Latest news with #YFQ-42A
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2 days ago
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Hybrid-Electric GHOST Strike-Recon Drone In The Works For USAF
The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has awarded General Atomics a contract for work on what is described as a 'hybrid-electric propulsion ducted fan next-generation intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance/strike unmanned aerial system,' or GHOST. A propulsion system of this kind can offer a very high degree of efficiency, which can translate to significant unrefueled range, as well as being very quiet. General Atomics has publicly touted work in this area in the past, tied in part to its Gambit modular drone family, which it has said could lead to a design capable of staying aloft for up to 60 hours, at least. The Pentagon included AFRL's GHOST award to General Atomics, a cost-plus-fixed-fee deal valued at $99,292,613, in its daily contracting notice today. The full entry reads: 'General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. Poway, California, was awarded a $99,292,613 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for hybrid-electric propulsion ducted fan next-generation intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance/strike unmanned aerial systems (GHOST). This contract provides for the advancement of the hybrid-electric ducted fan next-generation intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance/strike unmanned aerial systems to provide capabilities across a spectrum of contested environments. Work will be performed at Poway, California, and is expected to be completed by Aug. 26, 2028. This contract was a sole source acquisition. Fiscal 2024 research, development, test and appropriations funds in the amount of $26,867,479 are being obligated at time of award. The Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity (FA2931-25-C-B035).' Additional details about the GHOST effort, including what plans there might be now to operationalize what the program produces, are scant. TWZ has reached out to AFRL for more information. 'For more than 30 years, General Atomics has advanced unmanned aerial systems in ways never before achieved and often poorly replicated,' C. Mark Brinkley, a spokesperson for General Atomics, told TWZ when asked for more details. 'Satcom [satellite communications] control? Did it. Kinetic strike? That was us. Automatic takeoff and landing? That, too. Unmanned jets? We're building our third.' General Atomics' third jet-powered drone, at least that it has publicly acknowledged, is the YFQ-42A under development now as part of the U.S. Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. It is derived from the experimental XQ-67A drone produced for AFRL's once-secretive Off-Board Sensing Station (OBSS) program. There is also the company's stealthy Avenger uncrewed aircraft. 'We've been promising something impressive related to hybrid-electric propulsion, and now I can't talk about it anymore,' he added. 'That's how it goes with these things. Contrary to what you see on the news, the revolution won't be televised.' In general, hybrid-electric propulsion systems offer improved fuel economy and other benefits by combining fuel-powered engines and electric motors. The system can be paired with batteries of various capacities to achieve its desired performance. Using ducted fans can offer additional performance and other benefits. Hybrid-electric configurations can also help reduce infrared and acoustic signatures on top of other low-observable (stealthy) design features. As noted, General Atomics has been very open in the past about its work on hybrid-electric propulsion involving ducted fans for future stealthy long-endurance drones. 'We are working on hybrid electric propulsion,' Mike Atwood, then Senior Director, Advanced Programs at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI), told Breaking Defense in 2022. 'We believe that GA is going to pioneer a completely new way to propel airborne air-breathing [vehicles]. That will be unveiled in the coming years, but it is a completely disruptive technology. It uses a hybrid electric system where it's basically a Tesla Model S and an RQ-170 got together and you have a fully electric aircraft.' Atwood has since become GA-ASI's Vice President for Advanced Programs. At that time, General Atomics had presented a notional concept for a stealthy flying wing-type drone, referred to as MQ-Next, and pitched as a potential successor to the company's still-popular MQ-9. Two years earlier, the Air Force, the largest known operator of MQ-9s, had announced its desire to stop buying those drones largely over concerns about their vulnerability in future high-end fights, especially one against China in the Pacific. The service has continued to receive additional representatives since then. 'The key to this design is [a] heavy fuel engine, driving very efficient generators and motors. And that way we can get fairly low [fan] speeds, get really good efficiency,' Dave Alexander, GA-ASI's President, also told Breaking Defense in 2022. 