>>64533425
>spelt AMRAAM wrong
just end me

>>64533425
>F-47, which the USAF has said is now in production
It hasn't even had its official first flight

>>64533425
Nigger show me the fighters I wanna coooooooommmmmm I don't care about the 10th drone wingman copilot cuck

>>64533461
Oh, fuck off. Boeing's demonstrator flew in 2019. The one the are building right now is the LRIP test article to final mass production specs, set to fly in 2028.

>>64533425
>which the USAF has said is now in production
Didn't the USAF say that the F47 was now years behind schedule just last month?

>>64533488
>Boeing's demonstrator
so the F-47 hasn't even had its official first flight

>LRIP test article to final mass production specs
lol
lmao

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>>64533500
Wow, that zigger militarywatchmagazine piece really did a number with the thirdies, they're all spouting the same thing now.
Here is everything else to say otherwise.
>Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall announced on June 1, 2022 that NGAD program technologies have matured enough to allow the program to move to the engineering, manufacture, and design phase of development.
>Boeing’s confidence was evident, having started construction on its new advanced production facility in St. Louis nearly two years ago [in 2023], well in advance of the March 2025 contract award.
>A strong point of the Boeing proposal, which won the EMD contract on March 21, 2025, was its level of maturity. This digital-twin modeling allows engineers to predict manufacturing issues before physical testing begins, which is one reason officials believe Boeing can deliver faster and more effectively.
>People will be surprised by how fast you see the F-47 flying. We're positioned to move quickly—we're 100 percent resourced and ready to deliver on an accelerated timeline that matches the Air Force's urgency.
>In the few short months since we made the [F-47] announcement, they are already beginning to manufacture the first article. We’re ready to go fast.

https://boeing.mediaroom.com/news-releases-statements?item=131264&hl=en-US
https://simpleflying.com/real-reason-boeing-building-f-47-stealth-fighter-not-lockheed/?hl=en-US
https://news.usni.org/2022/06/24/report-to-congress-on-air-force-next-generation-air-dominance-program
https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2025/8/29/f47-will-hit-skies-faster-than-normal-says-boeing-exec

>>64533503
Your point is? They never said it was officially flying. The name was only chosen this year. I wanna talk about the Ghost Bat, fuck off if you're just here to derail things.

>>64533521
>Your point is?
this bit here:
>>64533425
>the highly-classified F-47, which the USAF has said is now in production
is wrong, and so is your understanding of demonstrators and the military aeronautical development process in general

>I wanna talk about the Ghost Bat
What's there to talk about? You don't know jack anyway.

>>64533425
I gotta be honest, I didn't call the RAAF turning mainly fifth gen overnight and actually leading the way on wingman drone development.
Makes sense as a route of investment though, obviously everybody wants them but the RAAF in particular is well resourced, but dwarfed by the PLAAF. I suppose I didn't expect that clear incentive to be first off the line with a force multiplier like that to lead to actual outcomes.
Hopefully it's good enough that everyone just buys it instead of having a dozen redundant programs in aligned countries, but I'm not holding my breath on that.

>>64533528
I quoted that from the article. They're partially right, it's not in FRP but it's in RDT&E/LRIP production, assuming it's following the same test article to combat spec pipeline as the B-21. Go complain to the author about it.
>>64533533
The Aussies really hit the ball out of the park with the P-8 and they're doing it again with the Ghost Bat. While it's clear it's designed for higher value missions, I think the whole 'super expendable' thing is a meme that can be fulfilled by one way munitions and making your AI wingman 2x harder to kill is worth double the price, if it comes to that.

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>>64533425
I have high hopes for it, but there's a reason the US dropped from the Ghost Bat program. Too small.
It's only now they're pushing ahead with test firing on Block 1, but the vehicle is too small.
Block 2 needs to be bigger and more capable before it will have any real utility over Australian distances.

