The next-gen aircraft program, known as F/A-XX, has encountered funding shortfalls which are expected to slow down the initiative. The Navy delayed around $1 billion for the project in fiscal 2025 due to spending caps imposed by the 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act. The Trump administration’s budget request for fiscal 2026 includes just $74 million in R&D funds for the effort — far less than the $454 million the service received in FY’25 and nearly $900 million less than the Navy had previously planned to spend in FY’26, according to budget documents.

As part of advance policy questions submitted to the nominee ahead of his confirmation hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, Caudle was asked how the Navy would be able to maintain air superiority without fielding a next-gen fighter on its original timeline.

“Nothing in the Joint Force projects combat power from the sea as a Carrier Strike Group, which at the heart has a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier (CVN). To maintain this striking power, the CVN must have an air wing that is comprised of the most advanced strike fighters. Therefore, the ability to maintain air superiority against peer competitors will be put at risk if the Navy is unable to field a 6th Generation strike fighter on a relevant timeline. Without a replacement for the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and E/A-18G Growler, the Navy will be forced to retrofit 4th generation aircraft and increase procurement of 5th generation aircraft to attempt to compete with the new 6th generation aircraft that the threat is already flying,” Caudle wrote in his response.

Defense Department officials are especially concerned about China’s military advancements, which include developing next-gen fighter aircraft that the U.S. Navy might have to go up against someday.

“The Navy’s ongoing efforts to maintain technological superiority will ensure our ability to challenge any adversary. Deterring and denying China will require an ‘All Hands on Deck’ approach from the Joint Force including the massing of lethal fires from the sea, which comes from carrier strike groups with the latest and most capable strike fighters,” Caudle told lawmakers

“The Navy has a validated requirement for carrier-based 6th generation aircraft, and it is critical that we field that capability as quickly as possible to give our warfighters the capabilities they need to win against a myriad of emerging threats,” he wrote.

Last month, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine told lawmakers that he believes the requirement for a platform like the F/A-XX is “still valid.”

“As we look at the threat picture out in the Pacific, the requirements themselves I think are still valid. I think it comes down to a question that many of the folks on the committee have talked about, and that’s the ability [for industry] to produce at a particular time. And I’ll defer to my civilian leaders on the timing and synchronization [of] that program. But we do need, you know, capability that is mobile, whether it’s F/A-XX or others, that enable us to win on the battlefield to the future,” Caine said at a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

However, the Pentagon is prioritizing the development of the Air Force’s sixth-gen fighter, the F-47, to the tune of planning to spend $3.5 billion on the program in fiscal 2026. DOD officials have said they’re willing to slow down the Navy program due to concerns about the ability of the defense industrial base to handle two sixth-gen fighter programs simultaneously.

Trump in March announced the award of the prime contract for the F-47 to Boeing, but the prime contractor for F/A-XX still hasn’t been selected.

Navy officials have said the F/A-XX is expected to be extra stealthy, have significantly longer range than the fighter jets that are currently in the fleet, and incorporate AI capabilities.

Caudle noted that the service also plans to develop highly autonomous drones known as Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs) to complement sixth-gen fighters and other Naval aviation platforms. He suggested the drones would be “multi-role capable.”

“It is too early to predict the exact mix of manned and unmanned aircraft. However, as autonomous systems demonstrate increasing capability and warfighting effectiveness, we intend to iterate to deploy the most effective combination of manned and unmanned aircraft to maximize the lethality, combat effectiveness, and range of the naval aviation combat power,” Caudle told lawmakers.

Trump nominated Caudle for the CNO role last month. In February, the president fired then-CNO Adm. Lisa Franchetti without explanation. Adm. James Kilby has been serving as acting chief of naval operations.

Caudle, who is currently serving as commander of Fleet Forces Command, wasn’t a controversial pick for the top job and his nomination is expected to be confirmed by the Senate.

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The Air Force is requesting nearly $3.5 billion in FY’26 to continue work on the F-47, a sixth-generation fighter under development by prime contractor Boeing. According to budget documents released Thursday, the allocation includes $2.6 billion in discretionary funds and $900 million from the GOP-led reconciliation bill currently under debate in Congress.

In contrast, the Navy’s sixth-gen fighter program known as the F/A-XX, would receive just $74 million in R&D funds — 84 percent less than the $454 million the service received in fiscal 2025. The decision comes after the Navy already delayed around $1 billion for F/A-XX in FY’25 due to spending caps imposed by the 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act.

“We did make a strategic decision to go all-in on F-47,” a senior defense official told reporters during a Pentagon briefing Thursday. The move was prompted “due to our belief that the industrial base can only handle going fast on one program at this time, and the presidential priority to go all-in on F-47 and get that program right, while maintaining the option for F/A-XX in the future,” they added.

