Air Force Awards $13 Billion Contract for New ‘Doomsday’ Planes

April 28, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

The Air Force awarded a $13.08 billion contract to the Sierra Nevada Corporation on April 26 for its Survivable Airborne Operations Center aircraft, the successor to the service’s E-4B “Doomsday” plane.

Like the E-4B, officially called the National Airborne Operations Center, the SAOC will be meant to withstand a nuclear attack and keep the government running from the air during a crisis.

Sierra Nevada Corp. was one of two bidders for the SAOC, according to a Pentagon release. Reuters reported back in December that Boeing, the only other bidder and the builder of the E-4, was eliminated from the competition.

Work on the contract is slated to last until 2036, the DOD release states.

The Air Force first started work on SAOC in 2019, but the process has been slow and was delayed several times. By June 2022, lawmakers said they were “concerned” by the lack of progress and the “availability and capability” of the E-4 fleet, which has been flying since the 1970s.

Progress is slated to ramp up rapidly now. After spending just $94 million on the program in fiscal 2023, the Air Force got $744 million from Congress for 2024 and is seeking $1.69 billion in 2025.

According to Air Force budget documents, the SAOC will be a commercially-derived aircraft “hardened to protect against nuclear and electromagnetic effects and modified with an aerial refueling capability to enable sustained airborne operations.” It will also need secure command, control, and communications systems and modern IT infrastructure.

The E-4B fleet consists of four modified Boeing 747s that are struggling with “capability gaps, diminishing manufacturing sources, increased maintenance costs, and parts obsolescence,” according to budget documents. The fleet’s mission capable rate has been steadily declining, reaching a low of 55.4 percent in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available.

To keep the plane flying until the early 2030s, the Air Force has invested in virtual reality training for the E-4, using a 3-D scan of the interior and exterior to create training modules for maintainers and operators.

RTX Exits the Space Prime Business, Won’t Make SDA Satellites

April 26, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

RTX will no longer compete to be a prime contractor in the space field, focusing instead on its “strengths” as a supplier of payloads, sensors, and components to other companies, president and chief operating officer Chris Calio said during the company’s April 23 earnings call.

Calio said RTX will “pivot” from “a space prime, if you will, to being more of a component supplier to the space primes. And I think, when you look at our strengths in that portfolio, I think that pivot … is the right one.”

RTX has “historical strength in some of the exquisite space areas,” but has “other strengths in some of the key components that go into the prime satellites and buses. But again, I think that’s where we’re going to be shifting; away from perhaps being a space prime to being more of a component supplier.”

Calio will succeed Greg Hayes as chairman and chief executive officer of RTX in May.

In March, RTX pulled out of a fixed-price, $250 million agreement to build seven missile tracking satellites for the Space Development Agency after realizing it couldn’t break even on the deal. The SDA is deleting those seven satellites from the planned constellation, director Derek Tournear told reporters at the Space Symposium March 18. The 28 other satellites—14 each awarded to L3Harris and Northrop Grumman for Tracking Layer Tranche 1—will suffice, he said. RTX-made components will fly on the L3Harris and Northrop birds, he added.

Even before it received the award, though, RTX was moving to exit the space prime role. Last April, David Broadbent, then-president of Raytheon’s space sector, told SpaceNews that “being in a mission prime position hasn’t yielded the results that we were looking for, and we’re now focused on a merchant strategy.”

RTX lost about $28 million on classified programs in the first quarter, Calio said. The company would not characterize the sectors those programs affected.

“There’s a few of them,” he said, and he estimated “it’s about 12 to 18 months” before those losses abate, with “critical milestones on each program.”

“There’s still some headwinds that we’re encountering as we get additional technical learning and going through testing, but that’s the timeframe and that’s the magnitude I would put on it,” he added. The company will “battle through” the losses.

F-15Es and A-10s Join Red Flag-Like Exercise on Arabian Peninsula

April 26, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

F-15E fighters from the 335th Fighter Squadron of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., arrived in the Arabian Peninsula last week for a multilateral exercise hosted by the United Arab Emirates.

