Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA)

Happy Tuesday everyone! Welcome to the Autonomous Platforms of the Future Newsletter, designed to inform you about future game changing products, technologies, and platforms. This week I'll be focusing on highlighting the newest product trend coming from the Department of Defense (DoD).

That trend is that the DoD has been focused on developing and strategizing to bring Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) to life for future military missions. An exciting time for major defense contractors and new startups to design and develop the next futuristic asset for US military use.

Let's start with a quick explanation of what Collaborative Combat Aircrafts are:

Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) - are autonomous vehicles that can perform different missions, ranging from carrying weapons and flying ahead of other aircraft to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and relay valuable early warning and evade detection, to electronic warfare and striking targets either on their own or in accordance with the rest of the force

The reason why CCAs are a DoD high priority is potential future war threats that the United States Government (USG) faces. These CCAs will comprise a new breed of significantly less expensive and highly autonomous, mission-focused, unmanned collaborative combat aircraft to fly along with fifth-generation and newer human-crewed fighter jets. The combination of these two technologies will enhance the USG war capabilities to hold adversaries at bay while the next generation of fighter jets are developed.

A recent simulation at a university showed that the incorporation of CCAs with F-35 jets and B-52 bombers, that the USG were able to destroy major threats that have more advanced fighter jet and weapon technologies over the eastern hemisphere. This simulated war scenario further proved the importance of have these autonomous platforms operational by FY28.

Below are a few of the DoD programs that various government entities are working to advance. There are even more going on in a classified space that aren't showcased to the public.

US Air Force (USAF) CCA Program - is a multi-pronged initiative to test, develop and implement new autonomous and manned-unmanned aircraft teaming concepts.

Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) - is a highly classified and secretive program of the USAF to increase lethality and ensure air superiority

US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Programs:

• Low-Cost Attritable Aircraft Platform Sharing (LCAAPS) - involves the development of various aircraft variants that have a common core chassis. The LCAAPS program is one of the initiatives under the AFRL’s Autonomous Collaborative Enabling Technologies (ACET) portfolio through which the service aims to develop different technologies in support of future autonomous collaborative platforms (ACP).

• Off-Board Sensing Station (OBSS) - program remains highly classified, though the effort is expected to field an unmanned aircraft that can fly ahead of fighters and relay targeting information and other threat data back

• Skyborg - an autonomous aircraft teaming architecture that will enable the Air Force to posture, produce and sustain mission sorties at sufficient tempo to produce and sustain combat mass in contested environments

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Programs:

• AdvaNced AirCraft Infrastructure-Less Launch And RecoverY (ANCILLARY) - aims to develop and flight demonstrate an X-plane with the critical technologies required for a leap-ahead in long endurance, vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) unmanned air system (UAS) performance.

• Longshot - The objective of the LongShot program 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.

• OFFensive Swarm-Enabled Tactics (OFFSET) - program envisions future small-unit infantry forces using swarms comprising upwards of 250 small unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) and/or small unmanned ground systems (UGSs) to accomplish diverse missions in complex urban environments.

This is where the Manned-Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T) concept comes into play. MUM-T is the synchronized employment of soldier, manned and unmanned air and ground vehicles, robotics, and sensors to achieve enhanced situational understanding, greater lethality, and improved survivability. To further explain MUM-T, think of it as a standardized systems architecture and communications protocol that enables live and still images gained from the sensor payloads of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) to be shared across the linkage.

Through the use of sophisticated data links, MUM-T lets the manned platforms connect with UAS at different Levels of Interoperability (LOI).

Below are a snapshot of LOI:

Level 1 – Receipt of information from the unmanned platform via its ground control element

Level 2 – Direct receipt of information from a UAS to a manned helicopter; (via remote terminal)

Level 3 – Manned platform directly controls the payload of the UAS directly

Level 4 – Manned platform controls the airborne platform & payload, except recovery

Level 5 – All functions supported in Level 4 plus the ability to take off and recovery of the UAS

Level-X – Refers to the evolving capability of a single manned platform to control multiple UAS.

The USG is investing heavily in the CCA technology to ensure this capability is in production by FY28. The USAF will be first movers in the space given the criticality of aerial combats and protecting current manned assets in the air. The other services (Navy, Army, Space Force, etc.) won't be far behind with integrating autonomous technologies for their mission capabilities.

In a perfect world for the defense contractors designing these platforms, all the services would collaborate and submit a consolidated requirements list via request for proposal (RFP) so companies could design an aircraft to fit all these parameters.

In my opinion, having a consolidated platform requirements list is unreasonable given the different operational timelines and environments these aircraft would operate for the different military branches. While this wouldn't be ideal for some of the major defense contractors, it presents an opportunities for a number of startups to penetrate the space with their designs. I look forward to seeing how these CCAs develop over the next few years with all the various companies involved.

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