President Donald Trump announced that Boeing had beat out Lockheed Martin for the F-47 contract in March, ending a months-long pause to the program’s selection process caused by budgetary and design concerns. The aircraft is envisioned as a long-range crewed fighter jet that will replace the Air Force’s fleet of F-22 Raptors and is expected to field sometime in the 2030s.

The F-47 platform is the centerpiece of the Air Force’s future Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems, which also includes robotic wingman drones called Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA). Budget documents indicate that the CCA program would receive a total of $807 million in FY’26, with a majority of those funds coming from $678 million added in the reconciliation bill.

Similarly, the carrier-based F/A-XX is expected to feature longer ranges, enhanced stealth capabilities and be more survivable than the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet it will eventually replace. After Lockheed Martin dropped out of the competition earlier this year, Boeing and Northrop Grumman are both vying to lead the program.

While budget documents at press time did not disclose the specific work planned for the F/A-XX in the next fiscal year, the funding would allow the Navy to “preserve the ability to leverage F-47 work” and prevent “over-subscription of qualified defense industrial base engineers,” the senior defense official said.

The details provided by budget documents end months of ambiguity over the sea service’s plans for the F/A-XX. After Trump’s dramatic rollout of the Air Force F-47 contract award in March, reports surfaced that the Navy would follow suit and name the prime contractor for its sixth-gen fighter the same month.

But that announcement never came, and subsequent reports from Reuters and Bloomberg indicated that funding disputes and industrial base concerns had delayed the program — potentially by three years.

The Navy’s decision to once again scale back funds to F/A-XX is likely to spark ire among lawmakers, many of whom have recently pressed service leadership to move the program forward.

“I’m concerned that any hesitancy on our part to proceed with the planned procurement of the sixth-gen fighters for the Navy will leave us dangerously outmatched in a China fight. We cannot wait,” Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., said in May during a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense hearing with Navy leadership. “Further, we cannot expect to grow the industrial base by undermining aviation programs that rely on highly specialized supply chains and skilled labor that cannot be turned on and off like a switch.”

Ultimately, the final decision on the F/A-XX program’s fate is under discussion by Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Trump, a senior defense official told reporters Thursday. When asked whether the Pentagon was considering to create a joint Air Force-Navy program — repeating the F-35 Lightning II acquisition model — the official said “pretty much everything is under consideration to get the tactical air capability that our warfighters need as quickly as possible.”

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Congress funded the F/A-XX project to the tune of $454 million in fiscal 2025. However, the Defense Department wants to slash spending to just $74 million in 2026, according to budget documents viewed by DefenseScoop. Meanwhile, the DOD plans to spend $3.5 billion in the next fiscal year on the Air Force’s next-gen fighter, the F-47.

The 2026 request “slows” the Navy’s program “due to industrial base concerns of two sixth-generation programs occurring simultaneously,” according to the document.

Lawmakers this week expressed concern about the projected cuts.

“We know that in the FY ’25 [continuing resolution] there was $453.8 million … put towards that — I’ll get the number right — and in reconciliation $500 million. So you can see Congress is consistently pushing ahead and saying, ‘This is … where we need to go.’ And we’d be a little surprised if the support for this fell off, especially since we’re looking at the requirements and not seeing any change there,” Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., said Thursday during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

Wittman asked Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, who was testifying during the hearing, if the requirements that military officials previously laid out for that platform are still the same.

“As we look at the threat picture out in the Pacific, the requirements themselves I think are still valid. I think it comes down to a question that many of the folks on the committee have talked about, and that’s the ability [for industry] to produce at a particular time. And I’ll defer to my civilian leaders on the timing and synchronization [of] that program. But we do need, you know, capability that is mobile, whether it’s F/A-XX or others, that enable us to win on the battlefield to the future,” Caine replied.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who was testifying alongside Caine, said the fiscal 2026 budget request “funds the complete design of F/A-XX.”

However, he suggested the Pentagon is reevaluating plans for the program.

“We’re certainly reviewing it — working with the Joint Staff, working with the [combatant commands] — at its application around the globe. So it’s in the mix, but we recognize we need — we also need a capability as quickly as possible for the threats that we face,” Hegseth said.

Navy officials have said the F/A-XX is expected to be extra stealthy, have significantly longer range than the fighter jets that are currently in the fleet, and incorporate artificial intelligence capabilities.

The service also wants the manned jet to be able to team up with advanced drones.

“It will also, with the integration of AI and other technical advantages, allow us to have increased battle space management. And it will be our next platform that, instead of being man in the loop, will truly be man on the loop and allow us to have fully integrated architecture with our unmanned systems that we’re going to be fielding with concepts like the CCAs — whether it’s those collaborative combat aircraft, the small increased mass, or also teaming with larger unmanned vehicles that we may foresee into the future,” Rear Adm. Michael “Buzz” Donnelly, then-director of the air warfare division, N98, in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, said at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space conference in April.

