Lockheed Martin illustrates its affordable, modular uncrewed aircraft called Speed Racer flying with a U.S. Air Force F-35 Lightning II utilizing software from Project Carrera, its $100 million investment in teaming technologies in support of joint all-domain operations. Company officials said the ghostly F-35 outline hints at its role as a possible decoy.Lockheed Martin
Photo Caption & Credits

Disconnected by Design: A New Way to Employ 5th-Gen Jets

July 25, 2025

Audio of this article is brought to you by the Air & Space Forces Association, honoring and supporting our Airmen, Guardians, and their families. Find out more at afa.org

Disaggregated Collaborative Air Operations offers a creative responseto China’s focus on disrupting U.S. combat networks. 


By J. Michael Dahm

The U.S. Air Force operational concepts for penetrating into contested areas assume that U.S. forces can maintain highly networked connectivity and reach-back to data and command centers. But China’s People’s Liberation Army’s “informationized” warfighting strategy is specifically designed to counter the networked U.S. approach.  

Disaggregated collaborative air operations (DCAO) offers a counter to the Chinese strategy. It is a proposed operational concept that leverages the unique attributes of advanced fifth- and next-generation aircraft—not just their physical speed and stealth, but their advanced sensing and computing—to wage high-end warfare without having to depend on long-distance two-way communications or centralized command and control.

 The PLA has long modeled itself after the U.S. military, striving to become a “world-class” military by midcentury. Over the past 25 years, China’s PLA has studied, adopted, and evolved U.S. concepts related to effects-based operations, parallel warfare, and system-of-systems confrontation—all linchpins of success in America’s last major conventional war in, 1991’s Operation Desert Storm. China’s military has also optimized its offensive and defensive capabilities to target and counter what the PLA sees as the U.S. military’s critical operational center of gravity: its sprawling command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) system-of-systems. 

For the first decade of this century, U.S. military assessments described the PLA’s military strategy as “asymmetric.” Today, however, there is an extraordinary symmetry between the PLA and U.S. military. The PLA has developed a countermeasure for virtually every major U.S. military capability. More concerning, the PLA appears to be out-cycling U.S. technology development and acquisition, eroding U.S. military advantages faster than new U.S. capabilities emerge. 

The PLA’s strategy is based largely on U.S. military concepts borne out of the Cold War’s Second Offset Strategy. Following U.S. acquisition strategies of the 1970s and 1980s, China invested in stealth technology, precision guided munitions (PGMs), and networked C4ISR. These capabilities now provide the foundations for a PLA warfighting strategy that is, at its core, a simple two-step process. First, disaggregate an enemy force by attacking its C4ISR system-of-systems and then target and strike the disaggregated and disconnected enemy force with long-range precision fires.

The U.S. Air Force’s always-connected, network-dependent operations are, in fact, dangerously vulnerable to PLA countermeasures and must be replaced with new operational concepts. Aircraft in a high-end fight today must operate in relative silence for fear of being detected and targeted. “Reachback” for intelligence and coordination orders is now becoming a relic of “the last war.”

To counter the PLA’s approach, DCAO leverages the advanced information collection and processing capabilities of fifth-generation aircraft to break dependencies from centralized C4ISR and operate with forces that are disconnected and disaggregated by design. This approach renders the PLA attacks on U.S. C4ISR irrelevant. By fielding a force disconnected by design, the U.S Air Force can empower its fifth-generation F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II fighters to independently collect, process, and act upon information at the tactical edge of the battlespace, effectively turning them into independent airborne command centers. These advanced aircraft can orchestrate offensive and defensive operations, directing relatively small packages of fourth-generation fighter aircraft and uninhabited collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) using low-power or optical communications that are less likely to compromise their stealth. In the future, the B-21 Raider and F-47 Next-Generation Air Dominance Penetrating Counter-air Aircraft (NGAD PCA) will bring even more capabilities to enable disconnected air operations. 

