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WASHINGTON If the Air Force is to fight a major adversary like China in years to come, a top general has said, it must bring mass in its airpower without breaking the bank.
But manned fighters alone will not be enough to maintain prized US air superiority, Lt. Gen. Richard Moore, deputy chief of staff for plans and programs, said in an interview with Defense News. Key planes in its fleet, such as the F-15C, are aging rapidly, and the service is on track to retire more than twice as many fighters as it buys over the next five years.
That’s why Moore said it’s vital for the Air Force to build and field a planned fleet of at least 1,000 drone wingmen to augment its fleet of manned fighters. And the service is working to bring together industry ideas for so-called collaborative fighter jets and its own experiences to figure out how to make it a reality.
The picture here is changing, and what’s changing the picture are CCAs, Moore said.
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has made it clear that creating CCA is one of his top priorities, and the service is beginning to work out the details of how it will integrate drone wingmen into its fleet and will use them in a future conflict. In March, Kendall said he directed service planners to assume the Air Force would have 1,000 CCAs, though the final number may differ from that estimate.
This spring, top lawmakers raised concerns with top Air Force leaders about the state of the Air Force’s fighter fleet and its plans for fighters in the years to come. come.
During a March 29 hearing of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Ground Forces, Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Virginia, outlined Air Force plans to divest of 801 fighters by 2028 while contributing less than half with 345 F-35s. and the F-15EX.
Moore told that hearing that most of the aircraft slated for retirement are F-15Cs and A-10 Warthogs, as well as older, less capable F-22s and F-16s.
The Air Force’s F-15Cs and D Eagles are aging rapidly, as their withdrawal from Kadena Air Base, Japan, in recent months has shown, and their numbers are dwindling. Planned services for Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter platforms will not arrive until the end of the decade, at best, and will be very expensive, with each system expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars. And while the Air Force continues to bring in more F-35As, the service has reduced its initial plans to purchase 144 F-15EXs to 104.
Wittman, the chairman of the subcommittees, warned that continuing on such a downward slide, as key adversaries such as China continue to invest in fighter air power, could turn America into a mere regional power.
Moore said CCAs will be critical in providing the kind of air power that will be needed to confront a nation with a military comparable to the United States.
But trying to achieve that level of airpower with single-crewed fighters would be prohibitively expensive, Moore said, prompting the Air Force to turn to drone wingmen.
We need to find a way to create affordable mass, and that’s where CCAs came in, and that’s why the numbers are so high, Moore said, referring to plans for a fleet of 1,000 drones. You can’t just talk about the F-35s, F-15Es, F-15EXs, and F-16s, and call it the company. You need to add CCAs.
And the proposed services budget for 2024 is asking for the money to make that planning a reality. The service requested nearly $50 million to start a program called Project Venom that aims to refine standalone software of the type that could pilot CCAs, and $69 million to launch an experimental operations unit where officials would begin to develop tactics and procedures for incorporating CCAs into a squadron.
Industry ideas for CCAs
Moore said the experimental unit will take advantage of the Air Force’s new acquisition approach for CCAs.
Usually, he explained, the Air Force first outlines the requirements for a program to industry, which will then come up with something that meets those requirements.
But this time, Moore said, Kendall deliberately told the Air Force not to start by stating the requirements, but rather to ask the industry what was possible. And the experimental operations unit will take ideas from the companies and explore them further, Moore said, figuring out how to incorporate them into the squadron’s day-to-day operations.
Moore said the Air Force expects to have concrete ideas from vendors on CCA attributes within a few years, maybe sooner if we’re lucky.
The service will then begin experimenting with prototype drones and determine what level of autonomy is possible.
It will also be an integral part of the job concept, Moore said. If they’re really self-sufficient, if we can do that, that opens up additional possibilities. If they are somewhat self-contained, that would lead you more to a loyal wing concept, or CCAs being part of a formation with manned fighters. Well, just see how it goes.
Project Venom, in which standalone software will be installed in six F-16s for experimentation, will help shape the course of these future experiments on industrial aircraft, he said.
And there are many questions that still need to be answered once the Air Force has industry insights in hand, Moore said. For example, will CCAs be an integral part of a squadron and deploy together, or will they be a separate unit that deploys on its own? Will they launch from the same bases as crewed fighters or from different locations?
These are questions that don’t yet have answers, because we don’t yet know the attributes of the CCA that will come, Moore said. Well, resolve all of that as those attributes begin to crystallize. And I think the answers will become relatively obvious based on the planes, but we don’t have them yet.
Some drones could have multiple applications ranging from strike, intelligence gathering or jamming, for example. The one that CCAs’ ability to increase the manned fighter force as shooters was first focused on, so it will be the first, Moore said.
As for industry interest, some of the biggest companies in the combat aviation segment have already expressed interest, including Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Kratos and General Atomics, according to Moore.
I think we see multiple paths to what we’re trying to achieve, he said. I don’t think there is only one way and that I am not dependent on one company.
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He traveled to the Middle East to cover US Air Force operations.
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