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13-05-2025
- Business
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Air-Launched ‘Fighter Drone' Collaborative Combat Aircraft Being Eyed By USAF
The U.S. Air Force is looking into the idea of air-launching Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones from other airplanes in addition to other ways of reducing dependence on traditional runways. Air-launched CCAs also fit in with the service's larger vision of CCAs having a disruptive impact on future aerial combat and presenting enemies with new challenges to address. At the same time, launching CCAs from mothership aircraft would present other operational challenges and limitations that would have to be overcome. Air Force Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel raised the possibility of procuring air-launched CCAs on May 8 during a virtual talk hosted by the Air & Space Forces Association's Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Kunkel is currently Director of Force Design, Integration, and Wargaming and Deputy Chief of Staff for Air Force Futures at the Air Force's headquarters at the Pentagon. The Air Force's CCA program is being run in iterative development cycles. General Atomics and Anduril are currently developing what have now been designated as the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A as part of the program's first phase, Increment 1. Requirements for the follow-on Increment 2 are now in the latter stages of being finalized, and Kunkel has previously said his service may be leaning toward lower-cost and less complex designs for the second tranche. The Air Force has said it looking to acquire between 100 and 150 Increment 1 CCAs, and around 1,000 of the drones, at least, across all the future increments. 'As you look at how we generate combat power and the number of sites we can use, there's something to a shorter takeoff length, and there's something to vertical takeoff,' Kunkel said. 'We [have] got to figure out what that takes, because generally, when you do a vertical takeoff aircraft, you decrease the payload, you decrease the range. And so there's a balance that we need to strike here as we're thinking about how we generate combat power, how survivable it is, but then what the requirements are on the aircraft in terms of payload and range? But we're absolutely looking at that and what it takes.' 'We're also looking at, maybe we don't generate them [CCAs] from the ground at all,' he continued. 'Maybe we generate them by dropping them out of the aircraft. And so those are, those are all concepts we're looking at. But you're absolutely right. We don't necessarily want to be tied to air bases for our CCAs.' YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A are both designed to take off and land from traditional runways, but are already being engineered from the ground up to align with the Air Force's Agile Combat Employment (ACE) concepts of operations. ACE focuses heavily on the ability to deploy in irregular ways to a disaggregated array of operating locations, which include remote sites with limited infrastructure. This, in turn, helps upend enemy targeting cycles and reduces vulnerability. General Atomics has previously said the YFQ-42A incorporates specific design features that could help with operations from shorter and less well-maintained runways. The Fury design that serves as a base for Anduril's CCA, originally developed by Blue Force Technologies, also has features that allow for shorter field performance. TWZ regularly highlights how CCAs with complete runway independence, or at least independence from traditional airstrips, could be especially attractive additions in the context of the ACE construct. Beyond being less vulnerable to attacks that will stop their operations, runway-independent CCAs would be able to launch and/or recover from a much larger pool of potential operating locations, which could create even more uncertainty for opponents. Air Force officials have made clear that they expect to have to be able to fight while under attack during any future high-end fight, such as one against China in the Pacific. Based on prior discussions about expected range capabilities, at least for CCA Increment 1, airfields that would put the drones within direct reach of likely operating areas in the Indo-Pacific region would be especially vulnerable to enemy bombardment. 'We know that the adversary is going to try and target our bases,' Maj. Gen. Kunkel said last week in an obvious reference to China. 'For the last 30 years, they've developed a rocket force. They've developed cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, and all these things are meant to counter our bases, meant to keep us from reliably generating combat power from bases. One of the ways to thin out the adversary's mass is to put yourself in multiple locations.' So, 'the ability to achieve air superiority in the future is going to be more complex, and there's a couple things that we're going to need. We're going to need mass, and we're going to need some type of affordable mass that can counter our adversaries where they are. And so CCAs help us out with achieving affordable mass,' he continued. 'The other thing that CCAs do that some people often overlook is they increase complexity for the adversary.' 'As an air-to-air guy, you know that the easiest threat picture to counter is the 'Hey, diddle, diddle up the middle.'' Kunkel continued. With 'the ability to position CCAs and posture them in different places in a theater, you can increase the complexity of the picture that our adversaries see dramatically. And so that's another point that we've found, is increasing dilemmas for the adversary, increasing the complexity of the picture that they're going to see, increasing the complexity of what it takes for them to counter us.' Being able to air-launch at least some types of CCAs would only add to the complexities for a defender, who might suddenly find themselves facing a force that has multiplied substantially from what was originally seen on their sensors. Drones launched in mid-air could also approach a target area from multiple vectors at once or break off from the main group to head to a different adjacent operating area. Less survivable aircraft could also air-launch CCAs from rear areas and send them into higher-risk zones where more survivable aircraft like crewed stealth fighters could then take control. Air-launched CCAs could also offer valuable added on-station time for more localized missions like defending high-value, but more vulnerable assets, such as airborne early warning and control, tanker aircraft. These aircraft could even be launched on warning only when needed after a threat is detected. A very long-range and stealthy platform with a high payload capacity, like the forthcoming B-21 Raider bomber, might also be able to extend its reach even further by launching CCAs inside highly contested airspace. This could be for defense or offensive mission needs. The Air Force has separately been exploring how CCAs might pair with the B-21, in general. The Air Force also has a formal agreement with the Navy and the Marine Corps regarding the development of CCAs that includes a requirement for a common architecture that allows for seamless exchange of control during operations. 