Like the Navy, the Air Force years ago chose to integrate its intelligence function — known as the 2 — and its communications and network function, known as the 6, into the A2/6, led by a three-star general. It also added cyber to that portfolio, resulting in an official title of deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and cyber effects operations.

This week the Air Force broke the 6 function away from the 2 on the Air Staff, creating the AF/A6 deputy chief of staff for warfighter communications and cyber systems, in what the service calls one of the most significant reorganizations in over 30 years.

The office will be led by Maj. Gen. Michelle Edmondson, who most recently was senior advisor to the undersecretary of the Air Force.

“Our mission is to ensure warfighters have the reliable, secure communications they need to succeed in a complex and contested environment,” she said. “We’re building an enterprise that connects people, systems and decisions at the speed required by today’s operational demands.” 

The new AF/A6 will serve as the functional authority and management for warfighter communications and cyber operations.

The move had been telegraphed for about a year, with officials explaining it was designed to elevate the role of operational communications and cyber needs within the force, providing a dedicated general officer, typically a three-star, to advise senior leaders.

The office will help the Air Force operate in and through cyberspace and compete against the growing threats presented by China and others, officials have stated in the past, given core missions are vitally dependent on secure and resilient communications, and require a deputy chief of staff singularly focused on that.

In future fights, U.S. communications networks are expected to be attacked and stressed by adversaries.

“We created the A6 to ensure communications and cyber systems are available, secure and aligned with warfighter priorities,” Gen. David Allvin, chief of staff of the Air Force, said. “This office will help us focus resources and oversight where it matters most — supporting the mission in contested environments.”

The post Air Force establishes warfighter communications office appeared first on DefenseScoop.

While available documents did not detail how many ARRW missiles the Air Force intends to buy, the request officially transitions the hypersonic weapon from its troubled development and testing phase and into formal procurement and production. The move comes after the Air Force considered cancelling the program last year after it completed its rapid prototyping effort in August 2024.

Made by prime contractor Lockheed Martin, ARRW is one of the two types of hypersonic weapons the Air Force’s is pursuing — the other being the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM), under development by RTX-subsidiary Raytheon.

ARRW is a boost-glide missile that can be launched from larger aircraft such as the B-52 Stratofortress bomber, and like all hypersonics can fly at speeds of Mach 5 or faster and maneuver during flight.

The fate of ARRW has been up in the air since March 2024 when the Air Force announced it didn’t include any funds to procure the missiles in its budget request for fiscal 2025. The decision was not a surprise, as the program faced a series of setbacks during its development phase — including at least one failed all-up-round flight test that occurred in 2023.

At the time, Air Force leadership said they would pause the ARRW program to analyze the data gathered during its flight test campaign, while also shifting focus to the development of HACM.

But news that ARRW was no longer on the chopping block was first hinted at by Gen. David Allvin, the service’s chief of staff, earlier this month during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

“I will tell you that we are developing — and you’ll see in the budget submission, assuming it’s what we put forward — two different programs. One is a larger form factor that is more strategic [and] long range that we have already tested several times — it’s called ARRW. The other is HACM,” Allvin told lawmakers June 5.

The Air Force first awarded Lockheed Martin a contract worth up to $480 million to design and develop ARRW. Since then, the service has spent roughly $1.4 billion in research-and-development funds on the hypersonic weapon.

As for HACM, the Air Force is requesting $802.8 million in fiscal 2026 to continue the missile’s development, according to budget documents. The service received $466.7 million in FY’25 appropriations, and the increase in funds for this year are likely due to the program entering its flight test phase in the near future.

The Air Force intends to conduct five flight tests for HACM — two less than the service originally planned for — before the program begins rapid fielding efforts in fiscal 2027. The reduction in tests was caused by delays in nailing down the weapon’s hardware design, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office. 

Development of hypersonic missiles is considered a top priority for the Defense Department, especially as adversaries continue to advance their own weapons. Overall, the DOD is requesting over $3.9 billion in FY’26 across a number of programs at different stages of development, a defense official told reporters Thursday during a briefing at the Pentagon.

Along with the Air Force’s programs, those funds would also contribute to fielding the first operational battery of the Army’s Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) — also known as Dark Eagle — by the end of FY’25 and continued development of the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) system.