Alongside the Strike Eagles, A-10s from the Maryland Air National Guard are also participating in this year’s Desert Flag exercise, a spokesperson for Air Forces Central told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The three-week exercise kicked off April 21 and is “equivalent to U.S. Air Force’s Red Flag exercise,” focusing on combat and strategic drills with regional partners to strengthen a unified fighting force for regional defense, the spokesperson added.

Launched at Al Dhafra Air Base in the UAE, this year’s iteration will include diverse scenarios and ample opportunities for allied integration. In addition to the U.S. and UAE, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, and South Korea are all participating.

“Air forces from brotherly and friendly nations have arrived in the UAE’s territory to start the multinational joint exercise, Desert Flag 9, for the year 2024,” the UAE Ministry of Defence said on X.

A U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle pilot and weapons officer, assigned within the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, prepare to exit an F-15E after landing at an undisclosed location for Desert Flag 2024, April 18, 2024. Desert Flag, hosted by a regional coalition partner, provides strategic training with multinational and regional partners to build upon a cohesive fighting force in the defense of the Arabian Peninsula. (U.S. Air Force photo)

It’s been a busy few days for the F-15Es in the Middle East. Strike Eagles from the 335th Fighter Squadron and the 494th Fighter Squadron, along with F-16s, shot down more than 70 drones during Iran’s strike against Irael on April 13.

“I’m very confident and proud of our joint force, and what they were able to do with our allies and partners and to be able to do what they did on that night,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said about the fighters’ efforts at a Pentagon briefing on April 26. “One of the fighter squadrons showed up like the day prior, and they were right in the middle of the fight. And that says something to our level of training, our level of capability, and then be able to do that as part of a joint team and a coalition.”

Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. James C. “Jim” Slife also described the shootdowns as a “pretty successful weekend” for U.S. and coalition forces.

“Some of what was shot down was shot down with bullets,” Slife said April 24. “It was 20-millimeter shells coming out of the front end of a fighter. That’s a pretty favorable cost exchange right there.”

U.S. Air Force F-15E Strike Eagles fly overhead as they arrive at an undisclosed location, within the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, for Desert Flag 2024. April 18, 2024. Desert Flag, hosted by a regional coalition partner, provides strategic training with multinational and regional partners to build upon a cohesive fighting force in the defense of the Arabian Peninsula. (U.S. Air Force photo)

In addition to the U.S. fighters, the Royal Saudi Arabian Air Force is deploying six F-15SAs, its own model of the F-15, along with their technical and support airmen for this year’s Desert Flag.

The Republic of Korea Air Force, marking their second appearance at the exercise is deploying a C-130H along with 30 aircrew this year to train with the UAE’s C-130s.

New Report: Engine Problems Led to MQ-9 Crash in Africa Last Year

April 26, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

A U.S. Air Force MQ-9 suffered an engine failure flying over Africa in May 2023, forcing the drone’s pilot to down it in the ocean where it was not recovered, according to a new Air Force report. The cost of the mishap was more than $21 million.

The report, released April 22, does not disclose the exact location of the mishap and crash landing but notes that it took place within the area of responsibility for U.S. Africa Command. The drone belonged to the 432nd Wing at Creech Air Force Base, Nev., while the crew operating it was from the 184th Attack Squadron at Ebbing Air National Guard Base, Ark.

Investigators determined that the cause of the accident was a mechanical failure resulting in “abnormal contact in the engine core between the rotating and static components.” That led to an onboard system, the Digital Electronic Engine Controller, decreasing torque to maintain engine speed, but that failed and the aircraft lost thrust. The system then tried to increase fuel flow, but that caused the engine to overheat and created a fire.

The crew shut down the engine and determined the MQ-9 “had insufficient glide distance available to travel to a suitable landing or recovery site.” After coordinating with the Air Operations Center, the pilot flew the drone over the water hoping to get it near “friendly seaborne assets” for recovery.

The recovery never happened, though, and as a result, investigators were unable to determine the root cause of the mechanical failure that led to the engine problems.

The cost of the mishap was estimated at $21.8 million—one of 10 mishaps involving the MQ-9 in fiscal 2023, according to data reported earlier this month by Air Force Times.

