The man who buys the US Air Force’s fighters has a simple view of what matters most right now: factories. Speaking at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies on 28 September 2026, Brig. Gen. Timothy Helfrich said the F-47 sixth-generation fighter is heading for a production line of its own, and sooner than many people think.
“We’re not too far away from an F-47 production line, which will be additive to the production capacity,” Helfrich said. The next day, Boeing, which builds the F-47, also won the Navy’s F/A-XX. St. Louis is having quite a week.
Helfrich is the Air Force’s Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Fighters and Advanced Aircraft, which makes him responsible for everything from the A-10 and F-15 to the F-22, the F-47 and the new collaborative combat aircraft drones. When he talks about fighter capacity, the Pentagon listens.
Quick Facts
- Speaker: Brig. Gen. Timothy Helfrich, USAF Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Fighters and Advanced Aircraft
- Where: Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, 28 September 2026
- Aircraft: Boeing F-47 sixth-generation fighter
- First flight target: 2028
- Planned fleet: At least 185 aircraft
- Factory: Boeing St. Louis, nearly $2 billion expansion, full completion targeted for 2030
- Current US fighter lines: Three: F-35 (Fort Worth), F-15EX (St. Louis), F-16 (Greenville)
Why production capacity is the point
Helfrich framed fighter production as a strategic asset in its own right. “There are only three active fighter production lines, right?” he said. “We got F-35 down in Fort Worth, the F-15EX in St. Louis, and F-16 in Greenville.” Adding the F-47 would make four, and it would add capacity rather than replace any of them.
That matters in a world where the Air Force keeps warning that it has too few fighters and that its adversaries are building more, faster. You cannot surge production in a war if the factory does not exist before it starts.
Where the F-47 stands
Boeing won the F-47 contract in March 2025. According to TWZ, at least one pre-production aircraft is under construction, first flight is targeted for 2028, and the Air Force plans to buy at least 185 of them. Helfrich’s line about flying it “this administration” points the same way: before January 2029.
To build them, Boeing is spending nearly $2 billion expanding its St. Louis site by more than a million square feet, including a huge new assembly building, a hangar and a radar cross-section test facility. The first phase is due to open in 2026, with the whole complex finished by 2030.
Helfrich also stressed that the F-47 will come out of the box with full open architecture, so new sensors, weapons and software can be added without rebuilding the jet, and that it is designed to work closely with collaborative combat aircraft. In other words, the F-47 is expected to be the quarterback for a team of drones like the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A.
The bigger picture
The Pentagon has spent a decade debating whether the next generation of fighters was affordable at all. With the F-47 moving towards production, the F/A-XX awarded and the F-15EX line running, that debate appears to be over, at least for now.
What remains is execution. A new fighter, a new factory and a first flight in 2028 is an aggressive schedule for any programme. Helfrich clearly believes it can be done. The next two years will show whether he is right.
The full Mitchell Institute Aerospace Nation conversation with Brig. Gen. Timothy Helfrich.
Sources: Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies (Aerospace Nation, 28 September 2026), TWZ, Military Watch Magazine, U.S. Air Force biography
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