On August 19, 2024, Anduril Industries and General Atomics cautiously brought their drones to the Maryland Convention Center for the annual Air, Space, & Cyber Conference, hosted by the Air & Space Forces Association. At this conference, industry leaders and military officials eagerly discussed how these collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) could shape the future of air superiority, what roles and tasks they might perform, and how they would combine survivability with affordability.
Earlier in 2024, these two companies surpassed three defense giants—Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing—and won contracts to develop their CCA. Next year, service leaders want to see flying versions, and they plan to decide in 2026 whether to build one or both companies’ proposals as “increment one,” the first tranche of CCA.
The seven-year-old company Anduril presented its Fury drone, which it acquired in 2023 along with autonomous drone manufacturer Blue Force Technologies.
General Atomics is offering a version from its Gambit aircraft family. In addition to a full-scale CCA mock-up, the veteran drone manufacturer also displayed the XQ-67 aircraft, which officials described as a potential “sensor” for the CCA “shooter.” Under a secret U.S. Air Force off-board sensor station program, the XQ-67, which first flew in February 2024, helped shape the company’s concept of an armed CCA.
The Fury mock-up on display was slightly smaller than General Atomics’ offering and featured external weapons storage, potentially making it the less stealthy of the two. (Both may be less stealthy than the tailless UAVs being developed by China.)
First-stage CCAs will essentially act as missile trucks, carrying air-to-air missiles for manned fighters. Major General Joseph Kunkel, Director of Air Force Design, Integration, and Wargaming, has planned mission sets such as electronic attack, sustained sensing, and various weapon types for the second stage, which will commence in 2025. Future versions may also have different styles of sustainment and takeoff and landing capabilities, possibly featuring drones with independent control, Kunkel said.
A key factor in the industry’s development of CCA proposals is how survivable the drones need to be, given the Air Force’s desire to keep the price of new drones below $30 million—about a third of the cost of an F-35. Officials say that CCAs need to be both survivable enough to reach the weapon launch point and affordable enough to purchase in large quantities.
“Of course, you don’t want these aircraft to go out and just be shot down, and obviously, you don’t want them to be a panacea because they cost so much you can’t afford to lose them,” said Dave Alexander, president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems.
Alexander stated that his company’s offering strikes an optimal balance between cost and survivability, partly because it can carry protective systems, though he didn’t name them.
However, Lockheed Martin representatives, whose design did not make it into the first CCA tranche, contend that the concept of a non-stealthy best option is an illusion.
The company’s operational analysis shows that it is unlikely that stealthy robotic wingmen will return from combat, and at a cost of $15 or $20 million each, this is a “losing proposition,” said John Clark, vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works division.
With this analysis in hand, Lockheed presented a more stealthy design than its competitors.
Clark reported that Lockheed is changing its approach for the second stage: the company will propose a more durable design “at a much lower price,” he said.
The Air Force’s Kunkel dismissed such concerns, stating that the Air Force has a “very clear understanding” of how survivable their CCAs need to be.
It is unclear how to keep them operational without an 8,000-mile supply chain.
Kunkel said, “We’ve got to build in these systems, the ability to have a limited signature, to be small enough, to be mobile enough, to have a sustainment pipeline that doesn’t go all the way back to Marietta, Georgia. You’ve got to be able to sustain these things in the combat zone, to frankly, put them in multiple places that creates multiple dilemmas for our adversary when they’re on the ground.”
The Air Force is already preparing for the first deliveries of these aircraft and is conducting virtual tests on how these drones will pair with manned fighters.
The service is creating an experimental operations unit to test CCA concepts at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada and is integrating CCA into the Joint Simulation Environment, a next-generation flight simulator that includes virtual F-35 and F-22 cockpits, said General Kenneth Wilsbach, commander of Air Combat Command, during the conference. The first CCAs will head to Creech Air Force Base for testing, Wilsbach said, a base known for its drone operations.
“We’re starting to learn more in the virtual environment about how we can use them, and eventually, we’ll have hardware on the ramp at Creech Air Force Base. We already have a team at Nellis beginning work,” Wilsbach said.