'So, this is [a] game changer right here. This is a low-pressure ratio fan, so it's a little tricky and we got to be careful with it. But we believe once we nail this, get the thrust out of it and installed weight, then that'll drive that aircraft [to new lengths.].' Breaking Defense's report added that Alexander had talked about a 60-hour endurance for the MQ-Next concept and described it as particularly well suited for persistent long-range intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions over the hotly contested South China Sea. He also talked about a goal being for the drone to be able to operate from a 3,000-foot-long rough runway in alignment with the Air Force's Agile Combat Employment (ACE) expeditionary and distributed concepts of operations. Last year, Alexander again highlighted General Atomics' work on hybrid-electric propulsion systems utilizing ducted fans in an interview with Aviation Week on the sidelines of the annual Royal International Air Tattoo in the United Kingdom. At that time, he also directly linked these developments to the Gambit family of modular drones, and the Gambit 4 design in particular. General Atomics has presented a variety of very different potential Gambit drones, but they are all designed around a common 'chassis' that includes landing gear, as well as key mission and flight control computer systems. To date, Gambit 4 has been consistently depicted as a stealthy flying wing-type design intended for long-endurance persistent ISR missions that is fully in line with the MQ-Next concept General Atomics had previously shown, as seen in the video below. 'That part of the Gambit series is still out there and we want to make sure we don't lose sight of that,' Alexander said. 'It's very unique.' 'Heavy Fuel Engine 2.0 in development for the MQ-1C Block 25 is not the basis for Gambit 4's hybrid propulsion system, Alexander said,' Aviation Week's report added. 'A different diesel engine with eight cylinders will be developed to generate the power for the electric motors in Gambit 4.' Without knowing more about the work General Atomics is now doing for AFRL as part of GHOST, it is hard to say specifically what kinds of operational tasks the resulting drone might be capable of performing. However, in previous reporting about broadly similar designs, TWZ has highlighted the value that a stealthy, ultra-quiet drone with significant range and endurance could offer for conducting ISR missions, and doing so covertly, in denied areas. The GHOST contract announcement also mentions the potential for the drones to be capable of performing strike missions. The ability to immediately prosecute at least some targets of opportunity would be another major benefit of this kind of uncrewed aircraft. Northrop Grumman subsidiary Scaled Composites is currently working on a different highly efficient and whisper-quiet hybrid-electric flying wing-type drone called the XRQ-73 as part of a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program called the Series Hybrid Electric Propulsion AiRcraft Demonstration (SHEPARD). DARPA has been running SHEPARD in cooperation with AFRL, as well as the Office of Naval Research, since 2021. The XRQ-73 design is also a direct outgrowth of the XRQ-72A that Scaled Composites developed for a previous effort called Great Horned Owl (GHO), which the U.S. Intelligence Community's Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) ran from the early 2000s until sometime in the 2010s. AFRL was also involved in GHO. TWZ was the first to report in detail on the XRQ-72A, which featured a hybrid-electric propulsion system with ducted fan propulsors. The U.S. military and U.S. Intelligence Community have a long history of work on ultra-quiet crewed and uncrewed aircraft dating back to the height of the Cold War, and additional relevant developments could well be underway now in the classified realm. It's also worth noting here that the GHOST contract comes amid renewed concerns about the MQ-9's vulnerability even to lower-tier threats following a spate of losses to Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen in the past year or so. With General Atomics now on contract with AFRL for GHOST, it remains to be seen whether more details about that specific effort begin to emerge. Contact the author: joe@
Yahoo
2 days ago
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The Pentagon Is Getting $150 Billion From the 'Big Beautiful Bill'
Despite describing himself as a "fiscal hawk," President Donald Trump asked for an additional $113 billion for the Department of Defense in his discretionary budget request. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which passed the House of Representatives on Thursday, appropriates $37 billion more for defense spending than Trump requested. While some of this money may go to projects integral to national security, much of it is expensive pork for defense contractors. The bill, if passed by the Senate, would add an estimated $2.3 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade. It would appropriate an additional $150 billion to the Defense Department's already-bloated $848 billion budget, bringing the agency's account to nearly $1 trillion in FY 2026. The additional appropriations in the bill from the Committee on Armed Services, which oversees Pentagon spending, span 37 pages, 16 sections, and 232 items. In the air, over $500 million will go to Air Force exercises in the Pacific, a rather expensive way to saber-rattle with China. Nearly $1 billion will be allocated to "accelerate" production of the FA/XX aircraft and the F-47, which Trump touted as the "Next Generation Air Dominance" platform that will be "the most advanced, capable, and lethal aircraft ever built." But investing this much in another manned aircraft seems anachronistic while appropriating more than $10 billion for unmanned aerial weapons systems such as General Atomics' YFQ-42A and Anduril's YFQ-44A, autonomous one-way attack systems, unmanned surface and underwater weapons systems, and other artificial intelligence and autonomous capabilities. At sea, the federal government