Boeing Co. beat Northrop Grumman Corp to produce the Navy’s next Top Gun fighter jet, the stealthy and still classified F/A-XX, the Pentagon announced today.

The award was the second major fighter jet program Boeing won this year. It beat Lockheed Martin Corp. in March for the Air Force’s stealth F-47, an award President Donald Trump awarded from the Oval Office.

The Navy has released few details on the program — designed to replace the F/A-18 Hornet — such as the projected overall development and procurement costs, number of jets to be bought and when it might be operational.

“It’s one of those contests where it doesn’t matter if you’re the loser,” said aircraft analyst Richard Aboulafia. “Both companies have very full plates, and more to come,” he said of Northrop, which is building the B-21 stealth bomber and the Sentinel ICBM missile system.

Yet Boeing’s win, when combined with the F-47, means they’ve risen to “masters of the new universe,” Aboulafia said.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his deputy Steve Feinberg came out against the F/A-XX beginning last year. They argued the U.S. defense industrial base wasn’t capable of handling two new overlapping aircraft programs.

But Congress forced the Pentagon’s hand by providing hundreds of millions of dollars to proceed with the program.

The Boeing win raises the question whether it can muster an adequate workforce for both programs, said former Congressional Research Service aircraft analyst J.J. Gertler.

“At some point the constraint becomes people,” he said. Execution depends on having enough experienced engineers, production workers and technicians. There may not be many of those floating around loose in the St. Louis area anymore,” he said referring to the company’s primary aircraft facility.

(With assistance from Derek Wallbank.)

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