That’s the highest number of MQ-9 mishaps the Air Force has seen in a decade, according to service data.

Accident Investigation Boards have released reports for two other Reaper mishaps in 2023 thus far. In January, a contractor crashed a drone and caused $16 million in damages in California, and in September, another contractor was killed after she walked into the propeller of an MQ-9 while it was undergoing ground tests.

On top of that, the Air Force has already disclosed at least one MQ-9 crash in 2024—U.S. Air Forces in Europe announced a Reaper crashed in Poland in Janaury.

Beyond mishaps, MQ-9s have also been damaged or destroyed by Russian fighter jets and Iranian-backed militias six other times since March 2023:

February 2024: Houthi rebels, supported by Iran, downed an MQ-9 off the coast of Yemen into the Red Sea

January 2024: An MQ-9 crashed in Iraq. U.S. officials said the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iraqi militias supported by Iran, likely shot down the drone with an Iranian-provided surface-to-air missile.

November 2023: Houthi rebels shot down an MQ-9 over the Red Sea.

July 2023: In the span of a few days, Russian fighters intercepted MQ-9s over Syria twice, both times releasing flares that damaged, but did not destroy, the drones.

March 2023: A Russian fighter collided with an MQ-9 during an intercept over the Black Sea, causing it to crash and be destroyed.

The last MQ-9 mishap in Africa that the service disclosed happened in June 2020, when a massive fuel leak led the crew to crash the aircraft as hard as possible into the ground to prevent it from being recovered.

MQ-9s have played a critical role in the U.S.’ counterterrorism efforts in the Middle East and Africa. Their future in Africa, however, is unsettled at the moment as U.S. officials say they will pull back troops from Niger, where the U.S. Air Force has bases from which it has conducted Reaper operations in recent years.

Competitors Not Picked for CCA Look Forward to Increment 2

April 25, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak

The three contractors not chosen for the first increment of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program say they’re staying in the arena and will compete for other autonomous aircraft work for the Navy, foreign governments, and in the classified domain. But only two said definitively they will compete for Increment 2 of the Air Force’s CCA.

The Air Force announced April 25 that Anduril, a relatively new startup, and General Atomics, the service’s main drone-builder over the last 30 years, each won CCA contracts. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, the traditional aircraft primes, were not chosen, although the Air Force said they could compete for future CCA work at their own expense.

The Air Force was not able to immediately provide details of how Anduril and General Atomics’ CCA options have been exercised or what the wins translate to in terms of funds.

Northrop Grumman chief executive officer Kathy Warden said her company is “obviously disappointed” not to be chosen, but noted that the Air Force has “described this acquisition strategy as a continuous competition, as they’re already outlining future phases. So, we’ll see what that presents in terms of a future entry point.”

Warden, speaking on an earnings call April 25, also said the Navy and foreign governments are pursuing similar programs, “and so we are pursuing those opportunities.”

“We haven’t learned anything at this point that fundamentally changes our strategy in autonomy,” she added. “But we’ll monitor how the CCA program progresses and incorporate any learnings that we have into those future opportunities.”

The company wants to expand its presence in the emerging market of CCA-like platforms, Warden said.

“We are obviously working toward affordability in our product line,” she said. “So, we do not want to be viewed as only offering exquisite and expensive technology. We’ve been working to drive down the cost of our offerings, and I think we had quite a compelling offering on CCA and can compete in that marketplace.”

She said Northrop is well-positioned to meet customer needs “against the high-end threats,” but isn’t looking to be a player in the “more commoditized part of the market: very low cost and not survivable systems. That’s just not our business model.”

Boeing, in a press release, also expressed disappointment “that we won’t be moving forward in this phase” of the CCA.

“We are undeterred in our commitment to providing next-generation autonomous combat aircraft for U.S. and global military customers. Work continues on our robust and growing autonomous family, including the MQ-25 Stingray and future derivatives, the MQ-28 Ghost Bat, and a number of proprietary programs we can’t disclose.”

The Stingray is a carrier-launched, autonomous aerial tanker, while the Ghost Bat is a modular CCA-like platform developed by Boeing Australia, in partnership with the Royal Australian Air Force.

