U.S. Air Force sets new 1,509-fighter goal for 2035

The U.S. Air Force plans to grow its fighter force to 1,509 combat-coded jets by 2035, with the F-35 becoming its most numerous fighter and the new F-47 taking over from the F-22, under a revised force structure plan the service sent to Congress on Oct. 16. Lt. Gen. David Tabor, deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, laid out the numbers at a Pentagon roundtable on Oct. 20, describing a fleet in which F-35s make up about 40 percent of the force, F-22s and F-47s about 20 percent, and F-15s and F-16s share the remaining 40 percent roughly evenly.

That mix would reshape a fleet that today, not counting the A-10 attack jet, is about 45 percent F-16s, 30 percent F-35s, 15 percent F-15s and 10 percent F-22s, so the F-16 that has dominated U.S. Air Force flight lines for four decades would give up its top spot to the F-35 within the next nine years. Tabor said the growth would come from a combination of F-35A, F-15EX and F-47 purchases, and that the service redid its analysis because the data behind the previous force structure report was “pretty old.”

Hitting 1,509 jets means adding well over 200 fighters to the roughly 1,271 combat-coded aircraft the Air Force projected for 2026, and it goes 140 jets beyond the 1,369 the service had set as its 2030 goal in last year’s report. The new target is slightly below the 1,558 crewed fighters by 2035 called for in the previous long-term fighter plan, and because it counts all combat-coded aircraft, including backup and attrition reserve jets, it is a broader measure than the 1,145 primary mission aircraft that federal law sets as the Air Force’s minimum, a floor the service told Congress in May it had slipped below with 1,098 jets.

The F-15EX is the fastest way to add new airframes, and Boeing is already building them in numbers after the Air Force ordered 22 more of the jets for $2.38 billion on Sept. 30. The service has said it could buy up to 104 of the fighters to replace its aging F-15C/D fleet, as we reported last year, while the F-35A remains the backbone of the plan, with the Air Force previously saying it could buy about 100 a year by 2030 if funding and production capacity allow.

The F-47, the sixth-generation fighter Boeing is developing under the Next Generation Air Dominance program, is due to make its first flight in 2028 and is meant to replace the F-22 roughly one for one. The Air Force built 186 operational F-22s, and Tabor said the service still expects to field about the same number of F-47s as the Raptor fleet it will succeed.

Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the uncrewed jets designed to fly alongside crewed fighters, sit outside the 1,509 count, even though the Air Force is aiming to field 500 of them by 2032. Tabor said the drones are not yet changing how many crewed fighters the service needs but could reduce that number in the future, and he made clear that reaching the 2035 target depends on industry delivering the F-35s, F-15EXs and F-47s it has promised on schedule.