“We’ve just finished up, basically, critical design review for both Anduril and General Atomics. Both industry teammates are on the path to get to first flight in a timeline that allows us to get operational capability by the end of the decade,” Col. Timothy Helfrich, senior materiel leader for Air Force Materiel Command’s Advanced Aircraft Division, said during a panel at the Mitchell Institute’s Airpower Futures Forum. 

General Atomics and Anduril each received contracts from the Air Force in April for the development-for-production phase of CCA Increment 1, beating out defense giants Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing for the award. Under the effort’s current phase, the two firms are creating detailed designs, manufacturing drones and conducting flight tests for the CCA Increment 1 airframe.

As part of the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems, the CCA drones are intended to fly alongside the service’s manned platforms to augment its aircraft fleet for the service’s air dominance mission. The drones will carry equipment for a range of missions — including offensive strike and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

Now that Anduril and General Atomics have completed CDR — verifying their CCA airframe design maturity for potential development and production phases — both companies are gearing up to conduct first flight tests slated for 2025.

“I would say that we have matured the design to a critical point where we feel confident that it’s moving forward,” Diem Salmon, vice president for air dominance and strike at Anduril, told a small group of reporters after the panel. “Fabrication is moving very quickly, and it’s getting to the path where we’re going to be able to integrate and support the first flight that is, more or less, around the corner.”

As Anduril prepares to fly its offering for CCA Increment 1 — dubbed Fury — the defense startup is in the process of building the test article and testing sub-components before integration onto the airframe, Salmon said. 

General Atomics is also on track to fly a variant of the Gambit family of drones it is proposing for CCA Increment 1 by mid-2025, and it’s taking cues from its successful flight demonstration of the XQ-67A Off-Board Sensing Station in February, a company spokesperson told DefenseScoop in a statement.

Mike Shortsleeve, vice president of strategy business development for General Atomics, said during the panel that the company is leveraging its decades of experience in designing and building unmanned aircraft as it prepares for the first flight.

“When we did the XQ-67A, that effort to build that x-plane — with about 70 to 80 percent carried over into what would be CCA — that helped us to understand not only how that design needs to work, but also how do you actually build it right,” Shortsleeve said.

The Air Force expects to make a competitive production decision for the CCA Increment 1 in fiscal 2026 and plans to field the first batch of systems before the end of the decade.

Helfrich added that the service is on the cusp of kicking off development for the next group of CCA drones known as Increment 2. The Air Force is currently conducting analysis “to make sure we understand what are the right mission use cases for Increment 2 and the top-level attributes. This fiscal year, we will kick off concept refinement, where we then bring in industry to help us further refine what those attributes are and whittle down those use-cases,” he said.

Each iteration of CCAs is expected to feature different capabilities based on the latest technology industry can offer the Air Force at the time. Once fielded, the service will determine which mix of increments will fly for certain missions based on the capabilities they’re carrying to meet specific force designs, Helfrich said.

“No one should think that Increment 2 means ‘Increment 1 plus.’ … That doesn’t mean that Increment 2 has more capability,” he said. “We’re still looking to figure out whether the right balance — if you’re doing the analysis — is to further bring down the capability to maximize a low cost, or is it that I need to change what the focus is from a missile truck to something else.”

In the meantime, the Air Force is also establishing an experimental operations unit that will focus on doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, personnel, facilities, and policy concepts related to the CCA drones. During an event hosted by Defense One on Wednesday, Air Force acquisition head said he recently approved additional CCA purchases to equip the unit and enable experimentation with real drones.

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During AFA’s Air, Space and Cyber conference last week, Air Force leadership doubled-down on its intent to field next-gen capabilities, including a sixth-generation fighter jet and bomber, accompanying loyal wingman drones and a modern tanker. After months of uncertainty and conflicting public statements, the service acknowledged that it’s taking a number of external factors into consideration as it reevaluates its plans.

But while nothing is currently set in stone, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall emphasized during his keynote speech at the conference that the service will have “simultaneous and well-supported answers” about its future aircraft programs in the coming months.

“We are looking at what we need in order to achieve air superiority in a manner consistent with the increased threat, the changing character of war in the most cost- and combat-effective way,” Kendall said.

NGAD paused

Earlier this year, Air Force leadership began suggesting it was having second thoughts on its plans to acquire a a new stealth fighter jet — known as the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) platform. 

Kendall confirmed to reporters at the AFA conference that the service has halted the selection process for NGAD in order to reexamine the Air Force’s current design concept and ensure the platform is right for future threat, budget and technology environments.

The aircraft was initially designed to replace the F-22 Raptor fighter jet, and is envisioned as a long-range crewed platform equipped with advanced capabilities that can operate in highly contested environments. Kendall said NGAD’s current design as an F-22 replacement is several years old, and a number of new factors have come into play since it was first developed.

