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.
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.
The Department of Defense is pushing Congress to give it the authority to start new developmental programs before a budget is approved—a change the Pentagon argues would make critical new programs less vulnerable to Washington gridlock. “Time is going by, and all those things that ...
The Collaborative Combat Aircraft will be operational in the late 2020s, several years before the Next-Generation Air Dominance family of systems, Air Force officials told the House Armed Services tactical aviation panel. The CCAs will first be “shooters,” then electronic warfare platforms, then sensors, in ...
Though touted as “loyal wingmen,” Collaborative Combat Aircraft may not always be paired with crewed aircraft and may function only in concert with one another or weapons in “swarms,” the better to complicate an enemy’s ability to track and counter them, senior Air Force CCA ...
The Air Force is asking for about $6 billion to develop Collaborative Combat Aircraft over the future years defense plan, up from a get-started amount of nearly $400 million in fiscal 2024. One of the first types of CCAs will be for “spectrum warfare,” but ...
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall clarified what the service wants from its future fleet of Collaborative Combat Aircraft fleet, saying the service seeks a single type of airframe customizable to the mission with modular elements. He also said the final inventory could be twice as ...
Collaborative Combat Aircraft should be viewed as force-builders and not expendable vehicles, senior USAF and industry leaders said at a panel discussion during the AFA Warfare Symposium in Colorado this week. Building 1,000 such aircraft in the needed timelines will require tapping the commercial industrial ...
The Air Force should focus on fighter pilots learning to operate with one Collaborative Combat Aircraft before asking them to control two or more, ACC commander Gen. Mark D. Kelly said. The first CCAs should probably have some kind of electronic warfare mission, he added.
The Air Force will field 200 Next-Generation Air Dominance aircraft and notionally 1,000 Collaborative Combat Aircraft, and will request funds in the fiscal 2024 budget to develop these new systems, Secretary Frank Kendall said in his keynote address at the AFA Warfare Symposium on March ...