The F-35 Replacement Nobody's Talking About

We just got our first glimpse of what the future of aerial combat looks like — and it looks nothing like the F-35.

No doubt, for the past 100 years, America’s air superiority has been defined by big, expensive fighters and bombers like the F-16 and B-52.

But if we’ve learned anything from the wars in Ukraine and Iran, it’s that the future is smaller, cheaper, and autonomous.

And Anduril Industries — the defense tech company founded by Palmer Luckey — just rolled out the poster child…

A new aircraft unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

It’s called Omen, and it was unveiled at the Dubai Airshow last fall.

Omen is a “tailsitter,” which means it takes off and lands on its tail, then pivots in the air to fly horizontally like a conventional plane.

It’s fully autonomous, runway-independent, and small enough to launch from a ship, a forward operating base, or the back of a truck.

The aircraft was six years in the making.

Anduril started developing Omen in 2019. It went through five full-scale redesigns and was, in Palmer Luckey’s own words, “trapped in development hell” until Anduril found the right propulsion partner.

That partner is Archer Aviation (NYSE: ACHR) — the company best known for its electric Midnight eVTOL.

Archer’s hybrid-electric powertrain, originally engineered for civilian use, is now powering America’s next-generation autonomous military drone.

And the United Arab Emirates has already signed an initial commitment for 50 Omen systems through a joint venture between Anduril and the UAE’s state-owned defense conglomerate EDGE Group.

Full-rate production is targeted for the end of 2028. And a 50,000-square-foot R&D facility is being built in Abu Dhabi to support the program.

That’s the first customer. It won’t be the last.

How Anduril Plans to Outprice Lockheed

The reason Omen matters has very little to do with the UAE.

It matters because Omen is the first major proof-of-concept for a thesis the Pentagon has been quietly committing billions of dollars to…

Namely that the next era of American air power is going to be powered by small, cheap, autonomous aircraft, not enormous, expensive, manned ones.

Consider an F-35 costs about $82 million per unit. A B-21 stealth bomber will cost about $700 million each. And a Predator drone — the old workhorse of the unmanned fleet — costs around $30 million.

Well, Group 3 drones like Omen cost a small fraction of that.

They use commercial supply chains, and they can be built in automated factories like the one Archer just stood up in the United States.

And that, along with the fact that they’re pilotless, makes them expendable.

That’s why the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2026 budget request earmarked $13.4 billion specifically for autonomous systems. And the fiscal year 2027 request is expected to push that figure significantly higher.

Now, Omen isn’t going to literally replace the F-35 in every mission. But it will absorb many of the missions the F-35 has historically performed. It can do things like surveillance, light strike, logistics, maritime patrol, and more — and all at a fraction of the cost of a manned fighter jet loaded up with fuel.

Furthermore, once the Pentagon places its own large order, the unit economics get even better for everyone in the supply chain.

Meanwhile, Archer is now offering its proprietary electric powertrain to third parties as a recurring revenue stream — a major pivot for a company that primarily aims to sell and operate air taxis.

Indeed, Archer is going to do very well as this trend plays out. So will Anduril, if it ever goes public.

But there’s actually an even better play — an eVTOL company I’ve been tracking for years. 

It has a deeper Pentagon track record than Archer, a more advanced position with the U.S. Air Force, and a broader commercial business that gives investors exposure to the same structural trend across multiple end markets.

It’s a company that’s been ferrying soldiers, mechanics, and cargo across an active U.S. military installation as part of a secretive Pentagon program.

And it has multi-billion-dollar partnerships with major automakers and airlines.

I’ve put everything I know about it into a brand-new research report that you can find right here. 

I suggest you give it a look.

Because the F-35 era is winding down. The Omen era is just getting started. And the investors who get positioned now are the ones who’ll get paid as it unfolds.