'So as we're charting our path, they're charting their path, and you'll see that we're going down the same road,' Kunkel said. 'What we really want to get ourselves to is this interconnectedness, and this being able to pull up to a CCA, whether it's an Air Force CCA or a Navy CCA, and being able to operate it.' 'As you look at CCAs, they're going to be up in the sky, and there's going to be opportunities to be controlled by multiple different aircraft,' he added. All of this still leaves open key questions about where and how air-launched CCAs might be recovered after missions, especially if bases closer to operating areas are deemed too high risk or if missions take the drones deep inside contested airspace. Any need to save range capacity to be able to recover at a location further away from hostile threats would trim back a drone's useful combat radius and limit on-station time after it arrives at its designated objective area. How those drones would be regenerated for other air-launched missions once recovered at remote locales is also another question that needs to be answered. Mid-air refueling capability is something that's been on the table for future CCAs, wherever they are launched and/or recovered from, and that could help extend the time on station and overall reach of CCAs. It could also open up better recovery options for air-launched and ground-launched variants alike. At the same time, this would add complexity to the drone's design and impact its cost. The U.S. military has also been struggling for years already to meet existing demands for tanker support, which would only grow in scale and complexity in any future high-end conflict. Finding aerial refueling options that can survive in more contested airspace presents its own challenges. Air-launched CCAs designed to be outright expendable or at least optionally recoverable might be another option, but one that would demand a very low-cost to have any chance of being operationally relevant. It is worth remembering here that the Navy has previously presented a vision for lower-cost CCAs that are 'consumable,' and that would be expended as one-way-attack munitions or training targets at the end of very short service lives that can include as few as a handful of missions. It's important to note that the idea of air-launching 'loyal wingman' type drones is not new, and is something the Air Force in particular has been experimenting with for years now. The Air Force has also been cooperating with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on the LongShot air-launched drone program, the stated goal of which is 'to disrupt the paradigm of air combat operations by demonstrating an unmanned air-launched vehicle capable of employing current air-to-air weapons, significantly increasing engagement range and mission effectiveness' of fighters or bombers. In other words, this is an air-to-air missile carrier of sorts. In 2023, DARPA chose General Atomics to continue developing its LongShot design – renderings of which are seen at the top of this story and below – with an eye toward a first flight before the end of that year. As of March 2024, the expected timetable for the drone's maiden flight had slipped to Fiscal Year 2025, which began last October, per Pentagon budget documents. Whether or not LongShot has flown now is unclear. How LongShot may now tie in to the Air Force's CCA program is unknown. The possibility of air-launched CCAs might also align with Maj. Gen. Kunkel last month about how the program's focus could be leaning toward lower-cost and less complex drones for Increment 2. As he mentioned last week, there are still questions about capability tradeoffs that could come with various kinds of runway-independent designs. Regardless, 'we want to provide dilemmas for the adversary that they weren't even thinking of. Everything needs to be a threat.' The future CCA force, which might include air-launched types, is a central part of that vision. Contact the author: joe@
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
USAF Wants Collaborative Aircraft Fleet To Stress Parts Commonality For Forward Operations
The U.S. Air Force will have to prioritize the sustainability of its new Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones if it's to ensure they are an effective 'additive' to the force. This is the conclusion of Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel, Director of Force Design, Integration, and Wargaming, Deputy Chief of Staff for Air Force Futures, who also called for a significant degree of shared components between the first increment of CCA drones, which comprises the General Atomics YFQ-42A and the Anduril YFQ-44A. The topic of maintenance, logistics, and sustainment of CCAs, including a heavier focus on commercial-off-the-shelf components, is something we have addressed in the past. Maj. Gen. Kunkel was speaking as a guest at the rollout of the Mitchell Institute's latest research study, authored by Air Force Col. Mark A. Gunzinger (ret.), Director of Future Concepts and Capability Assessments. Based on a series of wargames, the study looks at the logistics requirements for Air Force CCAs in combat scenarios. Ultimately, Kunkel said, the CCAs will only be of real value as combat mass as long as they can be kept flying at high rates, either alongside crewed fighters or flying missions alone. In this way, the adversary will be forced to respond to their presence, generating sorties and expending weapons in their effort to counter them. While that is one of the main reasons behind developing the CCAs in the first place, it does impose a significant logistics burden, Kunkel observed. Even without the demands of making its CCAs suitable for distributed operations, these drones will come with a significant logistics burden, simply due to their number. The service expects to buy between 100 and 150 Increment 1 CCAs, but has said in the past that it could ultimately acquire at least a thousand of the drones across all of the program's increments. The goal, according to Kunkel, is to have CCAs that are able to operate for hundreds of hours without needing significant maintenance work. This becomes especially important when operating from forward locations, as is the expectation of future conflicts, notably in the Pacific theater. The drones are being designed from the outset to make them suitable for concepts of distributed and disaggregated operations, something also referred to as Agile Combat