The Pentagon has selected a winner for the Navy’s next-generation carrier fighter competition and could announce the decision within weeks, according to people briefed on the program. The F/A-XX award will decide whether Boeing or Northrop Grumman leads development of the aircraft expected to replace the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and anchor U.S. carrier aviation into the 2040s.

Reuters reported that the decision has been made after years of delay, engineering-capacity concerns and budget disputes. Congress provided roughly $750 million for the program in 2025 and another $1.4 billion in fiscal 2026, pushing against proposals inside the Pentagon to slow development.

A fighter program shaped by range and survivability

The Navy has disclosed few technical details, but F/A-XX is intended to be the crewed centerpiece of a broader Next Generation Air Dominance family of systems. It is expected to emphasize stealth, longer range, networked sensors and the ability to coordinate with uncrewed aircraft. Those attributes reflect the central operational problem for carrier aviation: modern anti-ship missiles, long-range sensors and advanced fighters can force carriers to operate farther from contested coastlines.

Defense News reported that the first production F/A-XX aircraft are expected in the 2030s and that Super Hornets may remain in service into the 2040s. The overlap means the Navy will have to fund a new fighter while sustaining and modernizing the fleet it is replacing.

The service’s latest budget request underscores how broadly it is trying to modernize. The Department of the Navy’s FY2027 request totals $377.5 billion, a more than $70 billion increase over the previous year, with the department describing the plan as a generational investment in maritime dominance, readiness and modernization.

The current fleet creates urgency

The Super Hornet entered fleet service in the late 1990s and remains the carrier air wing’s principal strike fighter. A Congressional Budget Office availability study found that Super Hornets experienced faster age-related declines in availability than earlier F/A-18C/D Hornets. At age 10, Super Hornet availability was about 18 percentage points lower than the older Hornets had been at the same age.

That does not mean the aircraft is obsolete; Block III upgrades, improved sensors and service-life work are intended to keep it relevant for years. But the maintenance trend illustrates why the Navy cannot indefinitely defer a successor. Older fighters generally require more maintenance, parts and depot work, while a peer conflict would demand high sortie generation over long distances.

A newer CBO fleet projection released in July estimates that the Department of Defense’s fighter inventory will shrink from about 3,300 aircraft to roughly 3,000 by 2029 before growing again in the 2030s. CBO projects that more than half of the fighter fleet will be stealthy beginning in 2033 and assumes F/A-XX arrivals later in the decade.

The industrial-base decision matters as much as the design

The F/A-XX competition is also a choice about which company carries a large portion of the nation’s next-generation combat-aircraft workload. Boeing won the Air Force’s F-47 engineering and manufacturing development contract in 2025. The Air Force’s award announcement described the F-47 as a sixth-generation system intended to replace the F-22 and operate as part of a connected family of crewed and uncrewed capabilities.

If Boeing also wins F/A-XX, the company would hold both major U.S. sixth-generation fighter development programs. That could create technology and supply-chain efficiencies, but it would also concentrate enormous engineering demand at one contractor. Pentagon officials have previously cited those capacity concerns when arguing for a slower Navy schedule.

Northrop Grumman offers a different industrial profile. The company is already leading the B-21 Raider bomber program and has deep experience in stealth design and large-scale military aircraft systems. Its corporate lineage also includes Grumman’s long history of carrier aircraft, including the F-14 Tomcat. A Northrop award would distribute next-generation fighter work across two prime contractors, but would still compete for many of the same specialized suppliers and engineering skills.

China is the pacing context

Defense leaders have repeatedly framed next-generation airpower around the challenge posed by China. When the Air Force announced the F-47, the Defense Department said future conflicts would place a premium on air superiority against peer adversaries. The Pentagon’s F-47 statement described a family of systems combining a stealthy crewed fighter with drones and other networked capabilities.

The Navy faces a similar problem from the sea. China has expanded its carrier force, developed advanced long-range missiles and fielded increasingly capable fighters. An American carrier air wing that lacks sufficient range could be forced to choose between exposing the carrier to greater risk or operating from distances that limit striking power.

The contract award will not solve that challenge immediately. Engineering development, testing, carrier integration, weapons certification and production will take years. But the selection will determine the architecture, industrial team and funding path for one of the Navy’s most consequential weapons programs. After repeated delays, the decision now approaching is less about a single airplane than about whether U.S. carrier aviation can evolve fast enough for the operating environment expected in the 2030s.