Trump picks Boeing over Lockheed for fighter jet contract

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United States President Donald Trump awarded Boeing the contract to build the U.S. Air Force’s most sophisticated fighter jet yet.

Trump awarded the contract on Friday, March 21, 2025, handing Boeing a much-needed win and boosting its shares.

The Next Generation Air Dominance program will replace Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor with a crewed aircraft built to enter combat alongside drones.

Trump, the 47th U.S. president, announced the new jet’s name, the F-47.

“We’ve given an order for a lot. We can’t tell you the price,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Boeing shares rose 5% after the U.S. company beat out Lockheed Martin for the deal. Lockheed’s shares fell nearly 7%.

“Our allies are calling constantly,” Trump added, saying foreign sales could be an option.

“They want to buy them also,” he said.

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For Boeing, the win marks a reversal of fortune for a company that has struggled on both the commercial and defense sides of its business. It is a major boost for its St. Louis, Missouri, fighter jet production business.

The loss is another blow to Lockheed after it was eliminated from the competition to build the Navy’s next-generation carrier-based stealth fighter, and amid growing discontent from the Pentagon over delays in upgrading its F-35 fighter jet.

In recent weeks, Trump met with Lockheed CEO Jim Taiclet to discuss the F-35, according to three sources.

The engineering and manufacturing development contract is worth more than $20 billion.

Boeing’s win means it will make the jet fighter and receive orders worth hundreds of billions of dollars over the contract’s multi-decade lifetime, Reuters reported.

The Star