An F/A-18 Hornet assigned to the Gladiators of Strike Fighter Attack Squadron (VFA) 106 prepares to launch from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Apprentice Alex Millar/Released)
AFA WARFARE 2025 — Lockheed Martin is out of the running for the Navy’s sixth-generation fighter jet program, known as Next Generation Air Dominance or F/A-XX, Breaking Defense has learned.
A source with knowledge of the program told Breaking Defense that Lockheed submitted a bid to the Navy, but the proposal did not satisfy the service’s criteria. The company is now no longer proceeding with the bid. The Navy previously told Breaking Defense in November that the service was evaluating proposals, but it is unclear when Lockheed was knocked out of the competition.
The outcome leaves a horse race between Northrop Grumman and Boeing to replace the venerable F/A-18 and E/A-18 with a new air superiority fighter. At stake for Northrop is its first fighter contract since the F-14 Tomcat, famed for its appearance in the original Top Gun movie; at stake for Boeing is the future of its fighter arm, which has seen a massive investment in its St. Louis facility on a gamble that the company will win a sixth-gen contract from the US military.
Lockheed referred a request for comment to the Navy. The Navy did not respond to requests for comment by deadline.
Lockheed, which cornered the market on fifth-generation fighters through its ubiquitous F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the F-22 Raptor, still has a shot to build a sixth-generation jet through the Air Force’s separate fighter competition, also known as Next Generation Air Dominance, where the company is facing off against Boeing.
The F/A-XX program is the highest-profile aircraft competition in the Navy in two decades, but the service has kept the effort highly secretive. Little is known about the capabilities or requirements of the aircraft, aside from the fact that it will be built to complement the F-35 aboard the service’s warships and will have a different airframe and engine than the Air Force’s sixth-gen fighter effort.
John Phelan, the Trump administration’s pick to become the next Navy secretary, characterized F/A-XX as a “next-generation aircraft, offering significant advancements in operational reach and capacity within contested environments” in written answers to questions from lawmakers published last week.
The program “is intended to enable Carrier Strike Groups to outpace adversaries while maintaining naval air dominance,” and will involve collaboration with the Air Force and Marine Corps on autonomy, mission systems, communication architectures, and autonomous combat drones, he wrote [PDF].
In its fiscal 2025 budget request, the Navy delayed about $1 billion of research and development funding that had been slated for F/A-XX in order to fund other readiness priorities while keeping the service’s budget within the constraints of the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
“We’re absolutely committed to the capacity and lethality of the carrier wing,” Rear Adm. Ben Reynolds, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget, told reporters in March 2024. “The capacity [and] the firepower of the air wing is orders of magnitude above anything else that [the Defense Department] has.”
Navy officials have publicly remained committed to awarding an F/A-XX contract this year, a contrast with the Air Force, which put its NGAD program on hold last year as it assessed the program. The Air Force conducted an internal analysis last year, which supported the development and fielding of a manned sixth generation fighter, but officials punted a decision on whether to continue the program to the Trump administration.
Stephen Feinberg, the nominee for deputy defense secretary, told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that the decision on the Air Force program could be made by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or President Donald Trump.
Justin Katz in Washington contributed to this report.