At the same conference, acting Chief of Naval Operations Adm. James Kilby said the Air Force isn’t the only service that needs a sixth-gen fighter for a potential conflict against advanced adversaries like China.

“We need F/A-XX in the United States Navy,” he said. “We’re talking about a fight in the Pacific. We fight together as a joint force, so having that capability is very important for us.”

Many observers had expected the service to award a large development contract to either Boeing or Northrop Grumman in the spring.

However, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, who stepped into his new role in March, told lawmakers Wednesday that officials continue to look at force structure needs for the future.

“As it comes to next-gen fighters … we’re looking at the full composition of the air wing of the future. And so we have to focus on the capabilities and technologies for years to come that are going to win, and that includes manned and unmanned platforms that we have to look at,” he said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

He noted that he also has concerns about the industrial base and how some of the Navy’s other programs are faring.

“I do not have a lot of confidence. All of our programs are in trouble. We have number of companies that are not performing. We’ve got to get those done. So I think looking at this system, sixth-gen is important. And I know it’s important to the admiral [Kilby], he should always give you his best military advice. I think we’re looking at the whole panacea of what we’ve got and then … what makes the most sense to use in the future. And so I think we have to get more confidence in the [industrial] base,” Phelan said.

“This is a system that you know, as I said in my opening statement about readiness, readiness means, like ready, like today and then in the future — and how is that future changing and how do we think about that? And so that’s we’re looking at it, evaluating it, and trying to make sure that we’re not back here in two years saying, ‘We told you it was going to cost X, it’s actually going to be X plus 50, and by the way, it’s going to be late,’” he told the committee.

Rep. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., said the Pentagon shouldn’t be cutting funding for the F/A-XX.

“We need that money for a lot of reasons,” she said at Wednesday’s HASC hearing. “China is … already testing and flying J-50s and J-36 fighters, which is their sixth-generation fighter. The Navy to be competitive with that has got to make that investment.”

The Trump administration has not yet submitted its full fiscal 2026 budget request to Congress. Lawmakers may end up appropriating much more money for the F/A-XX than the Defense Department proposes.

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The service is expected to award the F/A-XX program to either Boeing or Northrop Grumman in the not-too-distant future.

The Navy plans to begin fielding the system in the 2030s, and the platform is intended to eventually replace the F/A-18EF Super Hornet in the fleet.

Rear Adm. Michael “Buzz” Donnelly, director of the air warfare division, N98, in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, told DefenseScoop Monday that the sixth-gen F/A-XX will have several attributes that make it more advanced than the fourth-gen Super Hornet or the fifth-gen F-35C Lightning II.

Increased range will be a “core attribute” of the future fighter, he said.

“That increased range is an essential attribute that we’re looking to field. So probably over 125 percent of the range that we’re seeing today to give us better flexibility, operational reach. It will, of course, have refuel ability. And all of our air wings, our tactics and what we are designing in the future considers organic refueling capability. So the F/A-XX will be able to leverage that,” he said.

For context, the Super Hornet has a combat range of 1,275 nautical miles “clean” while carrying two AIM-9 missiles, according to a fact sheet from Naval Air Systems Command.

“It will definitely have longer inherent range. And then with refueling, you could say that’s indefinite as long as the refueling is available,” Donnelly said.

Stealthiness and AI integration will also be key characteristics, he suggested.

“Its attributes of survivability and signature, which give it the ability to penetrate threat airspace that will pace the threat that we see into the future beyond 2040. So that’s what we see as essential as the threat builds out its capabilities and increases kinetic capabilities with its own fighters and weapons,” he said.

“It will also, with the integration of AI and other technical advantages, allow us to have increased battle space management. And it will be our next platform that, instead of being man in the loop, will truly be man on the loop and allow us to have fully integrated architecture with our unmanned systems that we’re going to be fielding with concepts like the CCAs — whether it’s those collaborative combat aircraft, the small increased mass, or also teaming with larger unmanned vehicles that we may foresee into the future,” he added.

Today’s fighter and refueling capabilities give carrier air wings an “area of effect” of over 8 million square miles, Donnelly said during a panel at the Sea-Air-Space conference. With the addition of the MQ-25 Stingray unmanned tanker and the F/A-XX, the area of effect is expected to increase to 11 million square miles.

“That area of effect is important because that’s also the area of uncertainty for the air wing that enhances the survivability of the strike crew, but it’s also the tactical reality combined with the attributes of those platforms that allow us to penetrate into complex, ubiquitous ISR that the threat will continue to field and be selective in our targeting, so that we can be efficient and persist longer,” he said.

Adm. James Kilby, acting chief of naval operations, declined to provide a timeline for when the F/A-XX award might be announced.