The post Air Force revives ARRW hypersonic missile with procurement plans for fiscal 2026 appeared first on DefenseScoop.

Air Force officials overseeing HACM told the Government Accountability Office that the program’s first design review was held in September 2024 — six months later than expected — because more time was needed to nail down the missile’s hardware design. As a result, the service will only have time to conduct five flight tests for HACM before it begins rapid fielding efforts in fiscal 2027.

“Program officials said that the delays will reduce the number of flight tests the program can conduct during the 5-year rapid prototyping effort from seven to five,” GAO said in its annual assessment of the Pentagon’s acquisition programs, published Wednesday. “These officials said that the program will still be able to establish sufficient confidence in the missile to declare it operational and to meet all the [middle tier of acquisition pathway’s] objectives with the reduced number of tests.”

Led by RTX subsidiary Raytheon, HACM is an air-breathing scramjet missile and one of the Air Force’s two main efforts to develop hypersonic weapons, which can fly at speeds of at least Mach 5 and are highly maneuverable mid-flight. Northrop Grumman is also on the program as a subcontractor that’s developing the scramjet engine.

Raytheon received a $985 million deal from the Air Force in 2022 to develop HACM under a middle tier of acquisition (MTA) contract, an alternative procurement pathway that requires systems to complete a rapid prototyping effort within five years. The company was later given a $407 million award in 2023 for additional work to enhance the HACM’s capabilities — bringing the contract’s total value to nearly $1.4 billion.

According to its budget request for fiscal 2025, the Air Force planned to mature HACM’s design and initiate flight test activities — including integration on the F-15E Strike Eagle and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, as well as all-up-round free flight testing of missile prototypes. The service intended to build 13 missiles during the rapid prototyping effort to use as “test assets, spares, and rounds for initial operational capability,” the GAO report noted.

Program officials told GAO that HACM’s first design review was delayed to allow for more time to finalize the missile’s hardware design and “validate an initial configuration of the system for use in the first flight test,” the report stated. Another review to certify the system’s “fully operational configuration for use in the final flight tests” was scheduled for sometime in 2025. 

An Air Force spokesperson declined to comment on the current status of HACM’s development, citing “enhanced program security measures.” Raytheon did not respond to DefenseScoop’s request for comment.

Furthermore, GAO said that Raytheon is now “projecting that it will significantly exceed its cost baseline” for HACM, although Air Force officials told the watchdog that removing two flight tests could offer some savings. The program’s development cost as of January 2025 was estimated at close to $2 billion — a two percent increase from the watchdog’s 2024 assessment of $1.9 billion, according to the new report.

HACM would not be the Air Force’s first hypersonic missile to face challenges during development. Its other program — the Lockheed Martin-developed AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) — had a rocky test campaign. At least one of the weapon’s flight tests was deemed unsuccessful, prompting the service to shift priority to HACM’s development.

Issues during ARRW’s testing led the service to axe the weapon’s procurement in FY’25 so the Air Force could reassess the program for future budget requests, casting doubt on ARRW’s future. However, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin recently revealed that the service has included funds to buy ARRW missiles in its upcoming fiscal 2026 budget request.

“I will tell you that we are developing — and you’ll see in the budget submission, assuming it’s what we put forward — two different programs. One is a larger form factor that is more strategic [and] long range that we have already tested several times — it’s called ARRW. The other is HACM,” Allvin said last week during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

Although both ARRW and HACM are hypersonic weapons, they each have different propulsion systems that give them different characteristics. ARRW is a large boost-glide missile that uses a rocket motor to achieve hypersonic flight and is thus limited to being carried by bigger platforms, such as the B-52 Stratofortress bomber. On the other hand, HACM is a smaller cruise missile powered by an air-breathing jet engines, or scramjet, meaning it can be launched from more tactical aircraft like fighter jets.

Despite their differences, Air Force officials have previously stated that both ARRW and HACM are “complementary” to one another.

Moving forward, the Air Force is working with Raytheon to create a new schedule for HACM that still follows the five-year rapid prototyping timeframe mandated for MTA programs, GAO noted in the report. The government watchdog also said the Air Force has altered HACM’s transition strategy to support faster delivery of more missiles, while also improving the weapon’s design for large-scale manufacturing and expanding the industrial base’s capacity for production.

