The U.S. arms giant Northrop Grumman recently released a promotional video again, showing its candidate program for the U.S. Navy's F/A-XX fighter project, providing the most complete public appearance to date for this next-generation carrier-based sixth-generation aircraft.
The timing of the release of the video is quite intriguing: On April 20, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Daryl Caudle stated at the Naval Alliance "Sea-Air-Space 2026" exhibition that the Navy is about to decide between Northrop Grumman and Boeing to continue advancing the F/A-XX project. Subsequently, Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy Worden publicly emphasized that the company has the industrial capabilities to mass-produce a new generation of fighter jets, obviously intending to build momentum for this large order worth billions of dollars.
The computer-generated short film released this time is not only a marketing move, but also gives the outside world more intuitive clues about the final configuration and mission positioning of F/A-XX. From the perspective of the overall aerodynamic layout, this plan is highly consistent with the "multi-purpose carrier-based fighter" positioning set by the U.S. Navy for the F/A-XX, rather than the full-time air superiority fighter preferred by the Air Force. The lines and contours of the fuselage are also said to have obvious "family resemblance" to the YF-23 "Black Widow II" that lost the F-22 bid in the 1990s, showing the continuation of Northrop Grumman's years of accumulation of technical lines in the field of stealth high-speed fighter jets.
Different from the previous partial renderings, this video clearly shows for the first time that the aircraft has a vertical tailless layout. The front edge of the fuselage maintains the "broken line" fuselage side strips visible in previous exposures, but the traditional vertical tail has been completely canceled to reduce the radar reflection cross-section in both high-frequency and low-frequency bands, further enhancing the stealth performance. In order to cooperate with the overall stealth design, the air intake is arranged in a piggy-back arrangement on the upper surface of the fuselage. This approach helps reduce the detection probability of ground radar and infrared sensors, but it also causes some industry insiders to question its air intake performance in high-angle-of-attack combat conditions. The article pointed out that considering that the F/A-XX is classified as a sixth-generation fighter, its future air combat form is likely to be based on long-range detection and beyond-visual-range attack, rather than close-range circling combat in the traditional sense. This design trade-off is easier to understand.
In terms of airfoil shape, the aircraft uses a diamond-shaped main wing, which implies that it will have strong advantages in high-speed cruising efficiency and long-range range, but it may need to sacrifice certain low-speed maneuverability. The video footage also shows that the outer section of the wing appears to have a folding structure. This detail is highly consistent with its identity as a carrier-based aircraft: in the limited deck and hangar space of U.S. aircraft carriers, folding wings are almost a fixed configuration. The landing gear design is also a "platform" for carrier-based applications: the nose landing gear is a reinforced two-wheel design and is obviously equipped with an ejection tow bar, indicating that the aircraft is envisioned to adopt the catapult take-off and arrested landing (CATOBAR) method, taking off from the aircraft carrier through a catapult and recovering the arresting cable.
The cockpit cover adopts a large-size design, which also triggered speculation in the industry about the two-seater model. Some analysts believe that in future operations with high mission loads, the aircraft may be launched in a two-seat version, with the front-seat pilot also serving as the "mission commander" to coordinately command the swarm of "loyal wingman" drones to perform complex strike and reconnaissance missions. However, Northrop Grumman has not yet given more technical details on the cockpit layout and specific mission systems.
While the F/A-XX project is still in the program selection and technology competition stages, it is still unknown how many of the configuration features shown in this video will ultimately be retained on the physical prototype, and how many will be modified or even abandoned in subsequent development. What is certain is that before the Navy officially makes a decision, the technical competition and publicity war surrounding this next-generation carrier-based sixth-generation aircraft will continue to heat up.