>>64533542
>They're partially right
They're utterly wrong
> it's in RDT&E/LRIP production
that / is deeply disingenuous; RDT&E includes prototypes such as non-combat-worthy test frames, whereas LRIP can include fully-operational front-line combat spec with kill marks even
>Go complain to the author about it
I was tempted, yes
>assuming
and you really shouldn't
>as the B-21
we don't know shit about the B-21 or the B-2, for good reason, and if you read about the history of the F-117 and indeed all aeronautical development of the last 100 years, you should realise that even after achieving IOC let alone first flight, most combat aircraft are far from their full potential or even their standard combat capability
and the F-47 isn't even there yet

>>64533542
I don't think it'll completely go away but I do think that for most missions the prospect of doubling the size of a strike package is much more useful than a semi-disposable set of value-adds to your existing one.
The expendable wingman drone kind of reminds me of the theoretically disposable magazine, I don't think it'll ever be used that way in practice unless something's gone wrong.

>>64533549
A NATO pilot costs over a million dollars and 2-3 years of training, even if a drone can only carry 1/2 the payload of a regular combat jet, if they can get 8 pilots to fly 12 jet-equivalents that adds up

>>64533553
To be clear I'm talking a high value drone versus a low value drone here, I'm agreeing that the higher value drone represents the more valuable real world asset.

>>64533547
Moving the goalposts now are we? I never said anything about IOC. Go and tell that to the author, I urge you once again.
>>64533546
I'm pretty sure the YFQ-42A is smaller than the MQ-28 so that can't be the main deciding factor. GA managed to bake in a 2x AMRAAM IWB so I don't see why Boeing can't.

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>>64533533
Its probably the most successful of the known types out there and I think its caught a lot of people napping as half the world thinks Australia is next to Germany and the other half discounts the place as a desert full of dingo's eating babies. Which it sort of is, but there's also a lot of open space, no way of finding out exactly what's going on and can be done in a way which no one is looking at either- combine that with a lot of European, Korean, UK and American military companies just sort of tucked away in sleepy industrial suburbs. Making 'some stuff' on the quiet, on relatively small budgets and with a lot of international brains being thrown into the mix.
Everyone is looking at the US, UK and Europes backyard all the time
The other advantage is that Australia does give a fair bit of incentive to work here and it does offload a lot of the budget from the home countries to continue that next-step. So if Boeing in this case has a great idea, but the whole US MIC is in some kind of retarded bun fight for funding, they can just build a facility or two in Australia and work on it under Australian funding, property and make full use of the fact that its a good economy, super stable country, does its taxes and there's not a huge amount of general shitfuckery going on where there's open borders for people to just wander in.

There's a fairly long list of fuckups when it come to production, no one's ever going to say Australia is a powerhouse of industry. But it has ironed out a lot of the fuckups to the extent its not as crazy as it has been or can be in other countries, so I think the middle-power, barebones template for development seems to be working out as an alternative to the big budget, project bloated and overdone systems elsewhere in the world.
Think I'm cautiously optimistic for Ghost Bat, meaning its probably more into success than any kind of outright failure at this point

>>64533568
>Moving the goalposts now are we?
No, I'd already proven you wrong on your initial array of assumptions
>I never said anything about IOC
I know, you're too ignorant

>>64533500
Who? What?
The contract was only finalized for award this year.
Americans test fly their planes for 5-7 years typically and then final development takes another 5-7.

The f22 began in 86 and an official plane was in 1997
The f35 was 2001 and 2012
The ngad was only just chosen. It would surprise me if they make 2030, everything else said about it is just bullshit

>>64533547
>we don't know shit about the B-21
We know it was digitally designed like the F-47
We know it's got 6 prototype/test airframes
We know all 6 are being configured into combat capable airframes after the testing period
We know the F-47 program is looking to follow in those footsteps.

