Design analysis of the F-47, USAF’s just unveiled 6th gen fighter jet

US president trump, alongside the secretary of defense and air force generals, unveiled the long awaited next generation advanced manned fighter. Part of the ANGAD family of systems. So what do we know about it? Its name is gonna be the F-47. Where did that come from? Who the heck knows. F-35's designation had already skipped a lot of numbers, Curiously, the current trump's presidency is 47th in the US history. Anyway. The contract was won by Boeing. Which may be due to air force's dissatisfaction with Lockheed Martin. All that's known about plane's appearance comes from two image renders, released by the air force. They show a plane with a very distinct shine starting from the plane's nose. One of the images pretty clearly suggests canards, with a high dihedral angle, meaning pointing upwards. The other image doesn't show those canards though the whole image is more artistic and more of the plane is hidden in the clouds and vapor. Curiously, the wings seem to have the same dihedral angle. That is quite unusual and likely there due to stealth reasons. Planes like F-22, F-35 and China's J-20 and J-36 all have a potential radar signal trap when looked from the side, right where the wing meets the lower fuselage. F-47 seems to be avoiding that spot with a single diamond-like cross section when looked at from below or the sides. There is of course some similarity with Boeing's bird of prey demonstrator aircraft. That was a tiny plane which flew in the 1990s. It allegedly managed such a low radar cross section that it could be seen by naked eye, but not tracked by fighter jet radar, even from just a few miles away. Its alleged radar cross section value was minus 70 decibels. Orders of magnitude less than F-22's minus 40 decibels. And that was with 30 year old stealth technology. The rear half of the F-47 is not visible, so nothing can be really said about it. But two more details are interesting. One, the canopy looks fairly wide, compared to the rest of the plane. And two, the front landing gear shows a single wheel. Unlike, for example, the twin landing gear of the much bigger and heavier Chinese J-36 fighter. So it seems plausible that this plane is not really some huge 50 foot wingspan, 70 foot long behemoth. It's quite plausible that it's around F-22's size or even smaller. Sure, it's theoretically possible the wide cockpit features side by side seating, but would the plane then have a single wheel front landing gear? Probably not. For the longest time, the air force hinted at a need for the 6th gen fighter possibly being quite large and heavy. That seems to be the route China picked with its J-36. But since last year, the air force also suggested a smaller F-35 sized plane might also be viable. This may indeed be what we're seeing now with the shown F-47 renders. The air force also released this statement by General Oliven, its chief of staff. Various expected superlatives are used. F-47 is to be the most advanced, lethal and most adaptable fighter ever. But some curious details also followed. It's designed to outpace, outmatch and outmaneuver any adversary. Now, outmaneuvering is strange as next gen planes are generally not considered to put focus on maneuverability, due to lack of large control surfaces. But it could be that maneuverability mentioned there is more like agility. That General Oliven isn't talking about turning. Instead, he may be talking about plane's ability to rapidly change location and altitude. That might be achieved by its next generation engines. Combining best of both worlds. Turbofan mode for fuel efficiency and turbojet mode when power is needed. The General's statement also holds several eyebrow raisers. The F-47 will have significantly longer range than US 5th generation fighters. F-35 holds the edge there, with nearly 900 miles of combat radius in an air to air mission. Now, how can a small sized fighter jet significantly outrange that? Well, those advanced engines have been in development for a long time, and engine makers touted at least 25% in fuel efficiency savings. F-35 is also an overengineered multirole plane. It's designed to fly for 40 years, hauling bombs. F-47's airframe may be designed to last just half as long. Indeed, some years ago, the Air Force was exploring successive iterative designs to quickly replace one another, rather than sticking with a single design for decades. And the F-47 may be designed to only hold a few AMRAAM sized air to air missiles. If there are indeed gonna be more than 5 drones accompanying each F-47, which the Air Force strongly hinted at earlier, there may not be need for more than 4 or so missiles. As the drones would really be the missile carriers and shooters. Novel construction methods using metal printing, combined with all said so far, might allow more room for fuel and less weight. Leading to not just 25, but perhaps even 50% more range over the F-35. In theory, the plane may have just one engine, which might lead to further weight savings. General Alvin also admitted multiple ex-plane demonstrators flew for the last 5 years. And that F-47 has unprecedented maturity. So much so that the prototype will fly during Trump's presidency, meaning by 2028 at the latest. That's indeed a bit quicker than F-35 or F-22 flew after being selected. That being said, several more years always elapse for testing and refinements after the first flight. So first serial produced airframes may not reach the Air Force before 2032 or so, with initial operational capability declared around 2035 or so. That's Binkov's guess, of course. Even that would be slightly quicker induction into service than the past fighter jets had. Furthermore, the F-47 was quoted to cost less than the F-22, with the Air Force having more of them in the inventory. Once again, that points to the design not being some huge super advanced starship, but a more manageable design, perhaps in between of F-35 and F-22 in size, only more advanced. Cost is a relative thing. The sole fact there are to be more planes means the overall cost can be split among more airframes to get a lower price per airframe. After many produced, even flyaway costs can be kept low. That's why the F-35 is currently cheaper than the F-15EX. In previous years, before a small scale option was mulled, ANGAD was described as costing multiple hundreds of millions, and that only 200 or so might be affordable. So this may be another indication that we're looking at a smaller, cheaper solution. But with drone formations and tanker aircraft, a super large aircruiser may not be needed. Future will surely bring more info on the F-47. But it seems the US has been preparing itself for this for quite some time. Perhaps even before the alleged pause in ANGAD program, which came in the summer of 2024. Boeing has had new buildings constructed even before that. And we will conclude this video with a curious thought. What if the seeming inclusion of canards, Boeing as the winner, and the overall size, all suggest that the Navy's design is gonna be a variant of the Air Force's one? We will see. But Boeing winning that contract too is looking rather plausible. Come mid 2030s, US adversaries may get to see just how much of a capability leap the F-47 is. And bink of hopes, we will learn about the plane more even sooner. So we can do a comparison video with the Chinese 6th gen fighters.