The pause isn’t expected to last more than a few months, he added.

Kendall has tapped a team of advisors led by his special assistant, Tim Grayson, to oversee the NGAD platform’s reevaluation in a context that considers emerging technologies and the service’s other future aircraft.

One point of consideration is the Air Force’s plans to conduct more disaggregated forms of air superiority, which is both the main mission for the F-22 and the intended one for the NGAD system.

During a panel at the conference, Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Jim Slife noted that in the past, the service would design a single platform with specific requirements and capabilities — such as size, range and thrust — so that it could execute a specific mission set, such as air superiority.

“We’ve gotten to a point now where our systems-level integration, we have the ability to disaggregate these capabilities and look at air superiority more broadly than just, ‘Hey, we have to build a platform to do a thing,’” Slife said.

The Air Force is already moving down a path of proliferating its capabilities more broadly on the battlefield, especially with its in-the-works drones known as collaborative combat aircraft (CCA). However, the concept “puts into question the design concept that we’ve been working on” for the NGAD platform, Kendall said. 

“It’s a fairly mature design concept, and … it’s an F-22 replacement. You can make some inferences from that,” he added. “The CCAs are about air superiority first and foremost. As we go forward, I expect there’ll be a strike aspect of CCAs as well, but initially we’re focused on air superiority and how to use the CCAs in conjunction with a crewed aircraft to achieve air superiority.”

Both the NGAD platform and CCAs are considered part of the next-generation air dominance family of systems, and thus closely connected during their respective development processes. The Air Force planned to have the NGAD aircraft and its fifth-generation fighters available to fly alongside the loyal wingman drones as a way to augment and extend capabilities of manned platforms.

According to Kendall, how much the Air Force can harness autonomy for both its fighter jet and CCA drones is part of the larger NGAD evaluation.

“We’re looking at a range of alternatives, and crewed versus uncrewed is one of the things we’re thinking about. … I believe that we’re probably going to do one more version of a crewed, more traditional aircraft. I don’t know exactly what that aircraft will look like yet,” Kendall said. “It’s design to make it able to control CCAs effectively and fight with CCAs — I think is a question mark. Whether there’ll be variants that might be crewed or uncrewed is another question mark.”

Kendall also emphasized that once fielded by the 2030s, armed CCAs will have to be under strict oversight by the manned fighters operating them — meaning they will require line-of-sight communications.

“We’re not going to have aircraft going out and doing engagements uncontrolled. So the default, if they lose communications, would be for them to return to base, which takes them out of the fight,” he continued. “So we don’t want that to happen. And when they do engagements, we want them under tight control.”

At the same time, the Air Force is trying to wrangle in the unit cost of the NGAD platform so that the service can field the aircraft in high-enough numbers to deter adversaries. For Kendall, an ideal price point for NGAD would be around that for the F-35 Lightning II fighter jet.

“I’d like to go lower, though,” he said. “Once you start integrating CCAs and transferring some mission equipment and capabilities functions to the CCAs, then you can talk about a different concept, potentially, for the crewed fighter that’s controlling them. So there’s a real range in there.”

Original estimates for the sixth-gen aircraft were around $300 million per plane, about three-times as much as what an F-35 costs today. Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter later told reporters during a roundtable at the conference the service is looking to create a more affordable NGAD design concept, noting it may not come at the cost of an F-35 in the end.

As for what the intended output of the NGAD pause will be, such as a new request for information (RFI) or request for proposals (RFP), Hunter said that depends on what answers the Air Force finds in its analysis.

“There’s different possible points of optimization. If those points are very close to where we already are, there may not need to be a huge change in our approach. If they are not close, there will have to be a significant change to our approach,” he said.

Next-gen tanker and acquisition

As the Air Force mulls over NGAD, it’s also moving forward on another future aircraft program known as the Next Generation Air-refueling System (NGAS), while also testing out a new acquisition model that focuses on mission systems separately from the platforms themselves.

NGAS is a tanker that’s supposed to be designed to refuel other aircraft in more contested environments than today’s systems can. The service recently released an RFI for the platform’s mission systems as a way to establish a vendor pool for the program early, while also giving industry an early opportunity to help inform the Air Force’s requirements formation process, Hunter said.

“It’s not, ‘Hey, we’re going to pick one of you to be in charge of something for the next several decades.’ It’s about creating a pool of talent, if you will, a pool of industry capability that we will continuously access and continuously work with over time to achieve the objectives of delivering a capability, delivering a system,” Hunter said during a panel discussion at the AFA conference.

Focusing on mission systems first rather than the NGAS airframe was another intentional move by the Air Force, he later told reporters. The service is trying to pivot away from decades-old acquisition strategies where a single prime contractor is responsible for nearly every part of an aircraft program.