Employment (ACE). Kunkel highlighted the relevance of this concept to the new drones: '[With] an ability to position CCAs and posture them in different places in a theater, you can increase the complexity of the picture that our adversary sees dramatically … increasing dilemmas for the adversary, increasing the complexity of the picture that they're going to see, increasing the complexity of what it takes for them to counter us.' In the past, Kunkel has described the Air Force CCAs as 'the first aircraft that we have developed specifically for ACE.' Reflecting these concerns, Kunkel said he has already had talks with General Atomics and Anduril, with a view to reducing the number of different components in the company's CCA designs. This would also seem to indicate that the Air Force currently plans to buy a mix of YF-42As and YF-44As, under Increment 1, although that could still change. Kunkel noted that he has encouraged those firms to explore 'motors that are the same, controls that are the same, actuators, tires … those types of things that we need,' to make it easier to sustain CCAs once deployed. 'They don't necessarily have to be the same aircraft, but certainly many of the components need to be the same,' Kunkel added. Meanwhile, the increased use of 'condition-based maintenance' should help reduce the maintenance demands involved in CCA operations by alerting ground crews early to any looming issues. Already, we have explored the Air Force's ambition for its CCAs to make greater use of commercial-off-the-shelf components than the service's existing crewed and uncrewed platforms. On the other hand, Gunzinger proposed a somewhat different approach to dealing with maintenance issues, namely by fielding more expendable CCAs, with the idea of less-exquisite and cheaper drones in future increments gaining some traction recently. 'CCAs do not need to be anywhere near as reliable or have as large a mean time between failure as crewed aircraft,' Gunzinger contended. 'If it's a recoverable CCA that might fly 10, 15, or 20 sorties, there are still lower costs.' Gunzinger raised the scenario of some kind of mechanical failure keeping a CCA on the ground in the middle of the fight. 'We can push it off the side of the runway … because we don't have time, we don't have resources to get around and repair that CCA on the ground, increasing the time our airmen are on the ground, and possibly vulnerable.' For Kunkel, another important reason for ensuring as much subsystem commonality as possible is the sheer number of different CCA drone variants that are currently planned. According to Col. Gunzinger, the wargames involved 16 different variants, reflecting the wide spectrum of missions the CCAs are expected to undertake. While the Increment 1 CCAs are expected to work closely together with crewed combat jets primarily in the air-to-air combat role, at least initially, they will also be used as electronic warfare platforms and sensor nodes, further augmenting crewed platforms. There is also significant potential for the drones to fulfill roles additional to these: intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions have also been discussed. Another mission that was included in the recent wargames was logistic support, in which the CCAs would move ammunition and supplies around different forward operating locations. This reflects Air Force experiments involving MQ-9 Reaper drones, deployed in small packages to forward locations under the Rapid Reaper concept. For the MQ-9, General Atomics helped develop a 'kit' to assist with deploying and sustaining those drones within the ACE construct. Future CCAs, like the Reapers, could be adapted to carry small cargoes in travel pods under their wings, or in internal payload bays. With so many different versions of the CCA likely to be fielded, the Air Force will need to avoid having different sets of logistics trains to support them. In particular, weapons, refueling equipment, other ground equipment, and loading equipment should be common for CCAs, as far as is possible, Gunzinger said. Even with existing crewed aircraft, the demands of specialized maintenance and logistics, as well as the need for more bespoke equipment on the ground to support flight operations, have been significant challenges for the Air Force when it comes to implementing the ACE concepts. When it comes to optimizing the CCAs for combat operations from forward locations, Kunkel pointed to the utility of drones that can operate free from the constraints of traditional airbases, including being fully independent of runways. 'We know that the adversary is going to try and target our bases,' Kunkel added, in an obvious reference to China. 'For the last 30 years, they've developed a rocket force. They've developed cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, and all these things are meant to counter our bases, meant to keep us from reliably generating combat power from bases.' Putting CCAs at forward locations is 'one of the ways to thin out the adversary's mass … and the logistics pipeline of CCA is less complex' than for crewed aircraft. Compared with a traditional combat aircraft that likely requires complex logistical pipelines, long runways, and extensive infrastructure, all of which are vulnerable, CCAs are 'being specifically built so you can put them in a lot of different places. And if you can put them in a lot of different places, you can create a tremendous ground picture that an adversary has to attack if they're going to be successful. Increasing the number of ground targets for an adversary, I think, is just as important as increasing the number of air targets.' Kunkel noted that for certain roles, CCAs would need a conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) capability, but that short or vertical takeoff 'is something that we need to look at' in future CCA increments. 'As you look at how we generate combat power, and the number of sites we can use … there's something to a shorter takeoff length,' Kunkel said. 'We've got to figure out what that takes because, generally, when you do a vertical takeoff aircraft, you decrease the payload, you decrease the range. There's a balance that we need to strike here.' In addition to potential STOL and VTOL capabilities for future CCA increments, Kunkel also suggested that some of these drones could potentially be launched from other aircraft. Clearly, the Air Force is very much still in the process of working out how best to utilize its CCAs and what kinds of missions they should be used for. It's also notable that the promise of these drones to augment crewed combat aircraft, making them more lethal and flexible in the process, is also tempered by the potentially challenging logistics requirements that will come with them. These challenges will become greater the more different mission sets are taken on and as the different increments and versions of the drone diversify. It will therefore be critical to strike a balance between fielding CCAs with a range of capabilities and meeting the requirements of operating from forward locations with limited support. Contact the author: thomas@
