Chinese state media outlets predict America’s sixth-generation fighter, the F-47, will be an expensive boondoggle, though there are signs the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is, at least at some level, taking the threat it poses seriously.
In April, the U.S. Air Force’s China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI) published a round-up of early reactions to the F-47 from official state media sources. The U.S. government considers China a rival superpower, and CASI regularly samples CCP state media to gauge how party leaders react to new information on U.S. weapon programs.
What to know about the F-47
The F-47 is the centerpiece of the Next Generation Air Dominance, or NGAD, program, which will replace the F-22 as America’s premier tool for winning control of unfriendly skies.
In March 2025, President Donald Trump announced that the aircraft maker Boeing won the $20 billion development contract for the F-47, but there were few specifics about the platform.
Then-Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said the F-47 would have significantly longer range, more advanced stealth capabilities, and be easier to support downrange than fifth-generation fighters like the F-22 and the F-35, but still cost less per tail than the F-22. Previous estimates had the unit cost at up to three times that of an F-35. A single F-35 costs about $90 million, while an F-22 costs about $140 million.
Two months later, Allvin posted an infographic saying the Air Force would buy more than 185 F-47s, about enough for a one-to-one replacement of the F-22 fleet. He said the F-47 would also have a combat radius of over 1,000 nautical miles, which would be a key advantage in a long-range fight with China over the Pacific.
The Air Force also wants a brand new engine to power the F-47. Next-Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP), is supposed to reconfigure itself midflight for maximum thrust, efficiency, stealth, or other conditions. But engines are notoriously complicated machines, so NGAP brings more uncertainty to the development process.
‘America’s Sputnik moment’
The high cost, complicated technology, and the unpredictable nature of U.S. budget cycles led several Chinese state media outlets, including the Chongqing Morning Post, Reference News, China Central Television, and the Strait Herald to question whether the F-47 would ever enter service. One official said that even if it did, the development timeline would be so long that the aircraft would be out of date by the time it was ready for combat.
One Chinese military expert, Jin Yinan, said the only reason the U.S. was embarking on the F-47 project was to try to hold a vanishing technological edge over China.
CASI quoted Jin writing that the U.S. Air Force is amidst “an aviation equivalent of America’s ‘Sputnik moment.’ In this context…the U.S. must grit its teeth and swiftly launch the sixth-generation fighter program, even if it meant cutting costs elsewhere.”
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Modernizing fighter and bomber fleets will likely mean a longer wait to modernize the Air Force’s geriatric tankers, and other vital support aircraft like those that conduct airborne early warning. But Chinese observers were even more skeptical about the F-47’s manufacturer, Boeing.
What are the risks facing the F-47?
According to CASI, the state newspaper China Youth Daily was surprised that Boeing was picked for the F-47, while other outlets said the decision had more to do with Boeing’s financial importance than the merits of its fighter design.
The outlet Red Star News said picking Boeing was like “sending coal in the snow,” an idiom which CASI explained means sending help in Boeing’s hour of need.
Boeing’s had a rough decade, thanks to what many say are years of corporate mismanagement and regulatory negligence. On the civilian side, a series of deadly crashes and mishaps involving Boeing aircraft cost the company tens of billions of dollars in cancelled orders.
Boeing has also hemorrhaged billions on military projects, such as the KC-46 tanker and the T-7 jet trainer. The development of both platforms is years behind schedule due to structural or technological issues.
Chinese observers also pointed out that each F-47 will likely depend on hundreds of pounds of rare earth metals, which, among other things, enhance targeting systems and keep subsystems running at high temperatures. Nearly all of those metals are mined or processed in China.
Despite these doubts, CASI noted that in most articles, state media tacitly acknowledged the F-47 may represent leaps in range, stealth, and human-machine synergy, which could put potential Chinese military operations in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea at risk.
To learn more about the F-47 and what China’s government thinks of it, you can check out our YouTube coverage here.