Instead, the department wants to buy aircraft mission systems separately moving forward as part of what Hunter referred to as the “next-generation acquisition model.”

One element of the new strategy includes engaging with industry early on in the process, while another “is having direct relationships, where it makes sense and where we can, with our mission system providers,” Hunter said. “The reason why is, your mission systems have to integrate across a broad swath of our force in order to accomplish the missions that we have to do, the complex mission threads that go into high-intensity conflict with a peer competitor.”

Another RFI for the NGAS airframe will come after the Air Force finishes conducting an analysis of alternatives (AOA) for the platform by the end of 2024, which will give insights into what its future aerial refueling needs will be and how quickly the new system can be developed.

The analysis will also inform the Air Force’s plans to purchase an interim tanker that will help bridge the gap between the service’s current fleet of air refueling platforms and the future NGAS, which is expected to be fielded in the mid-2030s, Hunter said.

Speaking to reporters during a roundtable at the AFA conference, head of U.S. Transportation Command Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost emphasized the importance of fielding NGAS as quickly as possible to prepare for future conflicts.

She noted that initial insights into the AOA are not surprising, and cover how the tanker will fly in contested environments, the need for low visibility, and concepts of operations for refueling both manned and unmanned platforms.

“I’m hoping that as NGAS AOA comes out and we are able to expose all those technologies, that no matter the platform, I can start getting those technologies as soon as possible,” Van Ovost said.

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One of the new organizations created as part of the department’s plan to “reoptimize” for future warfare, the ICC is a major command that will develop operational concepts, integrated capability requirements and modernization plans for the entire service. Speaking during a keynote at AFA’s Air, Space and Cyber conference, Allvin said the provisional command will be led by Maj. Gen. Mark Mitchum, who most recently served as the chief of staff’s special assistant. 

“Their first task to do, is be able to evaluate the way we’re modernizing our Air Force by core functions, … to really answer that question in order to do what and evaluate in terms of the mission threats that need to be accomplished,” Allvin later told reporters during a roundtable.

Allvin has previously said the ICC is intended to address the service’s current capability development process — which he has described as “diffused and fragmented” across each major command — by creating a single organization responsible for generating new requirements for both current and future platforms. 

Around 100 personnel are currently assigned to the provisional ICC and they’re working out of their previous locations or assignments, Allvin explained. The aim is to have up to 800 people working in the final iteration of the command. 

“We have to have the full manning documents understood, have to do the full strategic basing process, full congressional notification, full nomination of the leadership — which is going to be a three-star that has to be nominated and confirmed,” Allvin said. “I would like to have it done within calendar year 2025. A lot of that will be dependent upon how fast we can move through the processes and how fast we can go through the assignment process, too.”

Meanwhile, the Air Force has also named Gen. Duke Richardson to be the service’s first capability development executive officer (CDEO) and lead the new Integrated Development Office — also created under the department’s reorganization efforts — within Air Force Materiel Command. Richardson will serve in a “dual-hat” role as both the CDEO and in his current position as AFMC commander, an Air Force official told DefenseScoop.

Naming Richardson as CDEO is the first step to standing up the Integrated Development Office, Air Force acquisition head Andrew Hunter told reporters Monday during a roundtable. In the new role, Richardson will be responsible for the service’s developmental planning efforts for prototypes and technologies that aren’t quite ready to be considered programs of record and need additional work on development or integration.

“It’s basically saying, ‘We understand where we need to go with the force, and we’ve laid the foundation for how we’re going to get there,’” Hunter said. “It’s not program management, per se, because you aren’t at the stage of the game where you’re executing a program, you’re laying the foundation.”

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During a recent Senate Armed Services airland subcommittee hearing, Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter told lawmakers that the service plans to field the “first increment” of a resilient command, control and communications capability in 2027. The specific capability he was referring to is a C3 battle management system for moving target indication — one of two programs currently being funded by the Department of Defense’s Quick Start authority, an Air Force spokesperson told DefenseScoop in a statement.

“It’s a rolling timeline. In terms of that first increment of capability — probably in the 2027 time frame, I would say, if you were to talk about something at the level of a network capability,” Hunter said at the May 8 hearing in response to questions from Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.

Approved by the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act in December, the Quick Start rapid acquisition authority allows the services to begin development on new programs in some cases without a congressionally approved budget. Spearheaded by Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, the authorities look to address delays in modernization efforts caused by the often lengthy period of time between when the services submit their annual budget requests and when lawmakers pass appropriations.

The Air Force has confirmed that two programs have been initiated through Quick Start, including the C3BM system for moving target indication. The other is a resilient national GPS position, navigation and timing capability.

Both programs are considered classified, and the spokesperson declined to provide any additional details beyond Hunter’s comments during the SASC hearing.