In its statement, Lockheed Martin noted that the CCA will have to work with the F-22 and F-35 fighters it builds.

The company “remains committed to advancing the state of the art in autonomous systems for air and ground missions. … For some time, we’ve been focused on bringing to life the transformative power of autonomous and AI/ML [artificial intelligence/machine learning] enabled operations in crewed and uncrewed DOD systems, with particular focus on integrating CCA with F-35 and F-22. These commitments and work are ongoing.”

Lockheed did not say, however, that it will continue competing for CCA per se, either as a manufacturer for Increment 1 or as prime on Increment 2. Asked about this, a Lockheed spokesperson said the statement stands, and noted the comment about the “commitments” and work “ongoing.”

While Northrop has said it will not pursue the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) crewed fighter that is to replace the F-22, Boeing and Lockheed have said they are pursuing that project. The Air Force refers to the CCA as part of NGAD, funding the two under the same budget line item and describing the CCA as part of the NGAD’s “family of systems.”

SPACECOM Boss Warns China Is Moving ‘Breathtakingly Fast’ During Pacific Visit

April 25, 2024 | By Unshin Lee Harpley

In the wake of a major Chinese military shakeup, the head of U.S. Space Command warned of China’s “breathtakingly fast” advances in space during visits to Japan and South Korea.

Gen. Stephen N. Whiting’s trip to the Indo-Pacific is his first overseas visit since taking command of SPACECOM in January. His arrival in the region comes just a few days after the People’s Liberation Army announced it was disbanding its Strategic Support Force as part of “a significant reform,” wrote Brendan S. Mulvaney, director of the U.S. Air Force’s China Aerospace Studies Institute.

The People’s Liberation Army now consists of four services—the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Rocket Force—and four arms—the Aerospace, Cyberspace, Information Support, and the Joint Logistic Support Forces.

The Aerospace Force in particular is “of great significance to strengthening the capacity to safely enter, exit and openly use space, enhancing crisis management and the efficacy of comprehensive governance in space and promoting peaceful utilization of space,” Beijing’s state-run media reported.

“I have seen the reports of their recent organizational changes,” Whiting told reporters in an April 24 briefing in Tokyo. “The statements I’ve seen come out of the Chinese government is that they’ve made those changes to further enhance the importance of space and information warfare and cyber operations in the People’s Liberation Army.”

Mulvaney noted in his analysis that “the PLA adheres to a fairly strict protocol order in formal announcements, so it appears that the Aerospace Force (ASF), which commands the PLA’s space forces, is now the senior force. The ASF was formerly the Aerospace Department of the Strategic Support Force.”

More broadly, Whiting is using his visit to warn that China is developing counterspace weapons to threaten U.S. space capabilities and using space technology to enhance other PLA branches such as the Army and Air Force.

“Over the last six years they have tripled the number of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance satellites on orbit, and they have used their space capabilities to improve the lethality, the precision, and the range of their terrestrial forces,” said Whiting. “That obviously is a cause for concern, and something that we are watching a very, very closely.”

Specifically, Whiting noted ties between the U.S. and Japan to monitor Chinese behavior in space.

“We are excited for the Japanese to bring on board their deep-space radar capability that they’ve been working for many years and that we’ve been partnering with them,” said Whiting. “When that achieves initial operational capability, we expect that will provide both of our countries an enhanced understanding of what China is doing in space.” Whiting also mentioned the ongoing partnership with Japan to deploy hosted payloads to conduct space domain awareness missions in a satellite factory in greater Tokyo.

While China’s growth in space is a major concern, North Korea’s emerging space ambitions are also drawing attention. Whiting engaged with South Korean leaders to talk through ways to increase joint domain awareness and keep a close eye on Pyongyang’s ongoing space projects. North Korea launched its first spy satellite in December and is planning a second launch, although there are questions regarding the capabilities of the one currently in orbit.

“We continue to see that they want to launch more satellites,” said Whiting. “We had a good discussion with Admiral Kim, the Republic of Korea chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, about how we can better collaborate together. I also had a chance to talk to the Korean Air Force commander of their Space Operations Squadron, how we could share space domain awareness information.”

Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo have been sharing missile warning data since December as part of their agreement to better track Pyongyang’s missile launches.

The Pentagon has been working to expand its partnerships in space with both nations for months now. The Space Force expects to establish a new component in Japan this year, and U.S. Space Force Korea, established in December 2022 at Osan Air Base, has been working with the Republic of Korean Air Force’s Space Operation Squadron to share data and counter threats in the region including Pyongyang’s GPS jamming through joint exercises.

‘Interchangeable Almost:’ NATO Air Deputy Pushes Even Deeper Integration

April 25, 2024 | By Greg Hadley

NATO Allied Air Command is making moves now for its member nations’ air forces to be able to service each others’ fighters, fly them with each others’ weapons, and integrate more closely than they have in decades, a top official said April 24—ahead of an influx of F-35s and a coming wave of sixth-generation fighters.

Interoperability has long been a cornerstone of NATO. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has charged the effort with a new urgency unseen since the end of the Cold War, NATO Allied Air Command’s Deputy boss, RAF Air Marshal Johnny Stringer, said at an event hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

Royal Air Force’s Air Marshal Johnny Stringer, Deputy Commander, NATO Allied Air Command on Wednesday, April 24, 2024, at the Air & Space Forces Association headquarters in Arlington, VA., April 24, 2024. **Photo by Mike Tsukamoto/Air & Space Forces Magazine**

The F-35 is perhaps the most obvious example, with the U.S. and a dozen European NATO countries having either purchased the fifth-generation fighter or planning to do so.

United Kingdom

Belgium

Netherlands

Italy

Denmark

Norway

Sweden

Poland

Germany (planned)

Czech Republic (planned)

Greece (planned)

Romania (planned)

“If you look at the number of nations who are operating or are buying F-35, that’s over 700 fifth-gen platforms in the European theater in 10 years time,” Stringer said. “Of interest, only 50 or so of them will be U.S.”

Defense and industry officials have previously suggested more than 500 of those fighters could be in place by 2030. The ever-growing number of the same kind of aircraft is likely to ease interoperability, but Stringer noted that the F-35 alone won’t define NATO’s efforts.

“You’ve got a load of capable fourth-gen platforms out there as well. Integrating fifth- and fourth-gen, maximizing what both bring to the fight is really, really important as well,” he said.

On top of that are the various sixth-generation fighter programs different member nations are pursuing. The U.S. Air Force is working on its Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter; Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom are collaborating on the Global Combat Air Programme; and France, Germany, and Spain are pursuing a Future Combat Air System program. Sweden is still exploring whether it might pursue a program of its own.

All the different efforts are the natural result of countries wanting to bolster their own technological and industrial bases, Stringer said. But with the “changed context” of Russia’s invasion, NATO and its members have to consider how to make sure these future fighters can work together.

“I think at some point, will there be coalescence in fighter programs? Well, there might be,” Stringer said. “ … I think one of the things which I would really strive for is, no matter what, make sure that the programs that are there are interoperable, interchangeable almost, with each other from the outset, and make sure that the weapons we are buying are applicable and employable across the force. This, by the way, poses some really interesting challenges, where proprietary software and the old school way of doing stuff makes weapons integration incredibly expensive. We have to break that paradigm.”

Beyond just buying similar aircraft and munitions, though, Stringer emphasized that NATO Allied Air Command wants to get members more comfortable working with each other’s equipment.

“One of the things NATO was really good at and then kind of fell away with that long shadow of 30 years was STANAGs, standardization agreements, that allowed you to go and put your Jaguar [fighter] into a base in Denmark where Danish technicians would turn the jet for you,” Stringer said. “And you’d then sign them off as being competent at aircraft cross-servicing. All understood, all documented. We’re reinvigorating that. There’s a lot of STANAGs still there, so let’s go back and test them and update them where necessary. Let’s make sure that our digital STANAGs are also fit.”

Cross-nation aircraft servicing in particular is an area where “we have just about every NATO air force signed up for this now,” Stringer added. “And we’re actually going, I think, quite nicely through the gears of getting nations signed off to go and service other people’s jets as we did before.”

