Lockheed Martin is investing in new technologies to enable its F-35 fighters to easily control and interact with up to eight autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft—and planning to bid in the next-round of the Air Force’s autonomous drone program, company officials told investors during an Oct. 22 earnings call.
The Air Force bypassed Lockheed in the first increment of CCA development, contracting with drone leader General Atomics and startup Anduril instead. The defense giant sees Increment 2 as a viable opportunity and the ability of future drones to collaborate with the Lockheed-built F-35 and F-22 as crucial to their success. The two fifth-generation jets are the Air Force’s most advanced fighter aircraft.
The Air Force wants to start fielding CCAs by the end of this decade. Lockheed officials say they’re already working on integration.
“We’ve developed a pod that will enable the F-35 to control even today the CCAs,” CEO Jim Taiclet told analysts during a third quarter earnings call. “And we have a flight control system and a communication system in development that will enable that as well. And that could be converted, I think, to F-22 as well.”
A Lockheed spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine that Taiclet was referring to “internal investments we’ve been making that enable a single fifth-gen pilot to operate multiple uncrewed systems (or CCAs) from the cockpit of a fifth-gen aircraft. This work is focused on ensuring that our fifth-gen aircraft stay ahead of future capability integrations, like CCA control.”
Exactly why an external pod is needed is unclear. It’s possible the pod has other purposes, or that it is a testbed for proving technology that, eventually, would be integrated into the existing F-35 through software or hardware updates. Lockheed announced two years ago it would invest $100 million in its own “Project Carrera” to develop manned-unmanned teaming technology. That plan included $20 million in F-35 development work.
Lockheed’s Skunk Works division showed reporters a control station at at AFA’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in September. General Manager John Clark said the station was for linking fifth-gen aircraft to CCAs, “and how all of this autonomy infrastructure and all this collaboration software helps facilitate the ability for a fifth-gen operator that’s got to fly his or her own airplane, and still interact with four to eight CCAs, and do so in an effective fashion,” said Clark.
The Lockheed spokesperson added that the system “makes the control of multiple CCAs possible from a simple pad/tablet configuration.”
The Air Force has said little in public about how manned fighters and CCAs will communicate and the interface pilots will use to manage their robotic wingmen. The F-35 can use both Link 16, the widespread tactical datalink, and its own stealthy Multifunction Advanced Data Link.
Last month, the Marine Corps announced it had conducted a test flight in which an XQ-58A drone “demonstrated newly added Link 16 capabilities … marking the first time the Department of Defense controlled an air vehicle using offboard expeditionary methods.” The release did not specify those methods.
Establishing a datalink between a manned and unmanned aircraft is just one part of the challenge. Officials must also figure out how to synthesize sensor data gathered by CCAs and integrate that into what a human pilot sees, optimized for relatively simple decision-making.
Lockheed has already unveiled a Sniper Networked Targeting Pod for the F-35, with an advanced datalink allowing fourth-generation fighters to communicate securely with the F-35 and a new radio allowing the fighter to form a mesh network with other aircraft and ground and sea assets.
A company official told Air & Space Forces Magazine that Taiclet was not referring to that pod in his comments.
An F-35 can also be fitted with an external gun pod, but that compromises the aircraft’s low-observable characteristics. Lockheed did not offer further insight about the CCA pod.
CCA Increment 2
While Lockheed whiffed on CCA Increment 1, the company remains in the hunt for “Increment 2.”
In September, Clark told reporters that the company overshot its target with a “gold-plated” CCA for starters, exceeding Air Force requirements. This time, the company is focusing on a lower-cost design. Taiclet said Oct. 23 Lockheed anticipates the Air Force will be looking for scale in Increment 2, which would seem to favor cheaper drones.
“The way it’s been described to us is Increment 1 was proof of concept, more of an experimental kind of approach,” Taiclet said. “Increment 2 is going to be targeted to be fieldable, combat-ready, scalable design and production of the uncrewed teaming half of the system. So we are fully dedicated to that.”
Quantity is an important factor, Taiclet argued.
“We have to be able to meet the J-20, which is the Chinese [fifth-generation] combat tactical aircraft, with enough numbers in the Pacific,” he said. “The F-35 and F-22 now are the only really competitive jets against the J-20 one-to one. We have to field enough of those aircraft in a short enough timeframe to maintain an effective deterrent in the Pacific.”
Taken together, Lockheed believes it can demonstrate the scale needed for Increment 2.
“We have Skunk Works working on both the parent and the child, if you will, when it comes to all CCA concepts, Increment 2 is going to be really where we’re, I think, most competitive, because we can show that we can control these vehicles with today’s technology already at scale,” Taiclet said.
NGAD
The question of scale and speed may take on greater immediacy given that the Air Force has chosen to pause the Next-Generation Air Dominance program. Requirements for the planned sixth-gen fighter are again under review as the Air Force worries that initial designs were too costly to make them affordable in any kind of mass. The introduction of CCAs and the potential to introduce a stealthy tanker aircraft, dubbed Next-Generation Air Refueling System (NGAS) could alter the development picture, Secretary Frank Kendall has said.
Taiclet said Lockheed continues to pursue sixth-generation combat aircraft concepts and will keep its options open. But advances in autonomy suggest a manned NGAD fighter may not be necessary.
“We need to be able to bring autonomy and the CCA concept into fifth-gen and sixth-gen, if there is one,” he said at one point.
“We’re preserving our optionality based on what the U.S. government and services determine to be their strategy for tactical fighter deployment over the next 20-30 years,” he said at another. “Part of that strategy is having Skunk Works continue to develop technologies that could be implemented for a sixth-generation tactical aircraft that’s a step function above what the F-22 and F-35 can do today.”