The Air and Space Forces want to transition part of the ground moving target indication mission from radars on airborne platforms — such as the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) that was retired in 2023 — to those on space-based systems.

In its budget request for fiscal 2024, the Space Force kick-started a new program alongside the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) called Long Range Kill Chains to develop ground moving target indicator sensors and auxiliary payloads to replace part of the E-8C JSTARS mission. Due to classification, the Department of the Air Force has not confirmed whether the moving target indication funded via Quick Start is directly related to the Long Range Kill Chain program.

While the services intend to move fast on deploying new moving target indicator capabilities, Hunter told lawmakers that fielding a fully realized networking system would still take time.

“If you start talking about really being able to do entire mission threads at scale, anywhere in the world, it’s going to be another few years before we can really say we’ve rolled that out to the warfighter,” he said.

In the meantime, Hunter emphasized that the department is incrementally deploying other “meaningful” networking systems prior to fielding the moving target indication system. According to his written testimony to Congress, there are over 50 ongoing programs across the Air and Space Forces dedicated to modernizing their networking capabilities in support of the DAF Battle Network — the services’ contribution to the military’s Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) concept.

For example, the Air Force delivered a cloud-based command and control (CBC2) capability to the Eastern Air Defense Sector in October, and later to the Canadian Air Defense Sector in January. The department plans to deliver more CBC2 systems to the Pacific, Western and Alaskan air defense sectors throughout fiscal 2024, according to the spokesperson.

The Air Force is also deploying Tactical Operation Centers-Light (TOC-L) kits to different locations around the world and integrating them into service- and joint-level exercises. Essentially mobile computers equipped with software and data-management applications, the kits generate air pictures for battle managers by integrating and fusing data from hundreds of feeds.

“Modernizing legacy systems to support modern day mission threads and horizontal integration across stove-piped platforms to close mission threads at speed and scale are areas that we continue to work through in order to deliver the DAF BATTLE NETWORK to the warfighter,” the spokesperson said. 

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The two firms beat out defense giants Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing for the development-for-production phase of the drone program. According to an Air Force release, the service plans to make a competitive production decision for the first increment of CCAs in fiscal 2026 and is on track to field the systems before the end of the decade.

“We executed an acquisition and funding strategy for CCA with early operator, technologist, acquirer, and industry teaming to quickly iterate requirements given our fielding timelines,” Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said in a statement. “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.”

As part of the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems, the CCA drones are intended to fly alongside the service’s sixth-generation fighter jets and current fifth-generation platforms to augment its manned aircraft fleet. The drones will carry equipment for a range of missions — including offensive strike and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

The Air Force plans to field CCAs in increments, and General Atomics and Anduril will now work to create the final design for the first iteration known as Increment 1. During the annual AFA Warfare Symposium in February, Kendall told reporters that the Air Force initially wanted to move three vendors into the next phase of Increment 1, but the current budget would only support two.

The service is requesting $557 million for program in its fiscal 2025 budget request and plans to spend almost $9 billion on the effort through fiscal 2029. The Air Force is expected to eventually buy at least 1,000 systems for around $30 million per drone.

According to the release, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and others will all be able to compete for the upcoming Increment 1 production contract — albeit likely with their own research-and-development dollars. There are currently more than 20 companies in the potential pool of vendors that can compete for future CCA efforts.

“As we navigate the next phase of CCA development, our 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,” Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter said in a statement.

General Atomics’ CCA prototype is based off its XQ-67A drone, which had its first successful flight in February as part of the Air Force Research Lab’s Low-Cost Attritable Aircraft Platform Sharing (LCAAPS) program. Through the next phase of the CCA program, the company plans to complete autonomy and mission system tests on both the XQ-67A and its MQ-20 Avenger prototype, according to a press release.

“Throughout our 30-year history, GA-ASI has been at the forefront of rapidly advancing unmanned aircraft systems that support our warfighters,” GA-ASI President David Alexander said in a statement. “The USAF is moving forward with GA-ASI due to our focused commitment to unmanned air-to-air combat operations and unmatched UAS experience, ensuring the production of the CCA aircraft at scale to deliver affordable combat mass for the warfighter.”

While Anduril did not immediately provide details on its CCA prototype, the relatively new company has recently inked multiple defense contracts to develop and build unmanned systems for the U.S. military.

“With the CCA program, Secretary Kendall and the Air Force have embraced a fast-moving, forward-looking approach to field autonomous systems at speed and scale,” Brian Schimpf, Anduril CEO and co-founder, said in a statement. “We are 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.”

Air Force officials also indicated that they’re looking at how international partners can participate in the CCA program as a way to offer “affordable mass at scale” and promote international integration and interoperability. That includes potential foreign military sales, per the release.

