U.S. President Donald Trump recently announced the introduction of a new generation of fighter jets, designated the F-47. “The F-47 will be the most advanced, the most capable, and the most lethal aircraft ever built,” Trump boasted with his typical hyperbole.
Unsurprisingly, the designation is an homage to Trump himself – the 47th president. The announcement event had the usual trappings of a Trump attention grab. This time, the sycophancy came courtesy of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. “The name of this program is the Next Generation of Air Dominance,” stated Hegseth before bathing the president in torrents of praise. “Mr. President, because of your leadership, your clarity, America is going to have generations of air dominance.”
But not so fast. While Trump hopes to field the F-47 before his current mandate ends in 2029, it remains to be seen when the aircraft will actually be completed and deployed. Additionally, achieving air dominance has its merits. But to which ends? What is the strategic goal behind establishing dominance in the air domain? These are questions that remain unanswered by the Trump administration.
According to Hegseth, the F-47 “sends a very direct, clear message to our allies that we’re not going anywhere, and to our enemies that we will be able to project power around the globe unimpeded for generations to come.” This statement lacks historical and empirical veracity.
In practice, the fielding and deploying of the F-47 could come at a strategic cost, worsening adversary threat perceptions, precipitating an arms race, and weakening U.S. deterrence.
The rhetoric and actions of the Trump administration are often contradictory. The announcement that the United States will expand its nuclear-capable forces came weeks after Trump advocated for a world free of nuclear weapons. Besides being intent on fielding a sixth-generation aircraft that is almost certain to be nuclear capable, like its predecessor, the United States has also expressed the intention to enhance its nuclear missile capabilities. Hence one trusts the Trump administration at their own peril.
The United States extends its nuclear deterrent to 31 NATO member states, South Korea, Japan, and Australia. But due to the Trump administration’s penchant for traducing the closest U.S. allies, there are serious concerns over whether the United States can be relied on to defend these countries if conflict came knocking on their door. If anything, Trump’s behavior suggests that the U.S. nuclear umbrella may be receding.
Trump’s recent treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was hardly reassuring. Subsequently suspending military aid and intelligence-sharing with Ukraine was contemptible. The tariff rates the Trump administration has imposed on all of the United States’ closest allies and partners – which remain high, at 10 percent, regardless of the “pause” – is another example of the capricious unpredictability of this U.S. administration. The Trump administration’s behavior has reduced the confidence allies and partners have in Washington, and for good reasons. The idea that Trump’s efforts to enhance the United States’ military capabilities are in order to better protect its allies is simply not credible.
Moreover, the future of U.S. security is not contingent on the expansion of U.S. forces. To think this would be to fail to understand the utility of force and the reality of deterrence – or, at the very least, to have a reductionist view of how to achieve credibility when threatening the use of force. Having the necessary military capabilities is a core part of nuclear deterrence, but it is not the sole requirement.
The United States already has the second largest nuclear arsenal, with arguably the most sophisticated capabilities. Yet it continually faces challenges from adversaries such as China and North Korea, countries with much smaller nuclear forces. Deterrence is not simply a numbers game. Other factors shape deterrence credibility, such as demonstrating the necessary resolve and commitment to meet threats where they arise, and to persuade the adversary that an act of aggression would be met with corresponding force. Possessing more nuclear capabilities is insufficient to achieve deterrence credibility, particularly if both allies and adversaries alike doubt U.S. resolve.
The announcement of the F-47 is a signal that the Trump administration subscribes to the idea that numerical superiority in military forces enhances the United States’ ability to protect itself. This view is misguided. In the words of George Perkovich, “preventing nuclear war and other existential military threats requires us to focus much more on politics than on the numbers and qualities of weapons.”
Size, in the case of nuclear deterrence, does not matter. As Robert Jervis stated, “It does not matter which side has more nuclear weapons. In the past, having a larger army than one’s neighbor allowed one to conquer it and protect one’s own population. Having a larger nuclear stockpile yields no such gains.”
Studies demonstrate that superiority does not beget clear advantages. Instead, large disparities in the nuclear balance of forces increase the likelihood of a nuclear crisis. In the 20 nuclear crises that took place between 1945 and 2001, 54 percent of crises that involved the U.S. took place when it possessed clear or overwhelming nuclear superiority. In the most dangerous nuclear crisis of the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States outnumbered the Soviet Union 17 to 1 in the balance of nuclear forces. However, superiority did not provide Washington with an advantage.
For McGeorge Bundy, national security adviser to President John F. Kennedy the takeaway was this: “The Cuban Missile Crisis illustrates not the significance but the insignificance of nuclear superiority.” The evidence suggests that superiority incentivizes the inferior state to challenge the status quo, as a means to compensate for the disparity in nuclear force capabilities.
The introduction of the F-47 is predicated on the premise that it will strengthen U.S. operational capabilities. As a replacement for the F-22, it will likely be capable of carrying the variants of the B-61, the only non-strategic nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal. There are indications that it will carry hypersonic missiles, theater weapons designed for immediate deterrence in a crisis scenario or, in the event of escalation, for employment in a warfighting theatre. This distinguishes tactical weapons from strategic ones, which are leveraged to deter large scale acts of aggression against a state’s vital interests.
