Andrew P. Hunter, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, has revealed on November 13 that the US Air Force plans to procure an unspecified number of additional Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) prototypes to equip a newly established experimental operations unit.

Back in April, the Air Force had picked General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. (GA-ASI) and Anduril to provide prototypes for CCA Increment 1, and both prototype designs have since passed their critical design review in October.

The GA-ASI prototype is known to be based on the same XQ-67A already picked by the USAF for the parallel program for an Off-Board Sensing Station (OBSS) and has already been seen in public, flying a number of sorties following from the first flight in February. The XQ-67A in turn evolves from the GAMBIT internal project for a highly modular “family” of drones configurable for various missions.

Anduril’s entry is still relatively mysterious. It is thought to be based on the FURY, a modular, stealthy and high-subsonic manoeuverable crewless aircraft that had originally been designed by Blue Force Technologies as a low-cost Aggressor to be used in training. Anduril acquired Blue Force Technologies in 2023 and has since continued work on the FURY, integrating in it its LATTICE artificial intelligence core.

Both Anduril and GA-ASI are under contract to develop and manufacture an unspecified number of prototypes. Both prototypes in their “complete” CCA guise are expected to fly for the first time in the new year. The purchase of an unspecified number of prototypes will enable the Air Force to experiment and continue developing the CCA concept using the actual platforms.

Many tests so far have carried out “indirectly” with the use, in particular, of the MQ-20 AVENGER from GA-ASI. Funding to stand up the new experimental unit has been included in Fiscal Year 2024 budget allocations. Its tasks will include continuing the “training” of the autonomy algorithms, which are being developed separately from the prototype aircraft. A competitive production decision for the first increment of CCA is then expected in Fiscal Year 2026 in order to field a fully operational capability before 2030.

A second Increment of CCA is planned to follow and it’s quite likely the aircraft will grow in capability but also in complexity and costs despite the ambition remaining to keep costs down. CCA is meant to provide mass to complement insufficient number of crewed aircraft. The USAF says it wants to procure “at least” 1,000 CCAs.

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