>>64533692
yeah
and that's shit, as I said
I'm not complaining exactly; it's clear the US military has decided that it's time to play their cards close to their chest, like in the bad old pre-91 days. if it means they're finally taking China halfway seriously, that's good.
but that aside, we have to face the facts, which is that we don't know jack about these programmes
>all 6 are being configured into combat capable airframes
that old saw
>after the testing period
yeah, nice little weasel word there
"testing period" could well be longer than the life of those airframes

>>64533555>>64533555

Checked. The numbers will be even more lopsided towards CCA drones because the idea is that pilots won't be doing anything more than giving a very broad mission profile to the drones as they swarm in tandem, as per the doctrine. So a US pilot can handle half a dozen drones that act more like an extension of their plane than something they have to control. Just gotta wait for it to come around. The military has been trying to get near full autonomy for 2 decades, just like Tesla has been trying for FSD for 15 years, that's how steep the barrier is, even with gen AI blowing up in the last 5 years.

>>64533712
Look buddy, i'm not arguing that we know everything, i'm just saying the evidence is there.

The B-21 was digitally designed so the "prototype" would be almost a finished design, not a traditional prototype that we would've seen in previous aircraft development programs (F-35/F-22/B-2/F-117, etc).

We know this because the USAF and Northrup have said so. They say the B-21 prototypes were built using production tooling and made the statement that the prototype airframes are in an "almost completely operational configuration." Northrup has also said the prototype airframes have consistently outperformed digital modeling predictions.

And the USAF has said this design philosophy is being used for the F-47 and they expect it to be even faster since they trust it more based on their experience learned from the B-21 design/prototyping.

>>64534186
I'm not arguing either, this is a casual academic inquiry, since none of us hold any significant stake in the F-47.

>the evidence is there
the reason why I'm saying we should distrust this evidence is that they said the exact same thing about the F-35 prototypes. lo and behold, years afterwards they then said "oh we've changed our minds, the testbed airframes shall always be testbed airframes and will never be combat-coded"
I'm not making a judgement here of whether that was a good or bad decision
I'm just saying, given that this happened, this means that it is prudent to assume the same thing will happen to the F-47 too
particularly since for all fighter programmes during the Cold War, the first couple of test airframes never were combat-coded
and so this should remain the baseline assumption until we actually are shown a programme in which they managed to do things differently

this is purely logical, nicht wahr?

>>64534249
Look, I agree that history gives us every reason to be skeptical, especially with the F-35.

However, the difference is that the B-21 program claims to have succeeded where the F-35 failed, and that success is directly attributed to the digital design approach.

The F-35 had to deal with real-world issues like weight, wing cracks, and systems integration that forced its early test aircraft (like the AA-1 and the CTOL/STOVL prototypes) to be non-representative and, eventually, non-upgradeable due to fundamental design changes made after they were built. The decision to retire those early frames was a fix for a failed or incomplete digital model.

In contrast, the B-21 prototypes were built after the digital design was considered mature enough to be production-representative. The USAF and Northrop are explicitly saying:

They built the aircraft on production tooling.

The flight tests are validating the digital design, not revealing major flaws that force redesigns (as happened with the F-35).

The frames are "almost completely operational," meaning the differences are minor (testing equipment/probes) and the airframes are structurally sound for combat missions.

I agree that the Cold War baseline assumption is that test frames never become combat-coded. I'm arguing that the B-21 is the first major US program where they are credibly attempting to reset that baseline, and the F-47 is set to leverage that success even faster.

>>64534249
The F-35 test articles were built under the idea of physical concurrency. The B-21 and F-47 are being built with digital twinning. Two totally different design concepts.

>>64534286
>the difference is that the B-21 program claims to have succeeded
I'm pointing out that we've heard these claims before, so nothing new here
>all-digital design
there's always something new
but anyway,
>I'm arguing that the B-21 is the first major US program where they are credibly attempting to reset that baseline, and the F-47 is set to leverage that success even faster
I'm perfectly open to the possibility, yeah?
just saying I'm not going to count these eggs, I want to see at least one hatching first, just one such successful aircraft, before I believe it
that's not a lot to ask, in my opinion

>>64534318
>concurrency
they dressed it up as something new but it's just restating the same thing they've been doing since WW2

>>64534373
I understand and respect that skepticism, especially given the F-35's history. It's a valid position to take until the aircraft are actually delivered to the combat units.

However, I'm simply pushing back on your initial statement that the claim of F-47 being 'in production' is 'utterly wrong.'