The F-47 is in its development stages; hence the full array of capabilities it will possess is yet unknown. Based on early analysis of the tactical jet, it will have optimal stealth capabilities, enabling it to evade radar systems. This is designed for enhanced survivability, making the aircraft ideal for reconnaissance, surprise attacks, and retaliation in the event that a crisis escalates. According to Andrew Cockburn, the F-47 will be deployed in contested regions and domains, further pointing to the theater applications of the sixth-generation tactical jet. “Under the overall direction of the F-47 pilot, they will in theory at least be able to engage enemy planes, attack targets on the ground,” wrote Cockburn.
Alongside the strategic, nuclear capable B-21 bomber, the other aircraft unveiled as part of the U.S. sixth-generation aerial arsenal, the F-47 will play a pivotal role in nuclear missions. “The F-47 will join the B-21 bomber in the Air Force,” wrote John Tirpak. Its “long-range strike capabilities [are designed] to counter the most sophisticated adversaries in contested environments.” These capabilities indicate that the F-47 will be deployed to enhance targeting of adversarial forces. Inherent to the sixth-generation aircraft will be signalling to the United States’ strategic adversaries that its forces can credibly hold at risk Chinese and Russian capabilities. Both are nuclear powers which have expanded their tactical nuclear capabilities in recent years.
Enhanced reconnaissance of enemy targets will invariably include the effort to hold at risk their theater nuclear forces. Some analysts have suggested that the F-47 was designed as part of a response to counter China’s own roll out of sixth-generation aerial capabilities. As William Freer from the Council on Geostrategy stated, “The fact that the F-47 announcement comes just three months after the first publicly viewed flight of what appears to be a new large stealthy aircraft from China is likely not a coincidence.” Indeed, it appears that the United States has opted to respond to China’s expanding military capabilities by engaging in an arms race, a detrimental consequence of pursuing superiority.
Being better able to credibly target and hold at risk enemy capabilities could inspire restraint in the adversary. However, the obverse side of this strategic coin could also inspire greater risk taking – particularly if the adversary perceives that its vital interests are threatened in a crisis. It is impossible to eliminate the possibility of escalation to the nuclear level of conflict when strategic competition includes nuclear powers. Regardless of the level of warfighting intensity the F-47 is designed to engage in, if a crisis escalates, so too does the possibility of nuclear use.
The F-47 would heighten U.S. adversaries’ threat perceptions, especially if deployed in their backyard. A weapon designed to engage enemy forces is a weapon designed to signal the willingness to run greater risks of brinkmanship. While the logic of brinkmanship pertains to creating conditions where de-escalation is preferable, it can also lead to accidental or inadvertent forms of crisis escalation. If the adversary perceives that it stands a better chance to preserve its vital interests by escalating, it will be drawn to using nuclear weapons in a crisis.
Scenarios that incentivize escalation will reduce the threshold for nuclear use. The F-47 could inspire such an incentive. Should the United States’ sixth-generation aircraft provoke crisis instability, Washington’s nuclear adversaries might opt to threaten nuclear use in a crisis.
U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General David Allvin intimated the role of the F-47 by stating that “the F-47 is truly the world’s first crewed sixth-generation fighter, built to dominate the most capable adversary and operate in the most perilous threat environments imaginable.” That the nuclear-capable F-47 is built for tactical deployment could also be interpreted as a threat designed to lower the threshold for nuclear use. The inclination to demonstrate restraint would be diminished in the event that the nuclear threshold is lowered.
An indication that the United States is willing to lower the threshold for nuclear use thus does not deter nuclear conflict, it incentivizes nuclear warfighting readiness. As Susan Martin put it, “nuclear warfighting is not a strategy for state survival.”
The inclination to demonstrate restraint would be diminished in the event that the nuclear threshold is lowered. As Kenneth Waltz once wrote, “It would be folly to move from a condition of stable deterrence to one of unstable deterrence.” Pursuing nuclear superiority would indeed be folly. While the introduction of the F-47 is designed to enhance U.S. deterrence capabilities, its fielding and deployment could come at a strategic cost – a cost that undermines the purported reasons for building the next generation aircraft in the first place.
Deploying the aircraft to contested zones could worsen adversary threat perceptions. This would precipitate a security dilemma, and lead to an arms race. Contrary to Hegseth’s claims, the rationale behind achieving air dominance is anything but clear. Fielding and deploying the F-47 could weaken deterrence in contested areas such as the Asia-Pacific and expose allies to greater nuclear threats.
The road to Armageddon may be paved with good intentions. The strategic cost of achieving air dominance could engender greater instability. No amount of sycophancy can justify precipitating a nuclear crisis. Restraint should begin in the White House, or else it could end in nuclear escalation. The Trump administration should avoid making decisions that lead to increased tensions, lest it stagger toward a nuclear showdown.