The service currently plans to use the rapid fielding effort in FY’27 to deliver missiles developed during HACM’s initial prototyping phase and then iterate on the weapon’s design. That work will inform a concurrent major capability acquisition pathway program the Air Force will start production for in fiscal 2029, according to GAO.

“The program office stated that based on global power competition and urgency to address threats, the Air Force changed the focus of the HACM program from a prototype demonstration to a program that would deliver operational capability in fiscal year 2027,” per the report. “The program stated that, with this shift, it is focused on meeting schedule as the priority and maintaining velocity toward fielding an operationally relevant capability — the minimum viable product that meets user-defined performance requirements — in fiscal year 2027.”

The post GAO warns that Air Force’s hypersonic cruise missile program is behind schedule appeared first on DefenseScoop.

The Trump administration announced in April that it awarded a contract to Boeing to build the F-47, a sixth-generation platform that’s part of the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance initiative. Officials haven’t publicly disclosed how much Boeing received for the award due to classification of the project.

The DOD hasn’t publicly released full documentation for its 2026 budget request yet. But at a House Appropriations Committee hearing Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other Pentagon leaders discussed some of the department’s plans for key programs.

The budget allocates $3.5 billion for the F-47, Hegseth told lawmakers.

The system is being built “to dominate the most capable adversaries and operate in the most perilous threat environments imaginable,” he said in written testimony to the committee.

The platform will have significantly longer range, more advanced stealth, be more sustainable and supportable, have higher availability, and take less manpower and infrastructure to deploy than the U.S. military’s fifth-gen fighters, he told lawmakers.

“The F-47 will significantly strengthen America’s air power and improves our global position. It will keep our skies secure — even as it ensures we are able to reach out adversaries wherever they may hide,” he said.

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in written testimony to the committee that the jet is the world’s first sixth-generation fighter and will offer superior “adaptability” compared to platforms that are currently in the fleet. He asserted that it would ensure “continued U.S. air dominance for decades.”

A graphic shared last month by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin on the social media platform X, indicated that the F-47 will have a combat radius greater than 1,000 nautical miles and a top speed higher than Mach 2. In comparison, the fifth-gen F-22 and F-35A stealth fighters have combat radiuses of 590 nautical miles and 670 nautical miles, respectively. The F-22 has a top speed greater than Mach 2 and the F-35A has a top speed of Mach 1.6, according to the chart.

The service plans to buy upwards of 185 F-47s over the course of the program.

Hegseth also told lawmakers Tuesday that the 2026 budget will “fully fund” the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program, which aims to field high-speed, next-generation drones that can fly with manned fighter jets like the F-47 and perform air superiority missions.

“We believe in the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the loyal wingman concept, this idea that you project power more robustly through autonomous [and] semi-autonomous systems … that amplify our lethal effect,” he said.

Bryn Woollacott MacDonnell, who is performing the duties of Pentagon comptroller and chief financial officer, said the 2026 budget request includes $804 million for CCA.

The Air Force has given fighter designations to the CCA prototypes that General Atomics and Anduril are developing, referred to as YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A, respectively. Both companies have started ground testing of their systems, and senior defense officials on Tuesday said first flights are expected to take place before the end of this fiscal year.

According to the graphic shared by Allvin last month, CCAs will be stealthy and have a combat radius greater than 700 nautical miles. Their top speed is classified.

The Air Force plans to buy more than 1,000 of the next-gen drones in increments.

Last week, the service announced that an Experimental Operations Unit for CCA was elevated to a “fully operational squadron equivalent” during a June 5 ceremony at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada.

According to a press release, the unit will integrate into the Virtual Warfare Center and the Joint Integrated Test and Training Center Nellis to “conduct realistic simulations and refine non-materiel considerations of CCA employment concepts in a virtual environment.” It also plans to conduct “live-fly experiments to verify simulation results and optimize tactics, techniques and procedures.”

“Our experimental operations will ensure that CCA are immediately viable as a credible combat capability that increases Joint Force survivability and lethality,” Lt. Col. Matthew Jensen, EOU commander, said in a statement.

The Air Force aims for the F-47 and CCA drones to be operational before 2030.