Based on the B-21's model, the term 'production' now likely means:

Manufacturing LRIP frames using the same production-representative tooling that will be scaled up for Full-Rate Production (FRP).

These airframes are designed to be combat-capable from the start, needing only the removal of test equipment and the insertion of the latest operational software to become front-line assets.

Therefore, the claim that F-47 is 'in production' is not necessarily a lie; it's a statement reflecting the new, accelerated definition of production enabled by digital design. It's a difference in definition, not necessarily a difference in truth. The public language has changed because the process has changed.

>>64534373
Clearly digital engineering tools have not changed since WW2

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>>64534823
see:
>there's always something new

take warship-building for example. I can tell you all about semi and fully computerised design, and new discoveries in hydrodynamics, and modular shipbuilding. (fun fact: even during the Cold War, they had to figure out hullforms by building multiple models and putting them through their paces in a testing tank. you can't computerise what you don't know the equations for.)

does this mean that future warships will be on time, and will deliver on all the promises of the designers and manufacturers, because it's all digitally-designed now?
does it fuck

>>64534919
That's a NAVSEA issue, simple as. Also tell me a 6th gen from today is like a 4th gen from 50 years ago. Besides radar and VLS, ships haven't changed much in terms of design. We still sail 50 year old carriers.

>>64534928
the point is that successive generations of warships and combat jets have had significant improvements made to their design process, so saying that the F-47 is built with X new technique cuts little ice. it all sounded just as hopeful and optimistic the last time, and the time before that, and the time before that. look what happened.
>this time it's different
is a tired refrain, judge the pudding after we eat it.

>>64534946
>>64534919
> completely ignores the actual reasonable response >>64534440
many such cases

It's okay to admit when you're outclassed.

>>64534954
I didn't bother responding because there's nothing left to say. anon has his take, I have my take; this has been a good conversation.

>outclassed
You have to learn not to take everything as a competition in which you have to prove your superiority.

>>64533425
>Make a cool CCA thread
>Dark skinned thirdoids swarm the thread about the F-47 to derail

non whites, including Russians, should be banned from the internet.

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>>64534919
Tow tank testing is very costly and time consuming. If the ship has a conventional hull form, and propeller & rudder installation, they can just skip this and use CFD instead. CFD today can give very accurate estimation of seakeeping capabilities and power requirements.

However, navies will always ask for a towing tank test for verification.

but i have seen cases where tow tank test verifies CFD data, but requested performance can't be achieved in sea trials, kek.

>>64535017
>If the ship has a conventional hull form, and propeller & rudder installation, they can just skip this
yeah but especially for warships, they were always developing new hullforms, and testing different weights and heights, so they practically never skipped this
and in the early days they were designing by sheer empiricism; that is, they'd take the fattest hullform they thought likely, and test it; then plane and trim the model, and test again; and plane and trim that, and test again; repeat
from this set of data they'd see which performed best and go with that

>but requested performance can't be achieved in sea trials, kek
unsurprisingly
I don't know why exactly, maybe you need a degree in marine architecture at least to know why, but from my casual reading on the subject, building a warship is more like constructing a building than churning out cars; nothing goes to spec and even individual ships in a class will have different performances

>>64534954
It's all chatgpt garbage.

>>64534975
You can tell thirdies by their complete lack of knowledge surrounding anything other than the biggest thirdie cope weapons. I appreciate their bumps.

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>>64533568
>m pretty sure the YFQ-42A is smaller than the MQ-28
Yeah but designed with no internal weapons bay from the outset, as far as I understand.
I'm sure Block 2 could change some things but my worry is that they make too many Block 1's and don't move on to something bigger.
All fighters and CCAs world-wide are getting bigger.

>>64533425
I really, really hope we see a hairbrained Russian attempt at copying this so I can break out “Ghost Blyatt”

>>64536110
They've actually stopped making Block 1s and are on Block 2 right now. I wouldn't bee too worried as Block 3 will be the one in mass production.

>>64534132
Fwiw many other companies have succeeded at FSD because they do it with the appropriate sensors. Tesla is trying to do it with optical only but are running in to the same problems humans do in that visible light kinda sucks due to the sun/atmospheric conditions being a really big source of noise.