The Air Force’s four principal fighter jets, an F-16, F-15, F-22, and F-35, fly in formation. In a disaggregated collaborative air operation, stealthy F-35s or F-22s could penetrate enemy air defenses undetected, then relay critical targeting data to fourth-generation F-15s or F-16s. Airman 1st Class Tristan Biese

The Air Force, Navy, Marines Corps, and U.S. allies all possess substantial numbers of fourth-, fifth- and next-generation combat aircraft. These make up what is termed an “inside force,” one composed of comparatively short-range, high-speed aircraft based within attack range of a potential adversary.  An inside force, supported by a well-considered operating concept can better deter near-peer adversaries than a purely “outside force,” which must operate from bases far away from the adversary. For the U.S. to retreat to rely on an outside force may message to friends and enemies an inability or unwillingness to fight. Additionally, inside forces, especially fifth-generation “stand-in forces” can penetrate highly contested airspace and generate the necessary capacities to deliver sustained effects in a large-scale conflict.

Key Terminology: Inside, Outside, Stand-in, Stand-off

  • Inside force: A force comprising of shorter-range aircraft that are based relatively close to areas of combat operations, within adversary direct attack ranges.
  • Outside force: A force comprising of longer-range aircraft that are based outside of adversary direct attack ranges. 
  • Stand-in force: Stand-in strikes, also known as “penetrating strikes” employ low-observable aircraft to penetrate enemy defenses and release munitions in close proximity to targets.
  • Stand-off force: Stand-off strikes attack targets from a distance with long-range weapons, generally launched from outside of adversary threat ranges.

DCAO focuses on using battlespace information dominance to fracture adversary offensive operations and create effects that cascade through an enemy force. Most importantly, while capacity is still crucial, the concept does not rely on mass, which generally requires highly centralized planning and coordination, continuous network communication, and quantities of aircraft that the U.S. does not possess. Instead, DCAO pushes information collection, processing, and battle management to the tactical edge of the battlespace, acknowledging that in highly contested environments, weapons systems will not be able to broadcast, network, or “reach back” for data for fear of transmissions being detected, geolocated, and targeted. By minimizing their emissions, fifth- and sixth-generation aircraft can provide pilots fused data to fully inform their decisions about how to engage adversary forces. 

Uninhabited systems, like CCA, will be complementary and additive capabilities that promise to increase the lethality, survivability, and capacity of Air Force operations in highly contested environments. 

China’s military has spent over a quarter-century developing the means to sever the information links that enable U.S. air dominance. Yet the PLA’s informationized warfare doctrine is less a counter to U.S. military operational concepts as it is a carbon-copy of the formula that made the U.S. so successful in modern warfare: that is, to render adversaries deaf, dumb, and blind and then pick them off with long-range precision fires. PLA thought leaders seized upon U.S. military’s concepts and force designs in the 1990s and evolved them even as the U.S. military turned its attention to the Global War on Terrorism. 

The result is that by the 2020s, the PLA held a much more expansive view of “information warfare” than did the U.S. military. The PLA’s approach to informationized warfare includes kinetic strikes on C4ISR networks, advanced electronic warfare, stealth technology, and increasingly intelligent munitions. Its 2015 military strategy synthesized operational guidance into a single sentence that might have been taken from a U.S. playbook: “Integrated combat forces will be employed to prevail in system-of-systems operations, featuring information dominance, precision strikes on critical nodes and joint operations.” 

The PLA regards C4ISR systems-of-systems as critical centers of gravity. It envisions attacking those key links and nodes to achieve battlespace information dominance, blinding an enemy force and paralyzing decision-making. De-linking operational elements increases the efficiency and effectiveness of follow-on strikes against bases and forces.

Even the most recent U.S. military strategies for generating combat effects appear to be largely symmetric with the counterstrategies the PLA has developed over the past several decades. Today’s U.S. Air Force Future Operating Concept (AFFOC) prescribes “pulsed airpower” to conduct strikes and other missions in high-threat environments. AFFOC synchronizes and aggregates airpower in space and time to create massed effects, generating temporary, episodic air superiority. The AFFOC approach aligns with the Joint Warfighting Concept (JWC), which revolves around concepts of “expanded maneuver” and “pulsed operations.” These designs, however, play directly to the PLA’s strategies and strengths.

