Collaborative Combat Aircraft: A Lot of Air Force Eggs in One Basket

Future air fights will be mostly battles of attrition. Whoever can field the largest number of air-to-air and air-to-ground assets will have the edge. That means many of those aircraft will be unmanned and semi-autonomous “loyal wingmen.” To that end, the US Air Force is banking on fielding what it calls the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCA.

Collaborative Combat Aircraft Are Here

CCAs are designed to fly with manned fighters, such as Boeing’s sixth-generation F-47 fighter in development. This means a manned fighter would fly in formation with two, three, or even five drones. The idea is to put more combat aircraft in the fight while minimizing risk to pilots when flying in contested areas. As Military Times described the CCA:

“Unlike traditional remotely piloted drones such as the MQ-9 Reaper, Collaborative Combat Aircraft are jet-powered, semi-autonomous systems designed to operate alongside crewed fighters such as the F-35, F-22 and future F-47. The pilot in the manned jet serves as mission commander, while the CCAs, the ‘loyal wingmen,’ use onboard autonomy for navigation, maneuvering, sensor fusion, and weapons employment.”

Consequently, the Air Force has conceived of the aircraft as expendable. “‘Attritable’ is the Pentagon’s term for platforms that are cheap, plentiful, and easily replaced if lost in combat,” according to Air & Space Forces Magazine. “The CCA program evolved in part from Air Force programs exploring low-cost, attritable aircraft and was envisioned as a way to provide ‘affordable mass.’” In the same article, the concept of “optionally attritable” was coined, but what does it mean? The magazine explains:

“The Air Force’s new Collaborative Combat Aircraft may fly scores of missions over many years or only a few if commanders decide a mission is worth the risk of losing one[,] a top official said this week—a middle ground approach he called ‘optionally attritable.’”

This means the Air Force has a CCA that is survivable and can fly many missions while still being expendable if the mission is worth the risk. The challenge, though, is producing the aircraft in a way that achieves low cost while adding warfighting capability. If the Air Force can produce a cheaper drone that can fly in contested areas, it will more likely be considered attritable. In reality, the aircraft’s eventual cost will determine the number acquired and how willing a commander is to put the CCA in a very high-risk air combat environment.

The procurement scheme has the Air Force acquiring CCAs in increments. Military Times reports:

“Increment 1 CCA will focus primarily on air-to-air and strike missions, with electronic warfare and ISR variants planned for later increments. The Air Force has previously signaled interest in acquiring 100–150 aircraft in Increment 1 as part of a longer-term goal of hundreds to low thousands across multiple increments.”

However, the number of CCAs procured will be determined by the unit cost of each one. The Air Force will want to take advantage of scale, because the more CCAs it acquires, the lower the unit cost, which is reportedly targeted in the range of $25-30 million.

Program Downselects to Two Contractors

The CCA program is a product of nearly a decade of work by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on autonomy, modular airframes, and expendable aircraft.

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According to the Congressional Research Service assessment of the CCA program, “In 2024, the Air Force awarded initial contracts to five companies to design and build CCAs: Anduril, Boeing, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI), Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman.” Two of those companies won contracts in 2024 to build “Increment 1 production-representative test articles,” which are similar in design. But one drone is larger and “carries missiles in an internal weapons bay,” The Wall Street Journal explained. The other is smaller and “carries munitions externally on its wings.”

There are pros and cons of carrying external stores. The advantage is that the airframe can be smaller, can carry a wider variety of weapons, and will be faster. On the other hand, external weapons degrade the aircraft’s stealth qualities.

As the CCA program moves forward, it is clear the Air Force has made a major investment in its success. The WSJ reported: The Air Force’s “latest budget request includes more than $1 billion for these specific drones in fiscal 2027, and in excess of $9.5 billion over the next five years.” There is little dispute that with this level of skin in the game, the Air Force has adopted the command mothership with a complement of drones to establish air dominance. The days of the one-on-one dogfights are over.

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The views expressed are those of the author and not of any other affiliate.