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Yahoo
F-47 6th Generation Fighter Future Force Size Questions Emerge
The U.S. Air Force is firmly of the view that its new F-47 6th generation stealth fighters are key to 'how we win' in future fights, according to the service's top general in charge of force structure planning. Though the Air Force previously said it would buy 200 of the next-generation combat jets, how many of the aircraft the service now plans to acquire is an open question as its vision of the core air superiority mission set continues to evolve. Air Force Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel talked about the F-47 and how it factors into his service's current work on a new over-arching force design during a virtual talk that the Air & Space Forces Association (AFA) hosted today. Kunkel is currently the director of Force Design, Integration, and Wargaming within the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Air Force Futures at the Pentagon. Kunkel described the announcement in March that Boeing's F-47 had won the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) combat jet competition as 'a fantastic day for the Air Force' that has 'assured air superiority for generations to come.' The Air Force had put the NGAD combat jet program on hold for a deep review last year, which ultimately concluded that the service needed to acquire the aircraft to be best positioned to achieve air superiority in future high-end fights. 'The F-47, the capabilities that it brings to the fight, are game-changing for us,' he continued. 'It doesn't change the character the fight just for the Air Force, it changes it for the joint force. It allows us to get places – allows the joint force to get places where it otherwise couldn't. It allows us to move closer to the adversary [and] allows us to counter the adversary in ways we can't [now].' Kunkel said that he could not provide any more granular information about the F-47's design and capabilities due to the high degree of classification currently surrounding the program. Air & Space Forces Magazine reported last week that the F-47 concept art that the Air Force has released to date has been heavily manipulated to obscure key details about the actual aircraft. You can find TWZ's previous in-depth analysis of what has been shown so far here. 'The F-47, I think, is a perfect example of a war-winning story, a coherent narrative, [a] cohesive 'hey, this is how we win,'' Maj. Gen. Kunkel added today. 'This is how the joint force wins.' There are still questions about how exactly the F-47 will fit into the Air Force's future force structure and how many of the jets the service might actually purchase. 'We won't be able to get to F-47 force structure numbers in this conversation,' Kunkel said today in direct response to a question from the author. 'It does point to a larger question of, we've got a force design, how do you transition that force design into force structure, and then is there a force-sizing construct that needs to accompany it? And that larger force-sizing structure or concept is something we're working on right now.' During a quarterly earnings call yesterday, Boeing's CEO Kelly Ortberg also said he could not offer any details about the current F-47 contract beyond what the Air Force has already announced. In 2023, then-Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said that his service was working around a future force planning construct that included 200 NGAD combat jets. That aligned with the original vision for what was first referred to as the Penetrating Counter-Air (PCA) platform, which was intended as more or less a one-for-one replacement for the existing F-22 Raptor stealth fighter. In July 2024, Air Force Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, head of Air Combat Command (ACC), said that there was no longer a firm timeline for replacing the F-22 at all, and it is unclear how those plans may have further changed since then. Significant F-22 modernization projects are underway now, which have also been feeding into the larger NGAD initiative. These questions are directly tied to the Air Force's still-evolving vision of what achieving air superiority – the primary expected mission of the F-47 – will look like in future conflicts. 'I was part of the group that did the [NGAD combat jet] analysis, and said, 'hey, is there a different way to do this? Can we do this with the current capabilities?'' Maj. Gen. Kunkel said today. 'I guess we probably didn't need to do the analysis, because what we found is we found out that we were right, that air superiority, in fact, does matter.' At the same time, 'there's an evolution in how we do air superiority, right?' Kunkel added. 'All domains is [sic] enabled by air superiority. So the Air Force must continue to provide it.' 'But there might be places where air superiority, it doesn't turn into air supremacy. And on this scale, it goes from 'blue' or U.S. air supremacy, and goes down to your superiority, and then goes down to neutral, and then 'red' is on the other side,' he continued. 'There's probably places where there's mutual air denial. Where no one's no one has air superiority, but we're denying the air domain to the adversary. And I think, in some of these cases, that may be perfectly acceptable, where we don't have this dominant presence all the time.' This is in line with a concept of 'pulsed airpower' operations the Air Force has outlined in the past, defined as a 'concentrating of airpower in time and space to create windows of opportunity for the rest of the force.' 'Now, is that your superiority? I don't know. I tend to think it is, but it may not be,' Kunkel further noted today. The video below offers a view of how the Air Force has described the air superiority mission in the past. As already noted, the air superiority mission set was absolutely central to the development of the NGAD combat jet requirements that led to the F-47. Kunkel himself highlighted just earlier this year how critical the jets are expected to be in providing a forward airpower presence, especially in heavily contested environments. 'You've got to be forward in order to sustain the tempo that's required to bring the adversary to a sneeze. So an all-long-range force, … it sounds wonderful, doesn't it? You sit in Topeka, Kansas, you press a red button, the war gets fought. Nobody gets hurt. It's all done at long range,' Kunkel said during a talk at the Hudson Institute think tank in Washington, D.C., in February. '[But] it doesn't win because it just can't sustain the tempo of the fight.' The service has also previously made clear in the past that plans for the NGAD combat jet, as well as its future fleets of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones and next-generation aerial refueling capabilities, are all directly intertwined. The Air Force is still very much refining its vision for how it will employ CCAs and is similarly ironing out requirements for future aerial refueling capabilities. The forward drone controller role is still expected to be another key task for the F-47. 