Collaborative Combat Aircraft Missions Come into Focus
By John A. Tirpak
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink is leaning toward a less costly, less sophisticated concept for Increment 2 of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) autonomous fighter escort program. Yet it could be another year before the service settles on what it really wants from CCAs, USAF officials said at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in September.
Increment 1 pits General Atomics against newcomer Anduril in a contest to build aircraft that could cost $30 million per copy. Meink told Air & Space Forces Magazine that he wants Increment 2 to offer a lower-cost alternative.
“I’d like to see it come in substantially less than that, like maybe half,” Meink said. At that price, industry officials said the Air Force would get something more like a reusable cruise missile than a stealthy, survivable robot wingman.
Meink said the Air Force already has 20 to 30 contractors working on various aspects of that less-costly concept—airframes, flight software, mission systems, connectivity, and automation, to name just a few. Defining the objective mission and selecting contractors to develop and integrate a system could take another year. In the meantime, Air Force officials expect to sign new contracts with companies to refine operational concepts, airframes, flight software, integration, propulsion and more, with some to be let within the next few months.
Gen. Adrian Spain, head of Air Combat Command, said the mission “is still somewhere on that spectrum from exquisite to affordable. We are still looking [at ideas], and competition is good.”
RTX’s Pratt & Whitney has begun developing propulsion systems it says can scale from 500 to 1,800 pounds of thrust with an eye toward powering reusable, low-cost flying platforms. GE Aerospace is partnering with Kratos to develop engines in the same class, and Honeywell and Rolls-Royce are also developing power plants in that class. All see an emerging market for engines to power CCAs and CCA-like platforms.
The Air Force has made “some investment” in this category, one development official said, but he cautioned that there’s no direct link between the thrust classes of these engines and the expected shape of Increment 2. Those same engines could power anything from CCAs to low-cost cruise missiles to modular, payload-agnostic “flying trucks.”
Lt. Gen. Joseph D. Kunkel, the Air Force’s director of force design, integration and wargaming and deputy chief of staff for Air Force Futures, said fleshing out the Increment 2 concept of operations should take “about another year.”
General Atomics Aerospace Systems started flying its YFQ-42A Increment 1 aircraft in August, going from contract award to first flight in 16 months. Anduril Industries has faced setbacks, having expected to fly its “Fury” YFQ-44 CCA first in September and then in early October. General Atomics hasn’t revealed whose power plant is driving the YFQ-42, while Anduril’s CCA is reportedly powered by a Williams International FJ-44 engine—a business jet power plant. GA told Air and Space Forces Magazine its aircraft is “engine agnostic.”
Meink, still settling into his job, said he’s in “no hurry” to nail down the Increment 2 specifics. With Increment 1 still in its early stages, officials have yet to determine what it will deliver. Production is supposed to begin next year, and it is possible the Air Force could buy aircraft from both Anduril and General Atomics rather than downselect to one.
Production capacity “is going to be one of the considerations of this program,” one official said, suggesting the Air Force may be willing to “pay a little more” to get it. Several echoed a truism frequently cited by former Pentagon acquisition and sustainment chief William LaPlante: “production is deterrence.”
As for Increment 2, that field remains wide open. Officials see potential to select more than two proposals, especially if there is a desirable international partnership involved. Boeing, which did not win Increment 1, continues to mature its MQ-28 Ghost Bat Advanced Teaming System CCA, a joint program with Australia.
Future increments are also possible. Senior officials cited a potential need for a more survivable system capable of performing more sophisticated targeting, reconnaissance, or communications missions. The concept could be to develop a modular payload system similar to that proposed by General Atomics, with its “Gambit” series, a line of CCAs that share a common chassis, engine, landing gear, and processor core, but able to be fitted with a mission-specific, modular airframes tailored to missions as diverse as air superiority and stealthy intelligence collection.
Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works advanced projects unit has developed a new CCA called “Vectis,” a stealthy airframe intended for tasks such as flying ahead of a crewed fighter and designating and/or shooting aerial targets. Lockheed said the aircraft, which it said has not been designed for a specific requirement, would be available at “a CCA price point.” Skunk Works President O.J. Sanchez predicted Vectis would fly in 2027 and make a “great” CCA if the Air Force wanted it.