will allocate more than $5 billion to the American shipbuilding industrial base, which the Jones Act has hollowed out. This century-old law requires all ships transporting goods between U.S. ports to be American-built, American-owned, and crewed by U.S. citizens. The bill also appropriates a combined $16 billion for a Virginia-class submarine, two guided missile destroyers, a San Antonio–class Amphibious Transport Dock, and another amphibious assault ship. (The Navy already has 23, 75, 13, and 12 of these, respectively.) About $3 billion will be given to the Defense Department to purchase T-AO oilers to help fuel the Navy's fleet of roughly 280 ships. The Pentagon has failed each of the seven audits it has submitted to the department's inspector general since it began doing so in 2017—more than 25 years after Congress passed a law requiring agencies to investigate their own finances, Reason's Joe Lancaster explains. While the bill has not yet been signed into law, the Senate is unlikely to alter military appropriations significantly. Giving the Pentagon even more money while it can't account for its expenditures does not make the country safer; it rewards incompetence and waste. The post The Pentagon Is Getting $150 Billion From the 'Big Beautiful Bill' appeared first on
Yahoo
20-05-2025
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Both Air Force CCAs now in ground testing, expected to fly this summer
General Atomics announced Monday that ground testing of its YFQ-42A began earlier this month, and the collaborative combat aircraft is expected to have its first flight this summer. In a statement, General Atomics said their CCA's ground testing began May 7. 'The YFQ-42A is an exciting next step for our company,' David Alexander, president of General Atomics Aeronautics Systems, said in a statement. 'It reflects many years of partnership with the U.S. Air Force of advancing unmanned combat aviation for the United States and its allies around the world, and we're excited to begin ground testing and move to first flight.' The announcement follows the Air Force's revelation May 1 that Anduril Industries' CCA, the YFQ-44A, had also started its ground testing. Anduril also expects its CCA to start flight tests this summer. CCAs are uncrewed, semi-autonomous drones that will fly alongside aircraft like the F-35 and F-47, also known as Next Generation Air Dominance. Their purpose is to expand the reach of the Air Force's limited fleet of crewed fighters and conduct missions, such as strike operations, reconnaissance, electronic warfare and to serve as decoys. The Air Force chose General Atomics and Anduril to design, build and test the first iteration of CCAs in April 2024. General Atomics' YFQ-42A is derived from its XQ-67 Off-Board Sensing Station drone, which the Air Force Research Laboratory flew in 2024 to test a 'platform sharing' construction concept. That drone was built on a chassis that could be used as a foundation for multiple drones, which the company and AFRL said could allow drones to be built en masse and more cheaply. Anduril's YFQ-44A was previously called Fury, and the company uses its Lattice operating system for its autonomous capabilities. The service posted a graphic last week that said these first CCAs would have a combat radius of more than 700 nautical miles and stealth comparable to the F-35's. The Air Force wants to have at least 1,000 CCAs. The Air Force also plans to locate its first CCA aircraft readiness unit — which will keep them in a 'fly-ready status' for rapid deployment — at Beale Air Force Base in California. Because CCAs would not need to be flown regularly to keep pilots trained, the Air Force expects the drones would only be flown a minimal amount of times. That means Beale's unit would likely need fewer support airmen than crewed aircraft require, such as maintainers, the service said. But both Anduril's and General Atomics' CCAs may not end up being in the Air Force's fleet. The service plans to choose next year which of those CCAs to move into production and start to develop the next 'increment' of the drones.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
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Our First Look At The YFQ-42 ‘Fighter Drone' Collaborative Combat Aircraft
We now have our first actual look at General Atomics' YFQ-42A 'fighter drone' prototype. The YFQ-42A, as well as Anduril's YFQ-44A, are being developed under the first phase, or Increment 1, of the U.S. Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program, and both designs are expected to make their maiden flights later this year. Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force Gen. David Allvin shared the picture of the YFQ-42A seen at the top of this story on social media today. The Air Force had announced the start of ground testing of both Increment 1 CCA designs on May 1, at which time the first images of a Anduril's YFQ-44A were also released. 'THE WORLD's FIRST LOOK AT OUR NEW YFQ-42A!' Allvin wrote in an accompanying post on X. 'As the @DeptofDefense matches threats to capabilities under @SecDef's [Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's] leadership, Collaborative Combat Aircraft will prove not only cost-effective, but truly lethal…No doubts these uncrewed fighters will put our adversaries on notice!' THE WORLD's FIRST LOOK AT OUR NEW YFQ-42A! As the @DeptofDefense matches threats to capabilities under @SecDef's leadership, Collaborative Combat Aircraft will prove not only cost-effective, but truly lethal…No doubts these uncrewed fighters will put our adversaries on notice! — General David Allvin (@OfficialCSAF) May 19, 2025 'The YFQ-42A is an exciting next step for our company,' David Alexander, President of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., said in a separate statement. 