The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) feels that the US Air Force (USAF) is essentially on the right track to fielding collaborative combat aircraft (CCA), but raises concerns about the speed of the programme and the potential for higher than anticipated costs per aircraft.
In a research report, the CSIS outlines the broad requirement for CCAs amid renewed great power competition, particularly with China. The aim is to build large numbers of low-cost, “attritable” CCAs that employ artificial intelligence to collabrate with manned aircraft.
Report authors Gregory Allen and Isaac Goldston list several positive attributes of the USAF’s effort to develop CCAs. These attributes, they write, are an improvement over typical USAF fighter acquisitions, which tend to see massive cost increases between generations of fighters.
Specific areas of good news are the existence of serious funding for CCAs, broadly written requirements that help with innovation, the separation of CCA software and hardware, and the recent selection of a non-traditional provider, Anduril, which should encourage other entrepreneurs – the other winner in the USAF’s Increment 1 of the CCA programme was a traditional supplier, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems.
The separation of the hardware and software acquisitions mean the USAF will not be stuck with an aircraft “that might have attractive hardware and unattractive software or vice versa”.
Still, the CSIS raises some concerns. First, USAF remarks suggest that CCAs will only be available in large numbers by the end of 2020s, and possibly longer given that Pentagon programmes are prone to delays.
This is of concern because Chinese supreme leader Xi Jinping has told the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan – a key military flashpoint between Beijing and Washington DC – by 2027.
The CSIS also detects signs that the price of CCAs could be far higher than originially envisaged. Earlier iterations of the programme suggested CCAs with a unit cost of $3 million, but CSIS observes that air force secretary Frank Kendall has estimated a unit cost of $25-30 million.
The CSIS sees a danger that the USAF’s “institutional culture” will end up taking its traditional “expensive and exquisite” approach to acquiring aircraft.
“Removing the pilot from an aircraft design and the associated necessary equipment has (in principle) the potential to reduce the costs of an aircraft, but it is no guarantee the aircraft will be cheap,” notes the CSIS.
It observes that the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk is unmanned, but has a unit cost of $130 million or above, mainly due to its “exquisite sensor payloads” and low production volume.
“The air force already has expensive, high-performing fighter aircraft like the [Lockheed Martin] F-35,” says the CSIS.
“The point of the CCA is to be cheap, rapidly built, and numerous. This is not to say that the air force should tolerate lousy work on the part of its industry partners but merely that cost and schedule must always be kept firmly in focus.”