“I don’t want to get ahead of the contract decision,” Kilby told reporters on the sidelines of the Sea-Air-Space conference. “It’s a decision at the secretarial level and above, and they’re working that now.”

He added: “But I will tell you, we need F/A-XX in the United States Navy, just like the Air Force does [need a next-gen fighter]. I mean, we’re talking about a fight in the Pacific. We fight together as a joint force, so having that capability is very important for us.”

Brandi Vincent contributed reporting.

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The two services have discussed how to keep their sixth-generation aircraft — the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) platform and F/A-XX, respectively — complementary, but they’re running two separate programs that feature different airframes and propulsion systems.

As they continue development work on the different aircraft, Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said the Air Force and the Navy should consider areas of joint collaboration — similar to the Pentagon’s acquisition strategy for the F-35 Lightning II.

“I would ultimately like to see — and I’ve stressed this to the Air Force and the Navy — that when we consider what we’re going to build next is [to] do what we did with the F-35, with a caveat to that,” Kelly said Saturday during a meeting with reporters during the Reagan National Defense Forum. “I think it helps if we can jointly build whatever the next system is. I think that would be a positive thing.”

He didn’t elaborate on the “caveat” that he was contemplating.

The F-35 fifth-gen fighter jet was born from the Joint Strike Fighter program, an effort to develop a single family of aircraft to replace a range of legacy platforms for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps — as well as for select international partners. The plane has multiple variants but all share the same basic design, avionics system, stealth technology and single-engine configuration.

The comments from Kelly come after the Air Force on Thursday announced it would defer a decision on the NGAD platform to the upcoming Trump administration. The service originally planned to award a contract for the aircraft by the end of 2024, but decided to pause the program’s selection process earlier this year due to risks posed by budget uncertainty and advancements in new technologies.

Meanwhile, the Navy is marching forward on its own sixth-gen fighter — currently known as the F/A-XX. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti told reporters in October that the sea service was in the process of source selection and is still committed to fielding the aircraft in the 2030s.

In a recent interview with Aviation Week, Rear Adm. Michael Donnelly, director of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations’ air warfare division, emphasized that the F/A-XX is independent of the Air Force’s NGAD. Notably, the sea service’s aircraft will feature a different airframe and leverage a derivative-type engine — as opposed to the Air Force’s adaptive-cycle jet engine technology being developed through the Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) program.

When asked about the differences, Kelly said that the two services “should sit down and talk about it.”

As for NGAD, Kelly acknowledged that the Air Force made the right decision to pause the program and decide the best way to move forward, especially considering how quickly adversaries are developing new capabilities that can better detect and destroy U.S. military systems. 

“These high-value assets are going to be held at risk. And how are we going to best deal with it? Maybe it is a sixth-gen fighter,” he said. “I think some of this technology has advanced very quickly, so I do agree with the secretary of the Air Force that it is appropriate to kind of take a pause here and figure out what direction we should go.”

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The services want their respective robotic wingmen to have common aircraft architecture, communications links, autonomy architecture and ground-control segments, Brig. Gen. Dale White, PEO for fighters and advanced aircraft, told reporters Wednesday during a roundtable at AFA’s Air, Space and Cyber conference.

“We do have those four focus areas that allow us to leverage the interoperability that we think we need [for] a CCA because this is not just a single-service solution, and we know that going in,” he said.

Both the Air Force and the Navy want their CCA drones to fly alongside their sixth-generation fighter jets — the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) and the F/A-XX fighters, respectively — as well as be compatible with aircraft currently in the fleet. 

The Air Force is currently planning for 1,000 such systems, and it hopes to have the initial iteration ready for fielding before the end of this decade. At the same time, the Navy already has draft requirements documents and a draft acquisition strategy in the works, according to an August report by Aviation Week.

White noted that the Air Force’s collaboration with the Navy isn’t about each of their requirements, “but the fundamentals of what it takes to make a CCA capability successful.”

Both of the services have indicated that they want to pass off control of each other’s robotic wingmen, and there has already been cross-service work done in regards to the networking components that will be needed to optimize CCAs.

During a separate roundtable discussion with reporters on Monday, Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter highlighted the benefit of working with the Navy, especially as the sea service continues developing sophisticated networking technologies.

“I think what’s really driving us together is that in many ways, the missions we’re looking to perform are very common,” Hunter said. “If the Navy has a solution that really works — and in some cases they do — then it pays for us to adopt it and vice versa.”

Despite predicting that future missions will require the Air Force and Navy to have some common baselines for their CCAs, White emphasized that the services’ still operate in vastly different domains. Because of this, the four common components will still allow for adaptability to different environments, he said.

“Now each service has a little more flexibility to go off and address specific requirements,” White said. “In the Navy’s case, marinisation is very different. I don’t have that challenge. So that’s the kind of flexibility.”

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