It’s a somewhat apt analogy in that the battlefield is also quite noisy due to EW and just a lot happening with frequency use in the area. But the military has it much harder because they have people intentionally trying to blind their vehicles and it literally is worth billions of dollars to figure out how to do so for many countries. Tesla could succeed probably this year if they picked something that used a more viable frequency/sampling method.

I’m genuinely curious if there’s an “aha” moment or technology for the modern autonomous attack vehicles to get over some sort of hump we need to make them as good as the bottom 10% of USAF pilots in terms of effectiveness and mistakes. That’s probably enough to revolutionize the autonomous attack systems on its own. I suspect we are limited by on device processing power and that needle probably just tipped past that point few years ago. Now on to testing the versions of those that can sustain high G’s and EW heavy environments. I’d imagine we could probably get the results we want per mission right now with an artisanal approach but the goal is how do we do high value missions extremely reliably with an off the shelf ready solution. (Sorry for the book I find this portion of tech interesting and actually practical. Machine learning is pretty weird!)

>>64536346
FSD at level 4, just not level 5 yet. They're still operating within constrained parameters. But yeah, I too wonder if the aha moment will be like a phase or a switch.

wingman refuelling drones are probably more viable than wingman combat drones, they should do those first

>>64536346
>>64536395
Bridging from 'we can instruct this airframe artisanally for a specific test or maybe even specific op to 'a pilot, backseater or Wedgetail crew can task a drone and munition on a target and focus on their other jobs' is going to be the really important hump in making these more than cool, expensive versions of what we've already been doing for 30 years.
The airframe doesn't even matter if the capacity to take advantage reliably enough for real world deployment in real world conditions isn't there.

>>64533542
>I think the whole 'super expendable' thing is a meme
As evidenced by ants. They're not successful...

True, they're not "super expendable", but it's swarm that wins. There is more to the tactic than meme.

Ant is great example for scale, too. One man vs an entire ant colony... Ants will win through numbers, and they're too small to meaningfully target. Sure, technological advantage of man can keep the ants off them, and allow a win, but I don't see that working on munitions scale...

>>64533570
>no one's ever going to say Australia is a powerhouse of industry
Australia had the fourth largest air force in the world at the end of WWII. It supplies most of the world's raw manufacturing materials. If it really wanted to be an industrial powerhouse instead of dicking around, it could.

>>64536468
>Ant is great example for scale, too. One man vs an entire ant colony... Ants will win through numbers, and they're too small to meaningfully target.
Is this an elaborate shitpost? My toddler has already genocided multiple ant nests.

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>>64536401
Those are already in production though, and super expensive for some fucking reason.
>$161.5 Million (For the first three LRIP units)
>The Navy wants to order 76 of these
Even at halved unit costs assuming economies of scale kick in it's still a $9b program.

>>64537887
They're not even trying to half unit cost, and the actual current LRIP unit cost is closer to $215M. The thinking is that the final unit cost will be ~$150-180M.

>>64537887
IIRC the tanker program was a pivot from an X-47 follow on, and Boeing’s offering was a modification of what they had ready for that program. Given that they’ve shown a model of it mounting LRASM before, I think it’s fair to question if it is really only to be a tanker, and if the seemingly absurd unit cost might reflect provisions for a future ISR and/or strike capability to be enabled if the Navy wants to fund it later.

>>64538015
It's already being billed as a UCAV tanker with ISR capabilities.

>>64538015
Is this some creative classification bullshit so congress will approve it? Like 'we know all the Senate Hearings have desperately called for a tanker, so here's one, it's definitely not a dual purpose strike and ISR that you wouldn't approve because we already have a gorillion of those platforms haha'

>>64538183
No, it's a real niche role the USN needs to fill. ~30% of all F/A-18E/F flights are refuelling other F/A-18E/Fs. Not only does the MQ-25 free up an F/A-18E/F from playing tanker, but it ALSO provides more fuel/range to the F/A-18E/F it's refuelling, it also has more loiter time, no pilot fatigue, and has a low observable features.