'CCA integration with F-47 makes the F-47 better,' Kunkel said today. Boeing E7 #Wedgetail, Future Fighter & MQ28 Collaborative Combat Aircraft #CCA teaming.. ( Boeing) — AirPower 2.0 (MIL_STD) (@AirPowerNEW1) April 20, 2025 Budgetary considerations will have an impact on the ultimate F-47 force structure, as well. Just completing the jet's development is expected to cost at least $20 billion on top of what has already been spent. The aircraft's estimated unit cost is unclear, but has been pegged in the past at three times the average price of an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, or upwards of $300 million based on publicly available information. Separately this week, Lockheed Martin, which lost the NGAD combat jet competition to Boeing, also pitched the idea of a major 'NASCAR upgrade' for the F-35 that could 'deliver 80% of 6th gen capability at 50% of the cost,' according to the company's CEO Jim Taiclet. Kunkel said today he had not heard about this ambitious proposal, but would be interested in talking with Lockheed Martin about it. Regardless, a major realignment of priorities is currently underway across the entire U.S. military under President Donald Trump. Despite expectations that some existing programs will be cut, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the total U.S. defense budget request is set to rise to around $1 trillion. Maj. Gen. Kunkel and other Air Force officials have been and continue to be bullish on their service coming out ahead in the end budget-wise. 'So, when you say balance out the budget, what we can't do as a nation is say that the Air Force needs to balance out its budget,' Kunkel said today. 'The Department [of Defense] needs to balance its budget, and the resources need to follow the strategy. … If the strategy has changed – which I would argue that the strategy for the last 30 years is not the strategy for the future – if the strategy has changed, then the resources need to follow the strategy. Here's the truth. The truth is that future fights depend on the Air Force to a greater extent than they ever have.' There are still concerns about what tradeoffs the Air Force may need to make in order to afford its F-47 plans on top of other expensive top-tier priorities, including the future LGM-35A Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile and the forthcoming B-21 Raider stealth bomber. There has notably been renewed talk in recent months about increasing planned B-21 purchases. 'When I left the Pentagon, the Department of the Air Force had a list of unfunded strategic priorities that were higher priority than NGAD. At the top of the list were counter-space weapons and airbase defense,' former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall wrote in an op-ed for Defense News earlier this month. 'Our new F-47s – and all of our forward-based aircraft – will never get off the ground if we don't address these threats through substantial budget increases.' Kendall had already disclosed that he had been willing to trade the NGAD combat jet for new investments in counter-space capabilities and improved base defenses during an episode of Defense & Aerospace Report's Air Power Podcast put out in March. During the podcast, Kendall, together with former Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Andrew Hunter, provided a slew of other new details about the F-47 and its origins, as you can read more about here. Overall, the Air Force's current leadership is clearly very committed to the F-47, but how the service expects to eventually weave the jets into its future force structure plans looks to be still evolving. Contact the author: joe@
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Collaborative Combat Drones Designed From Ground Up To Do Logistics Differently
The U.S. Air Force's new Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones are being developed around fundamentally different understandings of maintenance, logistics, and sustainment, with a heavy focus on commercial-of-the-shelf components, than the service's existing crewed and uncrewed platforms. This is particularly true regarding how CCAs will be supported at forward locations during future conflicts as the drones are the first aircraft designed from the ground up around concepts for distributed and disaggregated operations collectively referred to as Agile Combat Employment (ACE). The Air & Space Forces Association hosted a panel discussion on CCA logistics at its 2025 Warfare Symposium yesterday, at which TWZ was in attendance. Air Force Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel, Director of Force Design, Integration, and Wargaming within the office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Air Force Futures, was one of three panelists. The other two were Mike Atwood, Vice President for Advanced Programs at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI), and Andrew Van Timmeren, Senior Director of Autonomous Airpower at Anduril Industries. In 2024, the Air Force picked GA-ASI and Anduril to design and build CCA prototypes, now designated YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A, respectively, as part of the program's first phase or Increment 1. Requirements for a second tranche of CCAs, or Increment 2, which could be more costly, are coalescing now. The service expects to buy between 100 and 150 Increment 1 CCAs, but has said in the past that it could ultimately acquire at least a thousand of the drones across all of the program's increments. It remains unclear whether the Air Force plans to buy just YF-42As or YF-44As, or a mix of both, under Increment 1. 'We need to think about how we survive and generate combat power from the inside, and how do we strengthen our position on the inside? And part of that is distributed basing,' Kunkel said near the start of yesterday's panel discussion by way of introduction. 'The ability to create multiple dilemmas for our adversaries, … multiple places where they have to distribute and make choices about whether they're going to target or not, that's a really big deal for us.' 'That distributed basing also creates a lot of inefficiencies in how you might sustain something,' Kundel continued. 'Some of the design attributes that these two teams have been building into their CCAs are exactly that – you don't want to have a huge additional footprint that's required. You don't want to have, like, the big sustainment requirements.' 