The post Pentagon’s 2026 budget plan includes more than $4B for next-generation Air Force fighter jets appeared first on DefenseScoop.

Following a troubled flight testing campaign, the Air Force decided not to include any funding to procure ARRW in its budget request for fiscal 2025. At the time, officials said it would take time to fully analyze and understand data gathered during the test campaign before fully committing to putting more money toward the system’s development or fielding.

But comments made by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin on Thursday suggest the service has resolved to continue funding the ARRW program rather than end it.

“I will tell you that we are developing — and you’ll see in the budget submission, assuming it’s what we put forward — two different programs. One is a larger form factor that is more strategic [and] long range that we have already tested several times — it’s called ARRW,” Allvin said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

Developing hypersonic missiles has been a top priority for the entire Defense Department as U.S. adversaries continue to mature their own technology. The weapons are able to reach speeds of Mach 5 or higher and are highly maneuverable in-flight, making them difficult for air defense systems to intercept.

And while the Air Force, Army and Navy each have respective hypersonic missiles development programs, all of the weapons so far have yielded mixed results during flight test campaigns.

After a successful all-up-round test for ARRW in late 2022, the Air Force conducted three additional tests in 2023 and a final one in 2024 — but declined to share any results, casting doubt on whether all objectives were met during the campaign.

In 2023, then-Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall admitted to lawmakers that ARRW’s second test in March of that year was deemed unsuccessful. As a result, he said the service intended to reevaluate the program as it finished flight tests, but would shift focus to its other hypersonic missile program, known as the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM).

Furthermore, a 2024 report from the Pentagon’s weapons tester revealed that ARRW’s test campaign was also challenged by a lack of available infrastructure and insufficient means to collect critical flight data. 

Now, both ARRW and HACM are “continuing to develop and moving beyond [research, development, test and evaluation] and getting into the procurement range in the very near future,” Allvin told lawmakers Thursday.

Under development by Lockheed Martin since 2018, ARRW is a boost-glide missile that uses a rocket booster to reach hypersonic speeds, meaning the weapon is large and can only be launched via very big aircraft like the Air Force’s B-52 Stratofortress bomber.

On the other hand, HACM is a smaller, air-breathing scramjet hypersonic missile that is compatible with more aircraft, including fighter jets. RTX was tapped to develop a prototype design for HACM in 2022, and the service was expected to conduct at least 13 tests between October 2024 and March 2027 before production decisions are made, according to the Government Accountability Office’s annual Weapon System Assessment report released last year.

“The Air Force plans to transition HACM to the major capability acquisition pathway at either development start or production start in 2027, depending on what capabilities the Air Force is willing to accept and whether production facilities are ready,” the GAO report stated.

The Air Force declined to provide additional details regarding ARRW’s fate until the FY ’26 budget is approved.

Lockheed Martin deferred specific questions to the Air Force, but a spokesperson told DefenseScoop that the company “has full confidence in the maturity and production readiness of ARRW hypersonic-strike capabilities. We continue partnering with the U.S. Air Force to meet the urgent needs of our warfighters.”

The post Allvin hints at new funding for Air Force’s ARRW hypersonic missile in fiscal 2026  appeared first on DefenseScoop.

“Right now, [AI adoption] is a mixed bag. I think it’s not for lack of effort, but I think there are some institutional pieces there,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said Monday at the AI+ Expo hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project. “We are understanding the value of it, but assimilating it into our institution is one I think we still have some work to do on.”

There are a number of ongoing efforts to harness AI and autonomous capabilities across the department, including development of loyal wingman drones known as Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), integrating AI into its pilot test schools and experimentation with large language models for administrative support. Allvin also highlighted budding partnerships the service has with academic institutions — such as the DAF-MIT AI Accelerator and Stanford AI Studio — as beneficial to the service’s overall adoption of the tech.

But much like the rest of the Pentagon, the Air Force is encumbered by legacy bureaucratic processes that are unable to keep up with rapid advancements in AI capabilities. As a result, officials are working to find existing technologies, understand the best ways to leverage them and prove their value for the Air Force in order to move forward, Allvin said.

“Sometimes it’s hard for the institution to adapt, so we need to grab onto something and, even though there might be something better coming along in the future, we need to have the institution go, ‘Wow, that’s pretty important, that helps me make decisions better, that helps me do predictive maintenance better,’” he said. “And then, that helps us to really assimilate and be able to jump on the train.”