The JWC relies on the integration of capabilities across domains to generate “distributed mass,” where forces and capabilities may be geographically dispersed but are highly networked and coordinated. The JWC and its airpower component appear to rely on an unproven assumption that large U.S. force packages can be integrated, coordinated, and synchronized in the face of enemy countermeasures to provide superior situational awareness and interconnected decision-making. But China’s military has dedicated itself to using overwhelming kinetic and non-kinetic strikes to degrade and eliminate the very information capabilities the U.S. prioritizes. 

 Initiatives like the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) concept seeks to achieve seamless integration and rapid decision-making in complex operational environments. JADC2 will no doubt generate efficiencies and outsized effects in benign electromagnetic environments, such as the U.S. encountered in the Middle East over the past 30 years, but against a highly connected force like the PLA, they face significant risks. Given the PRC strategy to target, disrupt, and destroy U.S. C4ISR networks and capabilities, the U.S. Air Force must have a plan to fight China’s strategy—a way to secure battlespace information dominance when—not if—the PLA collapses critical U.S. information links and nodes.

Turning the Tables: DCAO

Rather than large formations attacking episodically, DCAO envisions numerous small force packages—combining advanced fifth-generation aircraft with both fourth-generation and uninhabited systems—executing precision attacks simultaneously while disconnected from broader networks. These small, agile force packages could overwhelm an adversary with asymmetry and complexity, forcing the adversary into reactive paralysis. 

DCAO builds on proven concepts like Effects-Based Operations (EBO) and parallel warfare developed in the 1990s to achieve strategic effects with an economy of force. In 1991’s Operation Desert Storm, stealth and PGMs were pivotal in maximizing results of effects-based and parallel operations using comparatively few aircraft. F-117 stealth fighters were able to penetrate deep behind enemy lines; PGMs ensured every sortie yielded a high-impact strike. While F-117s accounted for less than 2 percent of sorties during that war, they hit more than 40 percent of strategic targets. The use of stealth, precision strike, electronic warfare, and nascent cyber capabilities redefined the concept of combat mass, prioritizing combat efficiency over massed forces. 

Similarly, a DCAO force can act rapidly and continuously—even with limited access to centralized C4ISR, reworking traditional organizational structures to push command and control to the very edge of the battlespace and secure decisive outcomes. DCAO relies on outcome-driven mission orders: A theater air operations command center might transmit objectives, target sets, and intelligence by broadcasting one-way into the battlespace. Receiving that information passively, without ever replying or retransmitting, DCAO forces at the tactical edge would deny adversaries the ability to geolocate and target stray signals. 

In this concept, fifth- and next-generation aircraft are individual airborne command posts, synthesizing command broadcasts with locally acquired ISR and assigning missions to wingmen or accompanying uninhabited platforms using very low-power directional links or optical communications to minimize signature exposure and preserve stealth. Rather than massing firepower or even massing effects, DCAO elements would independently strike critical targets across the depth of the adversary system, creating shock and chaos at multiple locations simultaneously.


Forward Air Controllers Offer a Model for DCAO
The concept of Distributed Collaborative Air Operations  (DCAO) has its roots in a U.S. military doctrine employed for years to manage close air support. CAS aircraft take on hostile targets in close proximity to friendly forces. 
Integrating and synchronizing CAS among air and ground forces in time, space, and purpose is among the most complex tasks performed by the U.S. Air Force. Joint terminal air controllers (JTACs) on the ground work with airborne forward air controllers to control maneuvers and clear weapons release for attacking aircraft.
During the Vietnam War, the Air Force employed OV-10 Bronco light attack aircraft as an observation and airborne forward air controller platform to coordinate close air support in real time. The OV-10 had multiple radios, could remain station on for an extended period, and could therefore act as a communications hub while providing persistent overwatch. The OV-10s’ real-time intelligence gathering, target marking, and flexibility enabled them to direct other strike aircraft operating at higher altitudes to roll in and attack in a fast-moving, highly complex battlefield.
DCAO applies these same concepts in a much broader way. Even though the DCAO concept does not necessarily involve friendly troops in contact with enemy forces on the ground, DCAO puts fifth-generation aircraft in a similar forward air controller role. Pilots flying fifth-generation aircraft with their advanced information collection and communications capabilities are at the center of the DCAO fight, sensing the battlespace, making decisions, and directing other aircraft, including uninhabited systems and fourth-generation aircraft carrying long-range standoff weapons onto targets in highly contested battlespaces.