'You want to be able to use commercial stuff to the max extent [so] you don't have to take specialized refueling equipment, specialized loading equipment' to forward locations, the Air Force's force design boss added. Specialized maintenance and logistics demands, as well as the need for more bespoke equipment on the ground to support flight operations, have been major hurdles for the Air Force when it comes to implementing the ACE concepts using existing crewed and uncrewed aircraft. GA-ASI's Atwood highlighted lessons learned from the Air Force's Rapid Raptor and Rapid Reaper concepts for quickly deploying small force packages of F-22 Raptor stealth fighters and MQ-9 Reaper drones, respectively, along with supporting assets to forward locations. The MQ-9 is another General Atomics product and the company helped in the development of a 'kit' to assist with deploying and sustaining those drones within the ACE construct. This includes using the Reapers themselves to carry their own sustainment kits into a remote locale and to conduct limited resupply missions by carrying small cargoes in travel pods under their wings. 'So our CCA aircraft uses that pedigree' and has 'a footprint today' that is focused on forward-deployed operations and reducing maintenance demands as much as possible, Atwood said yesterday. 'The best aircraft is the one you don't do maintenance on.' He also highlighted 'condition-based maintenance' concepts leveraging systems on the drones to alert maintainers and help them start ahead of larger issues. The CCA 'should tell you when it's starting to cough a little bit and get sick.' General Atomics' CCA design also incorporates other features to ensure it can operate from more far-flung locations with more limited infrastructure, including shorter and less well-maintained runways. Atwood again used prior experience with the MQ-9 to help illustrate these challenges. 'We showed up at these World War II leftover airfields. And we quickly realized these airfields are in really bad shape, really bad shape, and we started to really appreciate runway distance,' Atwood explained. 'It's hard to make a fast-moving aircraft use a lot less runway. And so what we realized is we needed a trailing-arm landing gear.' A trailing-arm helps smooth the impact of landing, which in turn can help reduce wear and tear. This is especially beneficial for CCAs flying from short and potentially rough fields during future operations. When it comes to Anduril's CCA design, also known as Fury, Van Timmeren talked about how features to make it more readily maintainable in the field, as well as low-maintenance overall, were baked in early on. Van Timmeren, a retired Air Force officer who flew F-22s, previously worked for Blue Force Technologies, which started Fury's development in the late 2010s and was then acquired by Anduril in 2023. You can read the full story of how Fury came to be in this past in-depth TWZ feature. 'Early on, you communicate with your engineering team, not just the performance characteristics of the hardware that you want … we also want to say everything has to be easily accessible for the design. Everything has to be easily line replaceable,' Van Timmeren said yesterday. 'We have ease of access for all the panels [on Fury].' Another 'one of the things that's critical to the ease of supportability is leveraging as much as possible commercial components. So engines that are flight-certified, already in mass production for the civilian aviation community. Wheels, tires, brakes, hydraulic actuators, all the sub-components that go into a vehicle,' he added, also noting that no bespoke tools are required to do work on Fury. A 'perfect example of that actually is the engine [on Fury],' Van Timmeren continued. 'We're using a commercial engine that is in production, is FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] certified, millions of flight hours on it.' Fury is powered by a single Williams International FJ44-4M turbofan engine. FJ44 variants are in widespread use, especially on business jets, including members of the popular Cessna Citation family. Van Timmeren also used the example of needing to replace a blown tire to further illustrate the value of using components more readily available on the commercial market. Bespoke tires for military aircraft can be wildly expensive, as TWZ has reported on in the past. They can also be harder to source overall. If you blow a tire, 'you might have to go out in the community to find it,' Van Timmeren said. Using commercial parts available through global logistics networks means you can 'go to local FBO and buy it,' he added, referring to fixed-base operator/fixed-based operations contractors who provide general aviation support services at airports. TWZ has reported in the past about the serious issues the Air Force has already been facing with spare part supply chains, especially when it comes to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. During yesterday's panel discussion, both General Atomics' Atwood and Anduril's Van Timmeren highlighted the benefits that new and improving manufacturing processes, including 3D printing and other additive manufacturing techniques, are also expected to bring to the CCA sustainment pipeline. Supporting CCA operations, especially at more remote and/or austere forward locations, isn't just about the drones themselves. Maj. Gen. Kunkel had already highlighted these issues just recently at a separate talk the Hudson Institute think tank hosted last week. 'I will tell you, some of it's not like the sexy, cool stuff. It's like the basics. It's like bomb loaders, missile loaders, and, you know, refueling trucks and, you know, electric carts and air conditioning carts,' he said at that time. 'They've got to be made differently.' To help in this regard, General Atomics' CCA design features an all-electric start-up capability that requires no off-board support. 'So you can hit a button, the plane will start up, taxi, [and] take off all on its own,' according to Atwood. Any ground support equipment and other assets needed to support CCAs at forward locations also have to be able to get there in the first place with the same level of rapidity. 'I employed the James Bond model. I only want to maintain something that I could jump out of the back of the C-130 with,' Atwood said. 'When you think about the sustainment architectures that we built in the past, the thought was that they were going to be in sanctuary. So, you know, you could afford to build a piece of aircraft ground equipment that weighed 10,000 pounds and wouldn't fit on a C-130,' Maj. Gen. Kunkel had also noted last week at the Hudson Institute talk. Focusing assets that will fit inside a C-130 or a similarly-sized platform may not be enough to support future CCA operations. 'We use MQ-9 to carry parts between bases, and that's something we've done in the past, and something we'll continue to do,' but 'the concept of logistics, what we need for airlift, is going to change potentially,' Maj. Gen. Kunkel said yesterday. 