'It reflects many years of partnership with the U.S. Air Force of advancing unmanned combat aviation for the United States and its allies around the world, and we're excited to begin ground testing and move to first flight.' What can be seen in the head-on view of the YFQ-42A we have now is largely in line with renderings and physical models that General Atomics has shown in the past. The design has some low-observable (stealthy) features and shares some broad similarities with past company designs like the Avenger. It is also notably less slender than Anduril's YFQ-44A, which could offer advantages and disadvantages. General Atomics has also previously confirmed that its CCA design is derived from the experimental XQ-67A drone originally developed for the Air Force's once-secretive Off-Board Sensing Station (OBSS) program. A core aspect of OBSS was a so-called 'genus/species' concept, involving a core 'genus' set of components from which multiple 'species' of differently configured drones could be crafted, lessons from which the Air Force has said are being incorporated broadly into the CCA program. General Atomics has been further proving that concept out via its Gambit family of drones, which all feature a common 'chassis' that incorporates landing gear, as well as key mission and flight control computer systems. The XQ-67A has been flying for more than a year now, offering General Atomics a valuable risk reduction asset for its CCA work, as well. Though partially obscured by the flight-test data probe, there is a notably different colored section on the bottom of the front of the nose with what looks to be a grill and an additional feature of some kind above it, the purpose of which is not immediately clear. Past renderings of the General Atomics CCA design have shown a trapezoidal window in the same general location, a feature typically associated with forward-facing electro-optical and/or infrared sensor systems. As TWZ has noted in the past, the position under the nose could be a likely location for an infrared search and track (IRST) sensor. IRSTs can spot stealthy targets and offer other benefits, and would align with the air-to-air combat role that is expected to be the main focus of the Increment 1 CCAs, at least initially. General Atomics has been separately using its stealthy Avenger drones to demonstrate potential air-to-air combat capabilities, including while equipped with podded IRST systems. Anduril's YFQ-44A also notably has what appears to be a forward-facing camera system prominently on top of its nose, which could, at least, be used to provide visual inputs for control and additional situational awareness during initial testing. General Atomics' YFQ-42A prototype could have a broadly similar system installed in its nose. What may be the doors for the YFQ-42A's ventral payload bay are also visible, along with the drone's tricycle landing gear. 'I think CCA can actually be, in some cases, a mobility aircraft,' Mike Atwood, vice president for Advanced Programs at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI), had said during a panel discussion at the Air & Space Forces Association's (AFA) 2025 Warfare Symposium in March. '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.' '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 had also said at AFA's annual Warfare Symposium. '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 landing gear arrangement helps ease the impact of landing, which in turn can help reduce wear and tear, something that is especially beneficial for operations from short and potentially rough fields. It can also similarly help with rough field takeoffs. The Air Force said that the Increment 1 CCAs are the first aircraft, crewed or uncrewed, to be developed from the ground up to align with its Agile Combat Employment (ACE) concepts of operations. ACE centers heavily on short-notice and otherwise irregular deployments, including to far-flung locations with limited infrastructure. You can read more about how the Air Force's CCA vision aligns with ACE here. As it stands now, the Air Force is still looking to acquire 1,000 CCAs, if not more, across a series of iterative development cycles. Service officials have previously said that between 100 and 150 Increment 1 CCAs could be acquired, but it remains unclear whether that fleet with consist of YFQ-42As, YFQ-44As, or a mix of both types. 'A competitive Increment 1 production decision is expected in fiscal year 2026,' which begins on October 1, 2025, the Air Force had said as part of the announcement about the start of ground testing at the beginning of the month. The Air Force is now in the process of finalizing requirements for Increment 2 of CCA, which are expected to be significantly different from those for Increment 1. In March, Air Force Maj. Gen. Joseph D. Kunkel, director of Force Design, Integration, and Wargaming and deputy chief of staff for Air Force Futures, indicated that the second phase of the program could call for designs that are both less complex and cheaper. More details are likely to continue to emerge about the Increment 1 CCA designs, as well as other plans for the program, as the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A progress through ground testing toward their first flights. Contact the author: joe@
Yahoo
13-05-2025
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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@