Allvin noted that one key initiative doing a lot of that legwork is the service’s CCA program, which has been divided into three separate parts. General Atomics and Anduril are currently developing their respective platforms, at least one of which will be chosen as the first CCA drone under Increment 1. At the same time, the Air Force’s Project Venom is testing much of the autonomous flight technology for air-to-air combat that will likely be used by the next-generation drones. Meanwhile, the service’s experimental operations unit at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada is exploring operational concepts for the CCA platforms.

“We have to keep our imaginations wide open to understand this is a game-changing technology that can really shift [and] go to the next level when it comes to air dominance, but we can only do that if we don’t sort of get trapped by the vestiges of the past,” Allvin said.

The post Allvin: AI adoption within the Air Force currently a ‘mixed bag’ appeared first on DefenseScoop.

The tests represent a critical milestone for the CCA program, which is part of the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems. The drones are expected to fly alongside the service’s manned platforms — including the sixth-gen F-47 fighter jet — to conduct a range of missions and augment the organization’s aircraft fleet. The ground tests bring the two vendors one step closer to conducting first flights of their drones, scheduled for sometime this summer.

“This phase bridges the gap between design and flight, reducing integration risks, boosting confidence, and laying the groundwork for a successful first flight and eventual fielding to the warfighter,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said in a statement.

The upcoming ground test phase will include “rigorous evaluations” of both vendors’ prototypes, according to an Air Force statement. The tests will focus on the platforms’ propulsion, avionics, autonomy integration and ground control segments to “validate performance, inform future design decisions, and prepare the systems for flight testing later this year.”

After receiving contracts in 2024 for Increment 1 of the CCA program, General Atomics and Anduril completed critical design reviews of their prototypes last fall. The Air Force in March designated the platforms as the first-ever unmanned fighter aircraft, with General Atomics’ prototype dubbed the YFQ-42A and Anduril’s Fury platform now referred to as the YFQ-44A.

“The CCA program represents a groundbreaking new era in combat aviation, and we remain on schedule to test and fly YFQ-42 in the coming months,” General Atomics President David Alexander said in a statement. “Our work on YFQ-42 will further expand the field of unmanned aviation, and we remain excited for the future.”

Air Force leadership have touted the service’s rapid and flexible approach taken with the CCA program, as it plans to field systems in increments. A competitive production decision for Increment 1 is expected in fiscal 2026, with the first batch of drones planned for fielding sometime before 2030.

“Together, Anduril and the United States Air Force are pioneering a new generation of semi-autonomous fighter aircraft that will fundamentally transform air combat,” Jason Levin, Anduril’s senior vice president of air dominance and strike, said in a statement. “By delivering YFQ-44A at unprecedented speed, we are ensuring that warfighters have ample opportunity to experiment and build the trust required to support operational fielding of CCAs before the end of the decade.”

While General Atomics and Anduril are developing Increment 1 CCA platforms, the Air Force is separately working with five unnamed vendors that are developing the autonomy software for the first batch of drones.

Meanwhile, the service intends to begin development of the next batch of CCA drones, known as Increment 2, during fiscal 2026 to expand mission applications and integrate emerging technologies.

In recent months, Joseph Kunkel, director of force design, integration and wargaming at the Air Force Futures organization, has suggested that future CCA increments could feature a range of options in terms of cost and capabilities — including some attributes that aren’t considered “exquisite” in order to keep price tags low.

Along with initiating ground tests, the Air Force announced Thursday that the CCA drones will be based at California’s Beale Air Force Base, which has been designated as the CCA Aircraft Readiness Unit (ARU).

“The mission of the ARU is to provide combat aircraft ready to deploy worldwide at a moment’s notice. CCA are semi-autonomous in nature so the ARU will not have to fly a significant number of daily sorties to maintain readiness,” the service said in a statement. “The aircraft will be maintained in a fly-ready status and flown minimally so the number of airmen required to support the fleet will be substantially lower than other weapons systems.”

Updated on May 1, 2025, at 3:40 PM: This story has been updated to

The post Air Force kicks off ground testing for CCA drones while preparing for first flight appeared first on DefenseScoop.