'And you need a cargo aircraft that can very agilely deliver parts, and deliver weapons, and deliver material to places that are inside.' 'I think CCA can actually be, in some cases, a mobility aircraft,' General Atomics Atwood said, highlighting the internal bay on his company's design. 'One of the reasons that GA chose to have an internal weapons bay was for carrying not just missiles and kinetics, but to do that logistics.' All of this is set to have downstream operational and other impacts across the Air Force. 'So many people think about survivability in the air, in air combat phase, but just as important is survivability on the ground,' General Atomics' Atwood said. The ACE concepts of operations, at their core, are heavily centered on making it difficult for an opponent to target friendly forces on the ground. There also an increasingly heated debate about whether the Air Force, in particular, should be doing more to physically harden its existing main operating bases against attack, as you can read more about here. 'So, minimizing your turn time on the aircraft,' helped by using commercial components and supporting assets, 'gets you to have a turnaround time that is extremely difficult for the adversary' to get its targeting cycle around, Atwood added. Atwood further noted that the often discussed need for more 'affordable mass' to provide the required air combat capacity to win future conflicts could be provided with fewer platforms if they're more survivable, including on the ground, and can be employed at a very high tempo. The General Atomics executive also highlighted the value of increasingly autonomous capabilities in further reducing the required footprint on the ground. 'The other part about autonomy is it takes a [control] van out of it. So I need less deployed footprint, less chow halls, less barracks,' Atwood said. 'For a number of ways, simplicity eliminates vulnerabilities,' Maj. Gen. Kunkel also said. 'What it also does, it opens up the aperture on where you can actually place these things.' Kunkel noted that CCAs could operate from allied and partner airbases, and even from commercial airports, in addition to fully U.S.-controlled facilities, during future operations. The Air Force has already been using a mix of test aircraft, crewed and uncrewed, to help lay the ground work for its future CCAs, including just how the drones will be integrated into its force structure and day-to-day training and other activities, as well as combat operations. Yesterday, Kunkel noted that his service has established an Experimental Operations Unit (EOU) dedicated to this work at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. The Air Force announced last year that it would be increasing purchases of prototype Increment 1 CCAs to further help in this regard. CCAs are 'going to be the first aircraft that we have developed specifically for ACE,' Kunkel stressed. 'That's going to be the game changer for us.' For the Air Force to truly get the most out of its future CCA fleets, a new logistics and sustainment ecosystem will be required. General Atomics and Anduril have already been baking those demands into their YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A designs. Contact the author: joe@
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Yahoo
Next Generation Fighter Critical To Future Air Superiority, Key USAF Study Concluded
A deep review of the U.S. Air Force's paused plans to acquire a new crewed sixth-generation stealth combat jet came to the unambiguous conclusion that the service needs such an aircraft to be best positioned to achieve air superiority in future high-end fights. The same analyses further reinforced the view that establishing air superiority will remain central to winning those same conflicts. A panel of senior U.S. Air Force officers discussed what is commonly called the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) combat jet, as well as the future of air superiority operations more broadly, at the Air & Space Forces Association's (AFA) 2025 Warfare Symposium earlier today. 'Many of you know, we put a pause on NGAD, and we put a pause on NGAD to reflect, and we did a study on it,' Air Force Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel said early on in the panel. Kunkel is currently director of Force Design, Integration, and Wargaming within the office of the deputy chief of staff for Air Force Futures at the service's top headquarters at the Pentagon. 'With that study, we asked ourselves some hard questions,' he continued. 'Is air superiority dead? What does air superiority look like in the future? Does the joint force need air superiority? And what we found is, not only in the past, not only the present, but in the future, air superiority matters.' 'We tried a whole bunch of different options, and there was no more vital option than NGAD to achieve air superiority in this highly contested environment,' Kunkel added. This is fully in line with comments that Maj. Gen. Kunkel made at a separate event that the Hudson Institute think tank hosted last week, which TWZ covered at the time. Envisioned ostensibly as a successor to the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter, the NGAD combat jet requirements, at least as existed prior to the review, are understood to call for a relatively large, high-performance, and long-range design. The NGAD aircraft has also long been expected to feature a very high level of broadband low-observability (stealthiness) together with an array of advanced sensor, networking, electronic warfare, and other capabilities. All of that has been expected to come at considerable cost, with former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall saying in January that it would take at least approximately $20 billion to finish the developmental stage of the program. Serial production of the jets, which cost upwards of $300 million apiece, would add tens of billions more to the overall price tag. The alternatives to the NGAD combat jet that the Air Force is known to have explored include a truncated, lower-cost aircraft intended primarily to serve as an airborne drone controller. The service also considered a force-wide shift in focus away from air superiority to longer-range, standoff strike capabilities like those the B-21 Raider stealth bomber will provide. Kunkel and the other Air Force officers on today's panel stressed that NGAD is just one part of the bigger and more critical matter of how to effectively provide air superiority in future major conflicts, such as one in the Pacific against China. 'The entire joint force counts on air superiority. So, anything else you want to do in the battle space, if you don't have air superiority, it becomes much more difficult, if not impossible,' Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, head of Air Combat Command (ACC), another one of the panelists, said. 