The Air Force has awarded contracts to five companies for its Collaborative Combat Aircraft program to design and build unmanned, autonomous aircraft to fly alongside manned platforms, a spokesperson confirmed to Air & Space Forces Magazine: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Anduril, and General Atomics.
The acting official in charge of shaping the future Air Force revealed new details about the service’s plans for its fleet of unmanned wingmen Nov. 15, including the prospect that some of the drones may be aerially refueled to increase their range. The service is ...
There was a secret, multi-agency X-plane program to explore future fighters that paved the way for the Next-Generation Air Dominance program, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall revealed at the POLITICO Defense Summit on Nov. 14.
Testing Collaborative Combat Aircraft—the unmanned, autonomous aircraft that will fly alongside crewed fighters with the goal of beefing up the future Air Force fleet—will require an unprecedented integration of effort from engineers and operators, leaders of the service’s test enterprise said in a recent interview ...
The first of 10 EC-37 Compass Call electronic warfare aircraft was delivered to the Air Force on Sept. 12, contractors BAE Systems and L3Harris announced. The jets will complement the current EC-130s and will be supplemented by—but not replaced by—the emerging Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) ...
New details of the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program—and how it will work together with similar efforts in the Navy—will emerge from AFA’s Air, Space, and Cyber Conference in September, USAF’s program executive officer for fighters and advanced aircraft said.
The Air Force’s approach to developing Collaborative Combat Aircraft—the uncrewed, autonomous drones to fly alongside manned aircraft—will “break the mold” of traditional acquisition and sustainment, Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. said July 31. For years, Brown told attendees at the Air Force Life ...
Northrop Grumman won’t bid on the Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter, but might go after the Navy's F/A-XX and Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft programs, company CEO Kathy Warden said July 27.
The Air Force’s request for funding for the Next Generation Air Dominance program is slashed nearly a third—some $550 million—in the House Armed Services Committee chairman's mark of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act. But while the amount of the reduction roughly matches what the ...
China has structured its military to defeat the U.S. “kill chain”—the sequence of steps needed to spot and destroy particular targets—and the Air Force must now ensure its process is agile and resilient, largely by investing in new platforms and networks, an expert from the ...
The Air Force plans to get production of the classified AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile underway this year and will equip its new Collaborative Combat Aircraft with the weapon, senior USAF leaders said at a Senate Armed Services Hearing.
A GAO official told the House Armed Services Committee that the Pentagon still doesn’t have a portfolio-wide plan for tactical aviation, which would help itself and Congress identify true priorities and avoid duplication of effort. He also said the agency is worried that the F-35’s ...