As for Increment 2, planning for development is still underway and the Air Force intends to begin “initial activities” before the end of the year. As the capabilities in each increment are being determined by the technology available within the service’s fielding timelines, it is possible that Increment 2 will have different requirements compared to Increment 1.

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“I see a lot of challenges in our software development,” Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Andrew Hunter said Thursday during the McAleese Defense Programs Conference. “That’s a case where it’s not necessarily just a matter of time and we’re suddenly going to find all the software experts that we need to do the sophisticated, very complicated software development we need for some of these really advanced capabilities.”

Speaking to DefenseScoop on the sidelines of the conference after his remarks, Hunter added that he isn’t concerned with the quality of software developers in the Air Force. Rather, he wants to have more workers as some of the key programs under development — including the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Block 4 upgrades and B-21 Raider stealth bomber — move further along in the production cycle. 

The concerns are compounded by competition for talent between the commercial sector, Defense Department and defense contractors, he noted.

“We’re ramping up on a number of areas where we have our industry partners out there aggressively trying to ramp their software development capabilities. It’s that pace at which we can ramp that I worry about from competition with the private sector,” Hunter said. “I don’t have any concerns about the quality of the people that we’re getting, it’s just that I want more.”

At the same time, Hunter noted there are inconsistencies across the Air Force as it makes the pivot to embracing modern software development practices. He said the transition needs to include appropriate contracting methods, a highly skilled workforce and the tools needed to use these emerging capabilities.

The process has been difficult thus far. The transition is happening in pockets across the service rather than in a consistent manner, he said.

“It’s uneven, and it’s painful until we get those things aligned and it starts to click and it starts to work,” Hunter said. “We’ve made a lot of progress, but it’s not yet fully aligned to modern software development across the entire span of the activity.”

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Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment William LaPlante hinted at follow-on efforts during an exchange with Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., at a House Armed Services Committee hearing Thursday regarding Defense Department initiatives to expedite the fielding of innovative technologies.

“The Air Force’s ARRW system is the only hypersonic weapon that the DOD has successfully tested so far. And yet the DOD currently has no plans to move the program forward. Why is that?” Banks asked.

“Let’s just say that there is a plan. It’s not something we can talk about in this open session. But we’d like to talk. We’d be happy to come over and brief you in a SCIF [sensitive compartmented information facility where classified information can be viewed and discussed],” LaPlante replied.

Additional funding for ARRW would breathe fresh life into a project that many thought would be coming to an end. The service’s fiscal 2024 budget request included about $150 million for research, development, test and evaluation for the system, but the documents suggested it would wrap up after that.

It’s unclear, based on LaPlante’s comments, if follow-on work for boost-glide systems would fall under the ARRW program or a new program with a different name.

Last year, after a test that was deemed unsuccessful, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said the service was more committed to a different weapon known as the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM) — an air-breathing system that will use a scramjet engine for propulsion.

ARRW, developed by Lockheed Martin, is a boost-glide missile that uses a rocket motor to reach hypersonic speeds. The Air Force has launched the weapon from a B-52 bomber during testing.

The service had two ARRW tests slated for fiscal 2024, and one of them was conducted in October.

Hypersonic missiles are designed to fly faster than Mach 5, be highly maneuverable and have unpredictable flight paths, which would make it difficult for traditional air defense systems to intercept them. They are a top modernization priority for the Pentagon. The Air Force, Army and Navy are all pursuing different variants.

In December, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Andrew Hunter told DefenseScoop that the service hadn’t closed the door on further pursuit of boost-glide weapons.

“There are different approaches to delivering hypersonic capability. And we have not ruled out any of those approaches for the Air Force in the future,” he said in an interview.

However, Hunter didn’t disclose whether additional funding will be included for ARRW or follow-on work in the next budget submission.

“The rapid prototyping program is continuing [in fiscal 2024]. It’s been accomplishing flight tests, which has definitely been adding to our capabilities in the hypersonic realm. It adds to our understanding of … the capabilities that industry can provide, as it has provided under ARRW. And also adds to our ability to do test of hypersonic capabilities, which is really actually quite a key thing because the nature of hypersonic systems is they create a demand signal for a lot of new test capabilities, which we’ve been able to demonstrate with ARRW. And there will be more testing on ARRW in ’24,” he said.

More information about the fate of the program and other advanced weapons will be revealed when the service releases its fiscal 2025 budget request in the coming weeks.

“We don’t have anything additional to provide at this time,” an Air Force spokesperson told DefenseScoop Thursday in response to questions about LaPlante’s comments and future plans for ARRW.

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The service has confirmed that five companies are currently contracted for the initial stages of the CCA program — Boeing, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Anduril. Over the coming months, it will evaluate those vendors and down-select to two or three contractors that will move into the next developmental phase, Kendall said during a roundtable with reporters at the annual AFA Warfare Symposium.