Industry officials said Vectis derives from Lockheed’s unsuccessful first CCA proposal, which company sources said turned out to be more sophisticated and expensive than the Air Force wanted in Increment 1. But one said that air defenses worldwide will soon demand that CCAs have a “certain threshold of stealth” to survive long enough to answer the Air Force’s requirement for affordable mass.
Otherwise, he said, “they are expensive cannon fodder. That’s not ‘affordable mass.’”
Sanchez told Air & Space Forces Magazine that Lockheed assumed some risk taking Vectis forward without a definite customer in mind, but the company is convinced that Vectis’ combination of connectivity, stealth, and capability “is what is needed in this moment.”
When “the customer asks for it, speed will be important,” he said. “You’ll have to have something ready to go … ready to offer.” Vectis will be flexible enough to adapt to whatever a customer ultimately decides it needs, he added.
Brig. Gen. Jason Voorheis, program executive officer for fighters and advanced aircraft, said in an airpower modernization panel that the CCA program in all Increments is being developed with “an ‘exportability by design’ mentality;’” with the idea that partner and allied air forces will be able to buy them to boost their own capacity and capability, to achieve affordable mass.
He added that “the value proposition for modularity, open architectures, and open standards is crystal clear.” The approach to CCA—with many vendors in all aspects of its development and production—will break “vendor lock through those open standards, driving sustained competition, allowing for multiple vendors who can integrate different software and different hardware, unlocking it for innovation across our industrial base.” By “isolating flight critical from mission software, which open architectures allows us to do, that allows us to insert technology more quickly over time, driving … agility,” he said.
Kunkel, on the same panel, said that CCAs, besides offering affordable mass, offer “the ability to adapt very quickly, and then scale” production. This is one of the main, though “often overlooked” benefits of the program, he said.
“Sometimes we get ourselves locked in generational capabilities, and we hold onto those capabilities potentially for too long,” he said. Keeping the simplicity of CCAs and holding them at a low price point “as part of that model will help us to adapt and then scale new capabilities, much like we did in the Century Series from long ago.”
The Century Series was a progression of fighters in the 1950s and ’60s that explored different combinations of speed, payload, and maneuverability. All went into production, and each represented an advancement in some aspect of air combat. The Air Force, in a series of internal talking points for the conference, said, “CCA Increment 1 is currently in the design, development, and testing phase, with production decisions slated for FY26.” Between now and next Sept. 30, the Air Force “will begin to refine the concept(s) for CCA Increment 2. All current (over 20) and potential future industry partners in the vendor pool are eligible to compete for the CCA Increment 2 concept refinement activities.”
Service leaders emphasized, in speeches and panel discussions, that CCAs are not a substitute for crewed platforms, but in addition to them, as a “force multiplier.”
“By pairing crewed fighters with affordable, mission-specialized, semi-autonomous systems, we can stretch the reach, responsiveness, and resilience of our entire Air Force, while reducing risk to pilots,” the talking points stated. The CCA is being developed “with affordability in mind, not just in procurement, but across its entire life cycle—through reduced flying-hour demands, simplified logistics, and lower sustainment costs.”
Besides producing autonomous aircraft at scale to achieve affordable mass in combat with a peer adversary, the CCA program is also charting a new path for rapid development and acquisition, service officials said.
The Air Force recently announced that Increment 1 will be “hosted” at Beale Air Force Base, Calif., where some of the aircraft will be operated on a regular basis. Beale will not be the CCA schoolhouse, however, and most CCA operational training will be simulated. That’s because one benefit of these uncrewed systems is that they can be kept in their crates until needed, with some potentially pre-positioned at secured forward air bases.
Dave Alexander, president of General Atomics, said during a panel discussion that CCAs are ideally suited to the Air Force’s affordable mass and rapid modernization requirements.
“We don’t have a lot of time to get more platforms and more crews,” Alexander said. “Large numbers of CCAs really support [a] protracted air campaign, especially when you consider the tyranny of distance” in the Pacific.
A fleet of CCAs can be pre-positioned or quickly deployed via cargo aircraft, supporting the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment model “without overburdening … tankers.” He also said that CCAs, designed for air-to-air combat and leveraging advanced autonomy, can be employed to protect airborne command centers and tankers, freeing crewed fighters for other missions.
“We don’t have to wait 15 years” to develop such a capability, Alexander said. “We can save on aircrew, save lives, and do it quick.”
