China has done something quite different with several hundred retired J6 fighters by turning them into J6W unmanned Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses/SEAD aircraft or, by arming them with half a ton of bombs, as cruise missiles pretending to be fighter-bombers. Satellite photos show these unmanned J6W aircraft stationed near the coast opposite Taiwan. China already developed its own versions of 5th Generation fighter drones using their own stealth technology.