“The next phase is going to take us into development for production, and then we’ll be moving forward and in a couple of years to down-select for production,” Kendall said. “How many will be able to carry into production is still uncertain. It is definitely one, but there’s a possibility that we could do more.”

The service wants to acquire CCA drones that will fly alongside the sixth-generation fighter jets that are in the works — known as Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) systems — and fifth-generation aircraft that are currently in the fleet. The drones could be equipped to perform a variety of missions — such as offensive strike, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance — in order to augment crewed platforms.

The Air Force is likely to buy at least 1,000 CCAs, Kendall has previously said. The goal is to begin fielding the systems by the end of fiscal 2028.

The service plans to field CCAs in increments, and the five vendors in line for down-select are part of the first iteration known as increment one. The capabilities in the initial tranche have been determined by what technologies industry can offer within the timeline that the Air Force has set, Andrew Hunter, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, told reporters during a separate roundtable at the AFA conference.

Kendall noted that while the Air Force would like to have three vendors vying for the next phase of increment one, the service’s current budget would likely only support two. In its budget request for fiscal 2024, the Air Force indicated that it planned to spend more than $6 billion on the program and projects related to it over the next five years.

“Three is going to be difficult because of the level of funding we have in the budget,” he said. “With some cost-sharing with industry, I think we could do three and that would be our preference, so we’re going to be working out some way to do that.”

For increment two, the Air Force also plans to award two efforts in the upcoming fiscal 2025 budget that will fund similar work that they’re conducting with the current five vendors in increment one.

“Increment two will potentially be a very different set of requirements that the Air Force needs,” Hunter said. “For increment two, we’re going to be initiating that process in FY ’25. We’ll be kicking off a process with industry to really start to narrow in on what the increment two is going to be.”

As the Air Force moves forward with the upcoming down-select, the service is also working with a separate group of companies to establish the enabling software for CCAs, Hunter told DefenseScoop during the roundtable. Those efforts are independent of the individual CCA increments, but instead are focused on establishing the foundational software elements for the drones that are needed in every tranche, he said.

“Our architecture for core-enabling software capabilities is something that is always ongoing,” Hunter said. “That is a core capability … It’s one of the foundational architectures of the CCA effort, and so it will be very similar across increments.”

However, each increment does have its own specific software requirements that the vendors will work on. Companies will have a set of “key software tasks” that they’ll need to accomplish if they hope to move forward in increment one, he noted.

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The goal is to field the first tranche of CCAs by the end of fiscal 2028. The Air Force plans to spend more than $6 billion on related projects over the next five years.

“The whole idea of having increments of capability is that they are different. Now, they don’t … actually have to be a straight-line trajectory, right? Like, it’s not that every increment will necessarily be more sophisticated than the last … We see the potential for autonomy growing over time. But having said that … increments could just be focused on different operational problems and they may not necessarily be more or less advanced in like some kind of a straight-line trajectory,” Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Andrew Hunter said in an interview Tuesday.

While the drones could carry a variety of payloads and play a variety of roles, air-to-air operations will be the main task of the first tranche, Thomas Lawhead, assistant deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and requirements, has said.

The CCA program isn’t starting from square one in terms of technology development. The Air Force Research Lab has already planted seeds for the effort through its Skyborg vanguard project.

“This is the value, I would say, of the precursor work that AFRL did with Skyborg is because of the engagement with industry, and because of the engagement with our operational community, we were really able to look at a variety of concepts and figure out what really pays off in various operational scenarios and … what are the most essential attributes that are required to reach that objective to make that operational concept close. So that work that the foundation of the Skyborg effort laid, has really been very valuable as we’ve transitioned into CCA,” Hunter said.

The Skyborg work has been picked up by the program executive office for fighters and advanced aircraft, which is overseeing the next-generation air dominance and CCA projects.

Air Force could award production contracts to multiple companies for the first increment of CCA drones if there’s enough money for it.

Last week, Breaking Defense reported that five vendors are currently in the running for an early stage of the program — Boeing, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Anduril.

During the interview with DefenseScoop on Tuesday, Hunter declined to discuss the number or specific companies that the service is working with right now.

However, when asked how many firms are capable of producing the types of drones that the Pentagon wants for the initial increment, Hunter said it’s “probably a larger number than folks might expect.” He confirmed that it’s substantially more than would be expected for a high-tech, manned fighter aircraft program. In the modern era, those efforts typically only have two or three prime contractors in the running.

“Our goal for CCA is continuous competition throughout the life of the program. So, you know, we’re not looking to ever skinny down to just one CCA manufacturer. Our expectation is we’ll have a range of CCA capability with continuous competition over time. And what we’re seeing at this stage is there’s enough capability in industry and there’s enough interest in industry to make that strategy viable. And so I’m very, very satisfied about that, very pleased about it,” he said.