>>64534132
The US accomplished full teaming autonomy during the X-45A program under Boeing 20 years ago.

>>64538190
I mean that, in addition to the extra strike stuff

>>64538183
Pretty much. It was designed from the start with an "internal mission bay" to hold ISR equipment or munitions, or plug it with a fuel tank to make it a tanker. This pretty much goes all the way back to the X-45a program which then morphed into the X-47c program, that ultimately morphed into the unmanned buddy tanker program we see now. Boeing defense has shown to be extremely capable in this field, and were instrumental in the success of the X-47C even though hit was NG. The hardware and software you see used for in the X-47C was pioneered by Boeing, and the Navy forced them to work with NG software engineers to get the X-47C's software up to speed with taking off and landing on carriers. Even the on-deck controller is Boeing based. Prices can be funky as all services allow some form of overcharging to recoup costs from other programs - as long as those other programs are for the specific service being overcharged. Say Boeing builds something for the Navy and loses money on it based on contract terms, the Navy will allow them to recoup those losses by overcharging on future Navy programs done by Boeing. They're not allowed to recoup losses on an Air Force program by over charging the Navy, though, and this has caused problems before with other programs. I can't recall the exact programs right now, though.

>Because the MQ-25 started off as Boeing’s offering for the Navy’s defunct Unmanned Carrier-Launched Strike & Surveillance program, “that capability to haul weapons or sensors is inherently still built in the airplane. It’s just not something that’s currently activated,” Rutherford told Breaking Defense in an interview.

https://breakingdefense.com/2024/04/boeing-pitches-new-surveillance-strike-missions-for-mq-25-tanker-drone/

>>64533425
Both the Ghost Bat and Ghost Shark programs have made me genuinely excited, thank God the ADF had finally started being sensible. Also I wonder if they are going to test air to ground munitions on the GB?

>>64538398
The Ghost Bat apparently being ahead of schedule is wild, and I know the Ghost Shark snuck up on people, which is appropriate. The strategy of picking some promising industry partners and working closely with them to develop something for an emerging need seems to be working better than a more conventional tender process.
If it all works out it's win-win too. ADF gets precisely what they want and ahead of the pack, the companies involved get a product with a built-in buyer, and Australian industry gets all sorts of new work in sectors where they've got the knowledge but haven't had a proper domestic project for ages.
Australia being on good terms with basically everyone helps too. Nobody's going to be protesting your Australian-made drone purchase the same way they might be your Israeli-made IFV turret.
Hopefully the 'other people buying' doesn't turn as stupid as the E-7.

>>64536567
There is still quite the MIC in place down here, lot of trucks, IFV's and light armour gets made along with very large amounts of commercial, military explosives, drones, small arms and a couple of missile systems by now. Australia has been spending about 2% of its GDP on the military for about the last 28 years or so, which is probably about 0.5-1% less than it should but its still more than much of Europe or Asia has been spending over the same period of time and been enough to at least get the grass roots going in the market. So most of the major arms manufacturers have at least a toe in the local market and that's never a bad thing.
We struggle all the time with big ticket navy and aircraft solutions, those kind of built-strategy, long term projects always seem to end up being fucked with and I can't say its never not been at least just a bit retarded at times

>>64537887
>already in production
only just this year
>super expensive for some fucking reason
first of its kind aircraft always are, to be fair

>>64538015
it's probably a case of "look, it's really a flying wing with cargo pods, you can put anything you like on it"

>>64538183
>creative classification bullshit
doesn't happen

>The Ghost Bat
i have high hopes for CCA's
lets hope it pans out. i 1love their force projection models of them. literally based.

>>64536567
>If it really wanted to be an industrial powerhouse instead of dicking around, it could.
Please. It can hardly man enough for two major shipyards without draining workers from other industries.

>>64539525
The thing looking forwards to the most is the '3d radar'. Even if they can't shoot anything they can be stereoscopic radar receivers.

>>64542580
What is a "3d radar"?

>>64537887
>and super expensive for some fucking reason.
Because its Boeing.