Maintainers won’t be the only ones getting a taste. Stringer later said that NATO has conducted studies that point to the importance of training aircrews with weapons that might not even be in that nation’s inventory.

“That sense of training people and giving them the experience and the capability to employ more broadly is going to be really important,” he said.

Command and control, or ensuring different nations can come together to fight when needed, is also an emphasis.

“A lot of it is actually making sure that the digital structures you’ve got allow you to bring the different forces together,” Stringer said. “If I’m being really blunt, it’s an area actually where we know we need to be better than we are at the moment. But equally, there is a ton of technology now that we can get off-the-shelf and apply to this problem.”

Want to Be a Warrant Officer? Air Force Opens Up Applications Until May 31

April 25, 2024 | By David Roza

Airmen can apply to become warrant officers in cybersecurity or information technology starting today, April 25, through May 31, the Air Force announced. From June 24-28, a selection board will pick up to 60 candidates for the eight-week Warrant Officer Training School (WOTS) at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala. Selectees will be notified in late July, with an initial class scheduled to start in the fall of 2024 and a second class in early 2025.

The graduates will be the first batch of new Air Force warrant officers since 1958, when the service dissolved those ranks in favor of creating senior master sergeants and chief master sergeants. The Air Force and Space Force are the only military services currently without warrant officers, who fill technical rather than leadership functions in the other military branches. Now the Air Force wants to bring them back to maintain expertise in fast-moving technical fields such as IT and cybersecurity.

“With perishable skills, like cyber, like IT, where the technology is moving so rapidly, folks who are experts in that can’t afford to be sent off to a leadership course for eight or nine months,” Alex Wagner, assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs, said April 9.

Time spent in mandatory leadership roles can also hurt retention; Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said in February that about 100 Airmen joined other branches in recent years so that they could become warrant officers in IT and cyber. Airmen have been enthusiastic about the new program since it was announced in February.

“Everything we’ve discussed about warrant officers in our shop so far has been positive,” one anonymous cyber Airman told Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The April 25 announcement laid out new details for what kinds of candidates could apply. The program is open to members of the Active Duty, Air National Guard, and Air Force Reserve, but candidates must hold the rank of at least staff sergeant and have one year of active federal service. While Airmen from any specialty code can apply, they “must meet specific functional technical experience,” the release noted.

For IT, that includes at least “24 months of documented operational experience with enterprise IT or warfighter communications systems in areas such as voice and data internetworking, local and wide area networks, including terrestrial, satellite, and aerial systems, as well as network planning,” the release said. Applicants must also hold a Defense Department-approved industry certification commensurate with the requirements for the Information Assurance Technical Level II certification or higher.

On the cyber side, candidates “must hold senior level proficiency in one or more U.S. Cyber Command work roles as defined in the Commands Job Qualification System, or National Security Agency equivalent,” the release said. Candidates interested in a cyber capability developer work role must also “be a certified U.S. Cyber Command Senior Cyberspace Capability Developer or a Computer Network Operations Development Program graduate or have three years of experience in system level programming, i.e. C, Assembly.”

An Air Force graphic breaks down requirements for warrant officer candidates. (U.S. Air Force graphic)

Candidates can apply through the personnel management website myFSS, where they must submit evaluations and letters of recommendation. An Air Force official told reporters on background that a key component of the application will be a technical letter, which explains to the board “why is this member a no-kidding technical subject matter expert?”

“This board is going to be highly competitive,” the official said. “These have to be the right 60.”

There are five warrant officer ranks on the Defense Department pay scale, and the exact breakdown of what graduates’ ranks is still under consideration, officials said, but they are all supposed to be authoritative in their field.

“Having personally worked with warrant officers in the past, they’re usually the guys or the gals that we go to for the ‘no kidding’ answer on what’s happening, because they have that level of expertise,” an official said.