DefenseScoop asked Hunter if the Air Force is looking at multiple manufacturers for the first increment of collaborative combat aircraft, which the Air Force hopes to field by the end of fiscal 2028.

He reiterated that the service wants continuous competition throughout the lifecycle of the program, adding that would include increment one.

In response to a follow-up question from DefenseScoop after the interview seeking clarification on whether Hunter was referring to potentially awarding production contracts to multiple vendors for increment one, an Air Force spokesperson provided the following statement: “The CCA acquisition strategy provides the flexibility to carry multiple vendors through the entire life cycle of the program. There are multiple decision points along the way and to the extent funding allows, multiple vendors will be involved for as long as possible.”

The Air Force is planning for a large arsenal of the next-generation drones and may acquire 1,000 or more. Secretary Frank Kendall has estimated that the unit cost will be roughly a quarter or a third of the price of an F-35 stealth fighter, enabling the service to increase capacity more affordably.

Hunter noted that the Air Force is using digital engineering processes to keep an eye on potential vendors.

“We’re leveraging digital engineering to the maximum extent that we can with today’s tools, which are pretty robust. What that means is that, throughout when you’re working with industry in a digital engineering context, right, the government has access to what industry is doing [and] industry has a lot more exposure to the government throughout the process. And so, we are able to evaluate and assess for those who are in our pool of vendors that we’re working with exactly where they are at any given point in time and assess their performance. So, we remain constantly aware of progress across the vendor base throughout the program,” the acquisition chief said.

The push for continuous competition isn’t limited to drone manufacturers. The Air Force also wants to apply that concept to software makers whose technologies will enable collaborative combat aircraft to operate autonomously and perform other tasks.

“In general, right, our philosophy is: Build a vendor pool of people with game in the space and, as I said, encourage continuous competition. So that’s our overall approach. It’s true of software as well, that we’ve already been able through Skyborg to have an initial vendor pool of providers who have demonstrated real capability — both on their own and working with AFRL — and transition those providers into the CCA program. And we will certainly be completely open to on-ramping additional providers over time. In fact, that is our plan,” Hunter said.

Although the Air Force is aiming to field CCAs in the next five years, the service won’t be cutting corners, he noted.

“Our focus on CCA is speed to ramp, and we’re looking to field a capability in the later 2020s … But it doesn’t mean we’re going to shortcut any of the necessary stages of the acquisition process. And when I say the acquisition process, I really mean the technology development, engineering and fielding process,” Hunter said.

“There are certain real engineering and technical tasks that need to be done in order to have viable, meaningful military operational capability. So, we’re going to do those things on CCA, we’re gonna do them with a great deal of discipline on making sure that the requirements that we set are ones that we think are achievable in the near term to meet our projected fielding date. And then we’re going to work through those in a rapid fashion to get there,” he added.

An engineering and manufacturing development effort will be needed.

“That will both enable us to confirm that we have technically achieved the military capability we were shooting for and also to do the development of manufacturing necessary to develop a production for capability,” Hunter said.

He wouldn’t say explicitly whether EMD is the next big step for the program.

“I don’t want to get into the timing. But it’s in there, you know, like Ragú. You know the old Ragú commercials,” he said cryptically.

Hunter declined to discuss the timing of specific contracting actions for the program.

Meanwhile, the budget impasse on Capitol Hill could throw a wrench into the program. Federal agencies have been operating under a continuing resolution since the beginning of fiscal 2024, which largely freezes funding for programs at the previous year’s levels and makes it harder to move forward with modernization efforts.

There’s a possibility that the Defense Department will be subject to a yearlong CR if lawmakers can’t reach an agreement on new funding.

“We would be substantially set back if there was a yearlong CR even on a program as high priority as CCA. And the reason is, we would be in crisis mode across so many parts of the Air Force portfolio that even top-level, you know, strategic priorities would be put under stress. The budget would be put under stress, because, of course, we will have an NDAA [policy bill for fiscal 2024] which will mandate, rightly and helpfully, a pay raise [for personnel]. So, you know, we will have to pay at the rate that is statutorily mandated … So, it would be exceptionally challenging to increase any program above its FY ‘23 level. In that scenario, in fact, the vast majority of programs obviously, by sheer math, would have to see a reduction even from ‘23 in order to make the budget work. So, it would definitely be a substantial delay to our efforts on CCA,” Hunter told DefenseScoop.

The Air Force’s fiscal 2024 budget proposal included $392 million for the main CCA budget activity line in fiscal 2024.

DefenseScoop asked Hunter if the service would request an “anomaly,” in DOD parlance, from Congress to free the program from the constraints of a yearlong CR.

