More than two years ago, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall announced plans for the Air Force to build a fleet of autonomous drones to fly into combat alongside crewed platforms. Called the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), five companies were initially selected for the contract competition: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Atomics and Anduril.
In April, the competition narrowed to two finalists: General Atomics and Anduril. At the Air, Space, and Cyber Conference 2024, the design teams showed off the finalists.
Collaborative Combat Aircraft represent significant changes for U.S. air power, but at their core they are still planes. The CCA would operate just like a fighter, with landing gear, takeoff, climb and cruise capabilities, but without a pilot on board.
General Atomics and Anduril were chosen in the Department of Defense’s first tranche to field working CCA prototypes. Anduril’s offering, known as Fury, operates on similar principles as General Atomics’ CCA. Both are designed to be fast, maneuverable, modular, and attritable.
Ewing likened the CCA to a durable, yet expendable, lighter. General Atomics’ CCA uses the same chassis as the XQ-67A, a test platform that has been flying for the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL). The platform allowed General Atomics to develop a more weapons-centric variant faster than starting from scratch.
The program’s intent was to develop a low-cost unmanned system for red threat scenarios, enabling more cost-effective and relevant pilot training.
Trenton White, AFRL’s program manager for the XQ-67A, highlighted the collaborative development process, sharing lab insights with the companies to save time and cost.
“You don’t need to train and retain pilots, because it’s autonomous,” White said. “So you can build as many of them as you need. You can fly them in great numbers against an advanced adversary, and you can start to do things that you couldn’t do any other way.”
General Atomics expects its CCA version to start logging flight time by mid-2025.
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