Indeed, documents shared on Reddit on April 24 break down the exact roles and responsibilities for the two new Air Force specialty codes: 17W for warfighter communications and IT systems operations; and 17Y, for cyber effects and warfare operations. 17Ws are experts and advisors for planning, deploying, using, and securing communications systems, while 17Ys perform the same role for offensive and defensive cyber operations, assets, and personnel.

Air Force spokesperson Master Sgt. Deana Heitzman confirmed the documents were from the Air Force Officer Classification Directory, which contains the official specialty descriptions for all military classification codes and identifiers.

The rank insignias for the new warrant officers will look similar to those used by their Army counterparts, and the pay will be the same indicated on the Defense Department pay scale. But where the warrant officers are assigned after graduating could vary depending on operational requirements, the Air Force said in its announcement.

Officials said they “definitely” will stand up additional cohorts after this one, but when those cohorts happen and how many warrant officers will be trained is still under consideration. Likewise, the exact breakdown of IT and cyber warrant officers in this upcoming class is also to be determined based on the applications the selection board receives.

No matter how it breaks down, the reintroduction of warrant officers is a major change to the way the Air Force has done business over the past 60 years. Officials told reporters that once the graduates’ assignments are determined, there will be training and webinars with the command teams at those units to make sure leaders know how to work with warrant officers and know their authority and responsibility. Officials are also taking lessons learned from the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps’ warrant officer experience.

“I’m excited to see what comes out of it,” an official said. “We’ll have to adapt a lot, I’m sure, but the overall goal, what we need to hit right, is that culture.”

Whether the Air Force might expand warrant officers beyond cyber and IT is yet to be seen, as the service first wants to see how these initial experiments go. But Kendall has expressed interest in expanding the scope.

“I expect ultimately, assuming that we’re successful with these initial steps, that we’ll probably expand it,” he said March 5. “I don’t think it’s going to happen immediately, so you shouldn’t hold your breath about this. But my sense is, my own intuition about this, is that we’re going to want to expand it after we see how effective it is for cyber and IT.”

Anduril and General Atomics to Develop New Collaborative Combat Aircraft for Air Force

April 24, 2024 | By John A. Tirpak, Unshin Lee Harpley and Chris Gordon

The Air Force has picked Anduril and General Atomics to continue developing their autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft concepts over designs offered by Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, the service announced on April 24. In a non-traditional move, the companies that were not picked will still be able to compete to produce the resulting aircraft.

“The Department of the Air Force made the decision to continue funding Anduril and General Atomics for detailed designs, manufacture, and testing of production-representative test articles under the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program,” the service said in a press release.

“The companies not selected to build these production-representative CCA vehicles … will continue to be part of the broader industry partner vendor pool consisting of more than 20 companies to compete for future efforts, including future production contracts,” the service said.

Since before the CCA program officially started, Air Force officials have discussed the possibility of separating design and production in order to attract companies that could design advanced aircraft but perhaps not manufacture them.

An Air Force spokesperson said the non-selected entrants can compete for production, but must do so “at their own expense.”

Anduril is a recent entry in the uncrewed aircraft field, founded in 2017. The Silicon Valley startup purchased Blue Force Technologies and its “Fury” stealthy aggressor drone program in the fall of 2023. Conversely, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems is an industry veteran, having built the MQ-1 Predator and then the MQ-9 Reaper remotely-piloted hunter-killer drones for the Air Force since the 1990s. It has promoted its “Gambit” concept for CCAs, which features five platforms optimized for various missions and built around a common core comprised of an engine, keel, and landing gear.

The selections are for “Increment 1” of the CCA program, and a winner will be chosen in 2026. The Air Force also plans an “Increment 2,” which will get underway next year, but specifics of those platforms have not been publicly defined.

Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall has said the service plans to build at least 1,000 and as many as 2,000 CCAs through the mid-2030s, at a cost of about $30 million per copy. The concept is for CCAs to give the Air Force “affordable mass” to deal with a growing and highly capable threat posed by China, given that the Air Force can’t build enough aircraft or train enough pilots to overwhelm a peer adversary with manned platforms alone.

Though future iterations of the CCA could perform missions such as electronic warfare, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and dogfighting, their initial role will be to carry additional munitions for F-35s, F-22s, and the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter, which will succeed the F-22. To be stealthy, those aircraft must carry weapons internally, which limits their combat load.