“I think probably all of the services would need pretty substantial flexibility to move funds around in contrast to the FY ‘23 levels just for fact of life reasons, as I said, for the [military personnel] accounts. So, I think we would need robust flexibility across the portfolio. But certainly, we would not leave CCA out of whatever request we make,” he said.

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The Pentagon has been pursuing multiple types of hypersonics that have unique characteristics. Boost-glide missiles such as ARRW are first launched from a rocket booster that gives them sufficient energy to reach speeds greater than Mach 5 and then glide toward their targets. In contrast, hypersonic cruise missiles use air-breathing engines known as scramjets.

Last year, Raytheon was tapped to be the prime contractor for the HACM project.

“It is early days in the program, and so you certainly hope that a program like HACM is on track at this stage, because it’s quite early. And they typically are, right? And so, I’d say it’s on track but it is a challenging program. That’s why we’re undertaking a rapid prototyping effort really is to work through some of the potential risks, some of the potential technical risks associated with the HACM concept,” Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Andrew Hunter told DefenseScoop in an interview Tuesday.

“Of course, we’ve been building off of work that was previously done by the department in that program, so that has provided a great foundation for it. And then the Air Force effort is to turn that into something that’s more operationally useful. So, I do think there are concerns, as there are with any hypersonic technology, that we have to wring through how these work operationally and make sure that our test capabilities are sufficient to really help us know that we have a meaningful military capability,” he added.

Hypersonics are a top modernization priority for the Air Force as well as the Army and Navy. U.S. adversaries, including Russia and China, are also pursuing these types of systems, which are designed to fly faster than Mach 5, be highly maneuverable, and take unpredictable flight paths. Those characteristics make them difficult to track and intercept.

For the Air Force, hypersonic cruise missiles offer advantages over boost-glide systems in that they are smaller and can fit on fighter jets, not just large bombers like the B-52 that’s been used to test the ARRW. However, some experts say they are more complex to develop.

The ARRW effort was dealt a blow after a March test was deemed unsuccessful. There have been at least two tests since then, including one in August and another in October, but the Air Force has provided few details about how well they performed.

“The rapid prototyping program is continuing. It’s been accomplishing flight tests, which has definitely been adding to our capabilities in the hypersonic realm. It adds to our understanding of … the capabilities that industry can provide, as it has provided under ARRW. And also adds to our ability to do test of hypersonic capabilities, which is really actually quite a key thing because the nature of hypersonic systems is they create a demand signal for a lot of new test capabilities, which we’ve been able to demonstrate with ARRW. And there will be more testing on ARRW in ‘24. So that effort does continue for the rapid prototyping program and testing,” Hunter told DefenseScoop.

Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for ARRW.

Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said earlier this year that the service was more committed to HACM. DefenseScoop asked Hunter if the Air Force had decided to abandon the idea of acquiring a boost-glide system for the foreseeable future and focus on the cruise missile effort.

“There are different approaches to delivering hypersonic capability. And we have not ruled out any of those approaches for the Air Force in the future,” he said.

More information about the fate of the ARRW effort and the service’s plans for advanced weapons will be revealed when the service releases its fiscal 2025 budget request early next year. During the interview, Hunter didn’t disclose whether additional funding will be included for ARRW or follow-on work in the next budget submission.

Meanwhile, Hunter declined to say when the service anticipates HACM will be fielded or the projected cost per round. Broadly, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante has said the Pentagon should aim for an average procurement unit cost in “the single digit millions” for its hypersonic missiles.

“We’re actually looking at some that are as low as $3 million an all-up round. That’s where we want to be,” he said at a conference in April.

Hunter told DefenseScoop that the Air Force has a cost target in mind for HACM, but he was tight-lipped about it.

“We do set targets for all of our programs and I’m a big believer in them. [But] I’m not gonna tell you what the target is,” he said.

The cost per round will affect decisions about how many missiles the Air Force should buy.

“As you look at the munitions portfolio — and let me just kind of speak generally about hypersonics versus, you know, the rest of the munitions, of which there’s a huge variety … it’s definitely a mix, right?” Hunter said. “We need affordable mass for munitions just like we need affordable mass for platforms. And that’s something that we’re working very hard on. And then you need the high-end things, right, that can go into the most contested environments and address the … highest priority threats.”

He continued: “And generally speaking, hypersonic capability tends to go in the highest threat conditions and go after the highest priority threats. And it’s optimized for that. And part of that is the cost equation, and part of it is that the capability that it provides allows it to do that, right? And those two are related facts.”

Because of their relatively high price tag and the types of targets they’re intended for, hypersonics will likely be “fewer in number” than some of the common types of munitions in the Air Force’s arsenal, he suggested.

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