The airplane that will follow the F/A-18 Super Hornet onto the Navy’s carrier decks now has a builder. The F/A-XX, the Navy’s sixth-generation strike fighter, went to Boeing when the Navy announced its selection on Sept. 29, 2026, putting the Super Hornet’s manufacturer in charge of its successor.
It is Boeing’s second sixth-generation fighter award, after the Air Force’s F-47 in 2025. The design itself remains classified. What is public is the shape of the contract, the aircraft it is meant to retire and the factory Boeing says it has been building with two new fighters in mind.
Boeing’s Sept. 29 release, datelined St. Louis, says the Navy awarded the company “a multi-billion-dollar contract to produce its F/A-XX aircraft” and states that “F/A-XX is intended to replace the service’s fleet of F/A-18 Super Hornets.” The release gives no dollar figure. “It’s an honor to be selected to produce the Navy’s first sixth-generation platform,” said Steve Parker, president and chief executive officer of Boeing Defense, Space & Security.
Parker tied the win directly to the Air Force program. “Delivering two advanced fighters in parallel was always our plan, and we invested accordingly,” he said in the release. Boeing says construction continues on what it calls its secure manufacturing facility, “the largest in the U.S.,” located in St. Louis, and describes it as part of an all-digital design and manufacturing system. Those are Boeing’s own descriptions of a plant still under construction.
The company’s claims for the aircraft are broad: Boeing says the fighter “will revolutionize advancements in open mission systems architecture, advanced mission systems and operational reach and capacity.” Open mission systems means an architecture built so new sensors and software can be added without redesigning the aircraft. None of those claims can yet be checked against a flying airplane, and Boeing adds that “the technical and programmatic details of F/A-XX remain classified under U.S. national security and export laws.”
The F/A-XX development contract and its test aircraft
The dollar figure came from the Pentagon, not from Boeing. USNI News, reporting Sept. 29, quoted the Pentagon’s announcement: “The contract is valued at more than $20B for the full-scale development phase. The contract procures multiple test aircraft for ground, airworthiness, systems, and weapons integration testing.”
That wording matters for what has actually been bought. Full-scale development is the phase that turns a design into flying test articles and proves them out, before any production lot. The announcement, as USNI News quoted it, buys “multiple test aircraft” without giving a number, and neither the Boeing release nor that announcement gives a first-flight date.
USNI News also set out the Navy’s reason for the program. The new aircraft “is set to enter the fleet as the first Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets leave the fleet in the 2030s,” the outlet reported, and “a primary mission for the new fighter will be to extend the effective strike range of the U.S. carrier air wing that has steadily shrunk over the last 20 years.”
Super Hornets, Growlers and the F-35C
The replacement reaches beyond the strike fighter. The War Zone’s Sept. 29 report states that Boeing “will deliver the platform to augment and eventually replace legacy F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and EA-18G Growlers beginning in the 2030s, and operate alongside the F-35C.” The Growler is the electronic-attack version of the Super Hornet airframe, so the new design inherits two jobs on the carrier deck, not one.
The same report records how the field narrowed. “Boeing had been competing against Northrop Grumman for the F/A-XX contract,” The War Zone wrote, adding that “an earlier down-select reportedly eliminated Lockheed Martin back in March 2025.” Neither the Navy nor Boeing has published the scoring behind the decision.
On timing, Naval News reported on Sept. 29 that the Navy announced its choice “late on September 29th” and that the F/A-XX would replace the F/A-18E/F “likely sometime in the late 2030s.” That estimate is the outlet’s, not a Navy schedule.
For now, the record is a selection, a development contract the Pentagon values at more than $20 billion, and a St. Louis plant that Boeing says is being built to turn out two sixth-generation fighters at once. The next verifiable step is the first of the test aircraft the contract buys.
Top image: An F/A-18E Super Hornet, the jet the F/A-XX is meant to replace, launches from USS Ronald Reagan in 2016. Image Credit: U.S. Navy — Public domain / Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Combat Rated editors prior to publication.