Lt. Gen. Richard G. Moore, Jr., deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, said in an AFA Warfighters in Action event earlier this month that the “role we’re going to focus on first is the ability to augment the shooters and to add additional rails to the formations that we send forward.” The need is to “increase the number of weapons in a formation.” Those other roles are “not our focus” for Increment 1, he said.

While initial plans called for Increment 2 to be a more complex, very stealthy aircraft, wargames over the last year—some of which were run by AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies—found that a high-end CCA was not as useful in a Pacific campaign as a greater number of less-sophisticated autonomous drones.

Commenting on the selection, Kendall said the CCA started “just over two years ago” as part of his “Operational Imperatives” slate of new technologies the Department of the Air Force needs to compete with China. He praised the speed of the program and the quality of the entries.

“The progress we’ve made is a testament to the invaluable collaboration with industry, whose investment alongside the Air Force has propelled this initiative forward. It’s truly encouraging to witness the rapid execution of this program,” Kendall said.

The Air Force “executed an acquisition and funding strategy for CCA with early operator, technologist, acquirer, and industry teaming to quickly iterate requirements given our fielding timelines,” he added. “Continuous competition is a cornerstone at every stage of this program. The transparency and teamwork between industry and government really accelerated how quickly we could mature the CCA program.”

Andrew Hunter, Air Force acquisition executive, said continued collaboration “with both current and potential industry partners remains pivotal. Their expertise, innovation, and resources are instrumental in driving this initiative forward, ensuring its success and impact on future operations.”

Kendall said at the AFA Warfare Symposium in February that he hoped to carry three competitors into the next stage of the CCA program, but that budget constraints would make that challenging.

The choice of only two indicates that the service couldn’t afford a broader competition or the industry balked at more cost-sharing in the program. Lockheed Martin chief executive officer Jim Taiclet said on the company’s first-quarter earnings call on April 23 that the government must be prepared to pay a “risk premium” on contracts where new technology is being invented—such as CCAs—as many companies have taken heavy losses bidding aggressively on fixed-price development projects.

The exercise of the Air Force’s option “does not exclude any of the vendors from competing for the future Increment 1 production contract,” the USAF said.

Moreover, the Department of the Air Force is “exploring international partnerships, to include potential Foreign Military Sales, as part of the CCA program. These partnerships will help provide further affordable mass at scale while driving horizontal integration and interoperability across our international partnerships,” the release stated. “All current and potential future industry partners from the CCA vendor pool will compete for this follow-on effort.”

The CCA is budgeted as part of the NGAD program; one element of the “family of systems” that make up the NGAD concept. The Air Force asked for $577.1 million for the CCA in its fiscal 2025 budget request and plans to spend $8.9 billion on it across the future-years defense plan that runs through FY29.

Brian Schimpf, Anduril’s chief executive officer and co-founder, said in a release that the company was “honored to be selected for this unprecedented opportunity, which signals a demand for continued expansion of the defense industrial base.

“Anduril is proud to pave the way for other non-traditional defense companies to compete and deliver on large-scale programs,” Schimpf said. The company plans to work to put CCAs into the hands of Airmen “as quickly as possible,” he added.

General Atomics noted that the selection follows a successful preliminary design review of its offering earlier this year.

The CCA program “aims to be a force multiplier, developing a low-cost, modular, unmanned aircraft equipped with advanced sensors or weapons and operating in collaborative teams with the next generation of manned combat aircraft,” the company said.

It also noted that its XQ-67A Off-Board Sensing Station, built for the Air Force Research Laboratory to explore autonomous drones as communications nodes, has recently completed two test flights. GA-ASI called the aircraft a “CCA prototype.”

“The CCA program redefines the future of aviation and will shape the USAF acquisition model to deliver affordable combat mass to the warfighter at the speed of relevancy,” said Mike Atwood, vice president of advanced programs for GA-ASI.

The company also said it will continue to test CCA technologies on its stealthy MQ-20 Avenger uncrewed aircraft “to accelerate the readiness of operational autonomy.”