For example, stealthy F-35s or B-21s could penetrate enemy air defenses undetected, relay critical targeting data to fourth-generation jets equipped with long-range stand-off munitions and guide uninhabited systems executing electronic warfare actions or reconnaissance missions. The distributed approach maximizes combat effectiveness and minimizes risk to vulnerable assets.

Fifth-Generation Aircraft: The Heart of DCAO

Given the current state of technology, only piloted fifth- and next-generation combat aircraft can operate disconnected from battle networks, engage in complex problem solving, and act on mission orders to target adaptive enemy systems. Without significant advancements in general artificial intelligence, autonomous systems will not be able to independently execute a concept like DCAO.

Recent upgrades to F-35s have realized massive increases in airborne data collection and information processing capabilities that provide a strong foundation to build out the DCAO operational concept. Technology Refresh 3 (TR-3) and Block 4 F-35 upgrades include a new integrated core processor that is 25 times more powerful than its predecessor, a larger memory unit, and enhanced electronic sensing, protection, and attack capabilities. The upgraded AN/APG-85 radar reportedly doubles the capabilities of its predecessor. The F-35’s Distributed Aperture System (DAS) consists of six infrared cameras that look in all directions around the aircraft, providing the pilot with unparalleled passive situational awareness. An upgraded Electro-Optical Targeting System (EOTS) provides super high-definition video and precise laser designation capabilities, combining both forward-looking infrared (FLIR) and infrared search and track (IRST) capability. F-35 pilots can detect and track targets or potential threats at long ranges without emitting any detectable signals.

The core upgrade to the F-35’s F135 engine also provides increased durability and capabilities to facilitate next-generation weapons, sensors, and jammers. The engine provides the necessary power for the Block 4 upgrades, enhancing target recognition and electronic warfare capabilities and an expanded arsenal of weapons. Built on an open mission systems architecture, Block 4 will allow for rolling improvements to the F-35 without major system redesigns. 

The B-21 is likewise designed with powerful attributes to penetrate contested airspace and understand where and how to employ airpower in real time. Similarly, the F-47 promises to deliver key advancements in the penetrating counterair mission, as described by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin: “The F-47 will have significantly longer range, more advanced stealth, be more sustainable, supportable, and have higher availability than our fifth-generation fighters,” he said earlier this year.  “[It will have] next-generation stealth, sensor fusion, and long-range strike capabilities to counter the most sophisticated adversaries in contested environments.” 

The B-21 Raider, in flight tests at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., will bring a new level of stealth and sensing attributes to the fight. B-21s could penetrate enemy air defenses and guide uninhabited systems while delivering ordnance. The distributed approach maximizes combat effectiveness and minimizes risk to vulnerable assets. Courtesy

The DCAO operational concept offers an innovative and adaptive approach to outmaneuver near-peer adversaries’ evolving strategies and capabilities designed to defeat current U.S. approaches to generating combat mass. DCAO, like any operational concept, forms a basis for operational planning or military force design. It is a conceptual point from which to work backward toward other supporting requirements. It does not, by itself, solve all the enduring challenges facing the U.S. Air Force in the Indo-Pacific, which include:

  • Defending U.S. air bases against air and missile attacks. Forward-based air forces are essential for DCAO in the face of long-range missile threats in the Indo-Pacific and other theaters of operation.
  • Decentralizing command and control. DCAO requires a significant shift toward training for decentralized operations, away from centralized C4ISR systems that will be explicitly targeted by advanced militaries like the PLA.
  • Integrating mixed air forces. Forces will need to train to coordinate complex operations between fifth generation aircraft, older fourth generation aircraft, and uninhabited systems. 
  • Increasing capacity of the air force’s fifth generation and beyond aircraft inventories. DCAO depends heavily on using fifth generation and beyond aircraft for sensing, processing, and decision-making. Continued delays and shortfalls in production, upgrades, or deployment of these aircraft will undermine the core capabilities of the concept. Rapidly fielding upgrades to fifth-generation and fourth- generation aircraft will be necessary to maintain an edge over countermeasures developed by adversaries.

