Air Force Plans $1.06 Billion F-47 Test Campus, First Buildings Due 2031

The U.S. Air Force plans to spend $1.057 billion on a dedicated operational-test campus for Boeing’s F-47 fighter at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Yet the first major facilities are not scheduled for completion until March 2031 roughly three years after the aircraft’s planned first flight in 2028.

A draft solicitation released October 22 lays out an award target of February 2027, design and preconstruction through November 2027, and about 40 months of construction. The fiscal 2027 budget proposal requests $730.7 million toward the total authorized project cost. The construction plan confirms Nellis as the F-47’s operational-test location, although the Air Force has not announced the fighter’s first operational base.

What more than $1 billion buys

The initial phase is closer to a purpose-built test ecosystem than a conventional collection of hangars. It includes a 116,745-square-foot combined operations and maintenance hangar, a 39,200-square-foot mission-data reprogramming laboratory and a 40,903-square-foot simulator facility. A roughly 1.15-million-square-foot aircraft apron with sunshades is planned on the eastern side of Nellis.

Those allocations reveal where much of the test burden will sit. The Air Force needs physical space to operate and maintain aircraft, but it also needs controlled environments in which engineers can update software-dependent mission data, validate changes and connect the fighter with simulated aircraft and systems. The reprogramming laboratory would house engineers, intelligence and information-technology personnel, data management functions and a server farm.

Mission-data work is a continuing support requirement rather than a one-time software load. Aircraft systems use these files to interpret information collected from the surrounding electromagnetic environment. A dedicated laboratory gives the test organization a place to maintain relevant avionics hardware and evaluate revised data before it is used in broader testing.

The simulator building adds four bays and integration space for multi-platform testing and training. Both that facility and the reprogramming laboratory will contain highly secured areas for classified and Special Access Program activities. Public documents do not disclose the F-47’s classified capabilities, but the facility list establishes the scale of the controlled computing, integration and validation environment required to test the aircraft.

Why the campus trails first flight

The 2031 completion date does not mean F-47 testing waits until the campus opens. Boeing began manufacturing the first aircraft in 2025 after the Air Force selected the company for engineering and manufacturing development that March. The first flight remains planned for 2028, while the service intends to blend developmental and operational testing more closely and use digital environments alongside real-world flights.

That sequencing separates early aircraft development from the later operational-test enterprise. Initial flying can generate data and anchor digital models before the permanent Nellis facilities are ready. The completed campus would then support sustained evaluation involving maintenance crews, mission-data specialists, simulators and other platforms not only individual test sorties.

Digital testing can expand scenario scale and reduce dependence on what can be reproduced on a physical range, but it cannot eliminate live flight. Air Force Test Center leadership has emphasized that models must remain anchored in real-world physics and flight-test data. The investment at Nellis therefore buys both sides of that process: aircraft access and maintenance infrastructure for physical testing, plus secure laboratories and simulation space for work that cannot be conducted entirely in the air.

A construction and procurement tradeoff

The Air Force intends to select as many as four design-build teams, although it prefers one contractor capable of handling the initial projects. A single lead could simplify coordination across hangars, laboratories, secure areas and site infrastructure. It also places substantial schedule responsibility with one organization as design gives way to a compressed construction period.

Further work planned through 2032 includes specialized fuel-system maintenance, low-observable corrosion-control and weapons-load training hangars, along with a consolidated maintenance facility and maintenance training center. Those buildings broaden the campus from an initial test site into infrastructure intended to sustain repeated operational evaluation and workforce preparation.

For taxpayers, the $1.057 billion figure covers capabilities that will largely remain on the ground: secure computing, simulation, maintenance, training and aircraft-support space. For Air Force test organizations, the tradeoff is time. The permanent complex arrives years after manufacturing begins and after the planned first flight, but it is being built for the longer campaign of determining whether the F-47 is effective, supportable and suitable for operational use. The final planned facilities extend into 2032, making the ground infrastructure itself a major program milestone.

By David Whitaker — Associate editor for AMI’s aerospace and drone systems desk, translating flight systems, aircraft programs, spaceflight, and UAV developments into accessible technical stories.