Boeing beat out Lockheed Martin for the contract of the platform — which will be designated as the F-47, President Donald Trump announced during a press conference held in the Oval Office. Northrop Grumman was also in the running to develop the NGAD platform until 2023, when the company publicly announced it was exiting the competition.

The Air Force did not share how much Boeing received for the award due to classification of the program. The service is now on a path to field the NGAD platform sometime in the 2030s.

“The F-47 will be the most advanced, most capable, most lethal aircraft ever built,” Trump said. “An experimental version of the plane has secretly been flying for almost five years, and we’re confident that it massively overpowers the capabilities of any other nation.”

The NGAD contract is a critical win for Boeing and revitalizes its stealth aircraft business. The company has bet billions of dollars in standing up advanced manufacturing facilities at its fighter production hub in St. Louis, Missouri, where the legacy F/A-18 Super Hornet line is expected to end in 2027.

The award also gives Boeing a much-needed boost after its other defense programs — such as the KC-46 Pegasus aerial refueler and new Air Force One jets — have racked up billions in financial losses.

“We recognize the importance of designing, building and delivering a 6th-generation fighter capability for the United States Air Force. In preparation for this mission, we made the most significant investment in the history of our defense business, and we are ready to provide the most advanced and innovative NGAD aircraft needed to support the mission,” Steve Parker, interim president and CEO at Boeing Defense, Space and Security, said in a statement.

The sixth-generation fighter jet is intended to replace the F-22 Raptor and is envisioned as a long-range crewed aircraft equipped with advanced sensors and weapons payloads designed to operate in highly contested environments in the Indo-Pacific.

Lockheed Martin’s loss marks an end to the defense giant’s relative monopoly in the stealth fighter manufacturing business. According to a report from Breaking Defense, the company is no longer vying for the Navy’s sixth-generation fighter jet program known as the F/A-XX because its proposal did not meet the service’s criteria.

The F-47 platform is the centerpiece to the Air Force’s NGAD family of systems concept, which also includes the service’s future loyal wingman drones known as Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) and other advanced command-and-control technologies. The aircraft will be powered by an engine being developed under the Next Generation Adaptive Propulsion (NGAP) program — another ongoing competition between GE Aerospace and RTX subsidiary Pratt and Whitney. 

Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. David Allvin said Friday in a statement that over the last five years, the service has been flying X-planes for the F-47 aircraft to test future concepts and proving out its technology. He noted that the experimental work will allow the NGAD aircraft to fly sometime during Trump’s administration.

“With the F-47, we are not just building another fighter — we are shaping the future of warfare and putting our enemies on notice,” Allvin said. “This platform will be the most advanced, lethal, and adaptable fighter ever developed — designed to outpace, outmaneuver, and outmatch any adversary that dares to challenge our brave Airmen.”

The announcement comes after the Air Force decided to pause the selection process for the NGAD platform last summer to reevaluate the service’s design concept against predicted threat environments, as well as attempt to lower the platform’s cost. The service initially planned to award the NGAD contract before the end of last year, but ultimately decided in December to push the decision to the Trump administration.

During the pause, former Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall said the service was “taking a hard look” at the platform’s design to ensure the stealth fighter jet would be able to address new and emerging threats. China’s arsenal of advanced weapons and NGAD’s survivability on large airfields were some of the elements considered during the evaluation, he said.

In a statement, Allvin said “the F-47 has unprecedented maturity. While the F-22 is currently the finest air superiority fighter in the world, and its modernization will make it even better, the F-47 is a generational leap forward. The maturity of the aircraft at this phase in the program confirms its readiness to dominate the future fight.”

Budget constraints also influenced the service’s decision to pause NGAD’s selection process. Original estimates for the sixth-gen aircraft were predicted to be around $300 million per unit, but Kendall said last year his ideal price point would be similar to the F-35 Lightning II — about $100 million, depending on the variant.

Allvin said in a statement that the F-47 will have a lower price tag than an F-22 — which has a unit cost of around $143 million. The Air Force requested $2.7 billion for the platform in its budget request for fiscal 2025, indicating that it planned to spend $19.6 billion on the aircraft over the next five years. 

