Air Force Plans $1 Billion Campus for Testing F-47 at Nellis

The Air Force is taking the first steps to build a $1 billion campus including hangars, laboratories, maintenance and training facilities, and more to test the F-47 at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev.—and the service plans to finish construction by 2031 as it moves quickly to field the upcoming sixth-generation fighter.

In a presolicitation notice posted Oct. 22, the Air Force said it is looking for as many as four qualified firms that can quickly work on a project to design and build the proposed F-47 campus. The entire project, including construction, design, security, and other expenses, will ultimately cost about $1.057 billion.

The project would include a nearly 117,000-square foot facility, largely on the east side of Nellis, combining flightline operations and maintenance. It would also have a specialized laboratory for reprogramming the plane’s systems, an aircraft apron with sunshades, and a nearly 41,000-square foot simulator facility.

The notice lists several other facilities that could be built later as “potential subsequent work,” including additional hangars for fuel system maintenance, corrosion control of its stealth coating, weapons load training, maintenance training, and other maintenance needs.

The Air Force plans to issue an initial award for the F-47 campus in February 2027, which would then kick off about nine months of design and preconstruction, and then about 40 more months of more intensive construction into early March 2031.

The presolicitation notice for the campus provides the latest window on how the Air Force is preparing to bring the Boeing-made F-47 into its fleet. It follows the Air Force’s 2027 budget proposal, which requested $730 million for hangars and other support infrastructure for the F-47 and revealed its operational testing will take place at Nellis. 

The Air Force in March 2025 announced it had chosen Boeing to build the F-47, which will replace the F-22 Raptor sometime in the 2030s and eventually make up 20 percent of the Air Force’s fleet. It is expected to have advanced stealth, data sharing, and electronic warfare capabilities, and it will be able to direct semi-autonomous drone fighters known as Collaborative Combat Aircraft.

Former Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said in September 2025 that the first F-47 fighter was in the process of being built and would fly in 2028. Service officials have stuck to that schedule ever since and said its first flight will take place before the end of the Trump administration.

Allvin also said in a May 2025 social media post that the F-47 will be able to fly faster than Mach 2, or more than 1,500 miles per hour, and have a combat radius of more than 1,000 nautical miles, far more than the F-22 or F-35A Joint Strike Fighter. That expanded range would give the F-47 an advantage in a potential conflict with China, where aircraft will have to fly long distances over stretches of the Pacific Ocean.