Funding fifth generation and beyond aircraft acquisition alongside the requisite air base defense, logistics, communications capabilities, and training will be essential for the successful implementation of DCAO. 

Required: A Balanced Force Mix 

On a practical level, inside forces composed of both fifth- and fourth-generation strike fighters are what the U.S. Air Force has available in the greatest numbers in its present-day inventory. The current U.S. bomber force—even when augmented with dozens of B-21s in the next several years—will not have the capacity to generate large numbers of sorties from distant bases, nor will it have enough extended-range weapons to generate sufficient stand-off strikes in a large-scale operation against a near-peer adversary.



The Israel-Iran Conflict: A DCAO Concept in Action
As early as 2015, U.S. Air Force F-22s were used as “quarterbacks” to direct other aircraft in operations over Syria. F-22s deconflicted multiple assets using their superior sensing, processing, and information fusion capabilities. In 2024 and again in 2025, Israeli Air Force strikes against Iranian nuclear and missile infrastructure offered a window into the DCAO concept’s potential. Israeli F-35s flew ahead of the main strike formation, penetrating heavily defended airspace and mapping hostile radars and SAM sites. Their data enabled rapid vectoring of Israeli F-15s and standoff missiles from Israeli submarines and loitering munitions. Despite advanced Iranian air defense capabilities, the strikes achieved near-complete surprise and successfully degraded key military infrastructure with no reported Israeli losses. The DCAO concept envisions standardizing and institutionalizing these types of operations at a larger, more complex scale.

Balancing funding and the development of DCAO with other strategic priorities, such as long-range strike capabilities and overall force modernization, poses an enduring resource challenge. To mature DCAO and ensure the Air Force’s new force design delivers the capabilities U.S. warfighters will need in a future fight, the Mitchell Institute offers the following recommendations:

  • Reduce dependence on centralized C4ISR. The Air Force should design operational concepts to ensure its combat forces will continue to function effectively without reliance on long-range, highly networked or centralized communication systems that are vulnerable to catastrophic attacks from adversaries like China’s PLA.
  • Adopt and develop Disaggregated Collaborative Air Operations as an operational concept. Employ fifth generation and beyond aircraft as central components to lead decentralized and disaggregated operations. 
  • Modernize and scale fifth generation and beyond forces. The Air Force should rapidly scale up its inventory of fifth- generation aircraft to replace its geriatric fourth-generation combat aircraft. The Air Force should also develop and acquire CCA, B-21, and F-47 NGAD PCA aircraft at scale to create a collaborative, disaggregated, effects-based family of combat systems. 
  • Balance stand-in and stand-off forces. The Air Force should create a balanced mix of stand-in and stand-off combat air forces to provide optimal flexibility in potential conflicts with near-peer adversaries or any number of lesser contingencies.
  • Expand forward base defense and hardening efforts to enable DCAO. The Air Force should double down on its agile combat employment concept to enable DCAO with base hardening, active defenses, aircraft dispersal, and deception capabilities. 

In a future large-scale conflict, the most important question may not be, “How many aircraft do you have?” or “How many weapons can you carry?” but “How many decisions can you still make when the lights go out?” DCAO envisions a force designed to fight in the dark, thrive in chaos, and leaves adversaries chasing shadows. DCAO is a return to the fundamentals of effects-based operations and parallel warfare, fundamentals that capitalize on fifth-generation capabilities.  If the future is indeed dark, it will belong to those whose forces are designed to exploit that reality. 

Retired Navy Commander J. Michael Dahm is the Senior Resident Fellow for Aerospace and China Studies at AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. 

Audio of this article is brought to you by the Air & Space Forces Association, honoring and supporting our Airmen, Guardians, and their families. Find out more at afa.org