Marines starting early work on sixth-gen fighter jet concepts

WASHINGTON — The Marine Corps is starting to mull concepts for a new sixth-generation fighter jet, one that will likely “look like,” but not necessarily be, whatever the Navy picks for its F/A-XX program.

When the Marine Corps released its 2026 Aviation Plan in February, it included a small nod to the concept of having a sixth-generation fighter after 2041. The process of fleshing that out is now underway, according to Lt. Gen. William Swan, the Marine Corps’ deputy commandant for aviation, who told reporters in a Thursday roundtable that service leaders discussed plans during a Quantico meeting earlier this week. 

“I think right now, if you had to say, ‘Hey, what is it going to look like?’ I think it’ll look a lot more like what the Navy’s doing because we still fly off the carriers, we’re part of the Department of the Navy,” Swan said. “I think, you know, I don’t know that we’re going to get high end, and that’s really not a Marine Corps mission. It’s an Air Force. So I think if I had to, if you said, make a decision right now, it would be yes, some amount to augment the fifth-gen force, and it would probably look something like the F/A-XX or whatever the Navy ends up being.”

Swan said he ordered his team to include the mention of a sixth-gen fighter in the aviation plan because he wanted the Corps to be thinking about “a couple different ways” of how to get there.

“We’re fast following with the Air Force, right? They got the F-47, the Navy’s looking at F/A-XX, and they’re just starting on that. So we are going to watch. We want an all Block 4 F-35 fleet, and that’s probably going to take another 10 years,” Swan said. “So we’re probably five to 10 years away from ultimately making that decision, and we’ll see what they have, see what the threat looks like.” 

Despite a few moments where it appeared the Navy’s sixth-gen fighter program might be in trouble, the FY26 defense spending bill ultimately included nearly $900 million for F/A-XX, and said that the Pentagon should use the funds “for the purposes of awarding the EMD contract limited to one performer in accordance with the acquisition strategy to achieve an accelerated Initial Operational Capability (IOC).”

The move came after the program’s future appeared uncertain, after the White House voiced concerns in July 2025 about the industrial base working on two sixth-generation fighters at the same time, and said that doing so could mean delays for the Air Force’s F-47 program. 

Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s budget request released on April 3 includes $140 million for F/A-XX, with roughly $68.5 million of that stemming from the base budget and $72 million from reconciliation funds.