'So, if we want to collect intelligence, if we want to do casualty evacuation, if we want to drop some bombs, if you want to sail some ships around, or if you want to have some ground maneuver, if you don't have air and space superiority, you will not be able to or you will have a very difficult time achieving any of those other objectives.' 'There's been some talk in the public about [how] the age of air superiority is over,' Wilsbach continued. 'I categorically reject that and maintain that it's the first building block of any other military operation.' Wilsbach cited the emergence of two previously unseen Chinese stealth combat jets this past December as further evidence that air superiority is not dead and that America's chief competitor believes it to be similarly critical for success in future conflicts. The two Chinese stealth aircraft 'we believe are for air superiority,' Wilsbach said. 'As we observe what China has produced, and we can presume we know what that's for, for air superiority, what are we going to do about it? And I don't believe that nothing is an option.' — OedoSoldier (@OedoSoldier) December 26, 2024 — Justin Bronk (@Justin_Br0nk) December 26, 2024 The panelists did also make clear that they do not see the NGAD combat jet as a silver bullet solution to future air superiority challenges by itself. 'We're making this transition from a platform-centric Air Force to a system-centric Air Force,' Gen. Kunkel said. 'And as kill chains get longer and longer,… we need to think about how are we trying to do that whole system.' Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. David Allvin made similar remarks during a keynote speech at the AFA Warfare Symposium yesterday evening. 'We're looking at different ways to execute the same mission. We're going beyond just single platforms equal single things,' Allvin said. 'Maybe there's different ways to provide combat effects, understanding what that is, embracing and leaning into human machine teaming, understanding what autonomy can actually do for us, knowing that's going to be a part of our future.' Allvin then announced new 'fighter drone' designations for the designs that General Atomics and Anduril are currently developing in the first phase, or Increment 1, of the Collaborative Aircraft (CCA) program. CCA is part of the larger NGAD initiative that also includes the planned sixth-generation stealth combat jet. The NGAD aircraft has always been envisioned as serving, in part, as a forward drone controller and otherwise operating closely together with CCAs. The panelists today were also definitive in their belief that piloted combat aircraft will continue to have a role for the foreseeable future. 'We've been doing quite a bit of simulator work with incorporating manned and unmanned teaming, and we believe that there's some value to that as we go into the future,' Gen. Wilsbach said. '[However,] in 2025 we don't have the artificial intelligence [AI] that we can pluck pilots out of aircraft and plunk AI in them to the degree that the AI can replace a human brain. Someday we will have that, I trust, but right now we don't.' 'We're in this place where we're improving the artificial intelligence aspects, the human-machine team, all those areas are growth areas, but we have to iterate to the outcome,' Lt. Gen. Dale White, currently the Military Deputy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, added during the panel discussion today. 'And I think that's … the path that we're on.' 'As we walk down this warfighting path, we're going to have to iterate to the outcome, and it's going to take some time,' he continued. 'I know this Air Force is up to the task. I think CCA is going to put us on that path.' 'The reality is, this is where the threat is taking this because our adversaries are doing very similar things,' White also said during the panel discussion in regard to AI and advances in autonomy more generally. 'We can't sit back and just watch.' 'I don't see us fully stepping away from, you now, manned aircraft ever,' Gen. Kunkel added. A final decision on what course of action to take in regard to the NGAD combat jet, and what that aircraft might look like in the end, has yet to be made. There are also lingering budgetary questions. Concerns about the affordability of the new sixth-generation aircraft were an important factor in prompting last year's review of the program to begin with. The Air Force has a number of modernization priorities it needs to balance funding for, including the CCA program and work on new stealthy aerial refueling tankers. Aviation Week just recently reported that service might be considering axing Next-Generation Air-Refueling System (NGAS), or at least the stealth tanker component, to help preserve funds for the NGAD aircraft. There is also the matter of the ballooning costs of the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile program and an ongoing debate about the optimal size of the future B-21 Raider stealth bomber fleet. On top of this, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered a complete review of spending plans for the upcoming 2026 Fiscal Year. The goal is to cut tens of billions of dollars from existing programs to help fund new priorities under President Donald Trump, including the Golden Dome missile defense initiative. Dysfunction in Congress raises additional concerns about when any major new defense spending might get approved. 'Fiscal constraints don't change what it takes to win,' Gen. Kunkel said. 'We know what it takes to win. It takes all of the Air Force. It takes air superiority. And if America wants to make those investments to win, then we'll do so. If America doesn't want to make those investments, then we'll take more risk.' 'I'm not so foolish to think that this is like a black and white decision on, you know, win versus loss. There's a degree of risk involved,' he added. 'But if we fund more force, we decrease operational risk. We decrease the risk for our policy makers.' 'And it is true that our adversaries are moving quickly. They are,' he continued. 'Fiscal choices should be driven by what it takes to win.' Gen. Kunkel has been and remains particularly bullish on the Air Force ultimately coming out of the current budget uncertainty with an increase in funding rather than a decrease. He did also acknowledge at the Hudson Institute event last week that cuts to existing programs could still be painful. Many questions remain to be answered about the NGAD aircraft's future. However, it is now clear that the Air Force has concluded that the path forward that offers the best option for achieving critical air superiority in future high-end fights with the lowest amount of risk includes buying a fleet of new crewed sixth-generation stealth combat jets. Contact the author: joe@