“Compared to the F-22, the F-47 will cost less and be more adaptable to future threats — and we will have more of the F-47s in our inventory,” Allvin said. “The F-47 will have significantly longer range, more advanced stealth, be more sustainable, supportable, and have higher availability than our 5th generation fighters.”

Updated March 21, 2025, at 2:35 PM: This story has been updated to include a statement from Steve Parker, interim president and CEO at Boeing Defense, Space and Security.

The post Boeing wins contract for Air Force’s NGAD stealth fighter jet — now known as the F-47 appeared first on DefenseScoop.

Increment 1 CCA drones under development by General Atomics and Anduril will be referred to as YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A, respectively. While the “Y” refers to the platforms’ status as prototype vehicles and will be dropped once they move into production, the “FQ” designates the CCA drones as unmanned autonomous fighter aircraft — the first platform to be assigned such a designation, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said.

“For the first time in our history, we have a fighter designation in the YFQ-42 Alpha and the YFQ-44 Alpha,” Allvin said Monday during a keynote speech at the annual AFA Warfare Symposium. “Maybe [it’s] just symbolic, but it’s telling the world that we are leaning into a new chapter of aerial warfare.”

The CCA drones are part of the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems and are expected to be able to conduct multiple types of missions, from offensive strike to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. The Air Force wants to field the CCA systems in increments, and is planning to field Increment 1 before the end of the decade.

General Atomics and Anduril each received contracts in 2024 for Increment 1 of the program — an effort intended to develop uncrewed platforms able to fly alongside the Air Force’s fifth- and sixth-generation manned aircraft to augment the service’s capabilities. After completing critical design review in November, both vendors are in the process of building their respective prototypes and preparing for first flight tests this year.

“We have two prototypes of Collaborative Combat Aircraft that were on paper less than a couple years ago,” Allvin said. “They’re going to be ready to fly this summer.”

In a statement, Anduril Senior Vice President of Engineering Jason Levin echoed Allvin’s position that the CCA designations underscored a new era of unmanned military aircraft. The company is currently in the fabrication and testing process for its Increment 1 prototype — dubbed Fury — ahead of first flight this year.

“The designation is evidence of the program’s progress, and we continue to work tirelessly to deliver a capability that will expand the United States’ ability to project combat airpower,” Levin said in a statement.

At the same time, General Atomics is proposing a variant from its Gambit family of drones for CCA Increment 1. Much of the company’s previous work with the Air Force Research Laboratory to build an X-plane known as the XQ-67A Off-Board Sensing Station has been carried over to develop its CCA prototype. 

“These aircraft represent an unrivaled history of capable, dependable uncrewed platforms that meet the needs of America’s warfighters and point the way to a significant new era for airpower,” GA-ASI President David Alexander said in a statement. 

While the Air Force remains confident in the CCA program’s progress, the fate of the service’s manned sixth-generation fighter remains in limbo. After pausing the selection process for the NGAD platform last year, then-Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall announced in December that the service would defer any final decisions on the program’s fate to the Trump administration.

The post Air Force designates CCA drones as first unmanned fighter aircraft  appeared first on DefenseScoop.

One of the new organizations created as part of the department’s plan to “reoptimize” for future warfare, the ICC is a major command that will develop operational concepts, integrated capability requirements and modernization plans for the entire service. Speaking during a keynote at AFA’s Air, Space and Cyber conference, Allvin said the provisional command will be led by Maj. Gen. Mark Mitchum, who most recently served as the chief of staff’s special assistant. 

“Their first task to do, is be able to evaluate the way we’re modernizing our Air Force by core functions, … to really answer that question in order to do what and evaluate in terms of the mission threats that need to be accomplished,” Allvin later told reporters during a roundtable.

Allvin has previously said the ICC is intended to address the service’s current capability development process — which he has described as “diffused and fragmented” across each major command — by creating a single organization responsible for generating new requirements for both current and future platforms. 

Around 100 personnel are currently assigned to the provisional ICC and they’re working out of their previous locations or assignments, Allvin explained. The aim is to have up to 800 people working in the final iteration of the command. 

“We have to have the full manning documents understood, have to do the full strategic basing process, full congressional notification, full nomination of the leadership — which is going to be a three-star that has to be nominated and confirmed,” Allvin said. “I would like to have it done within calendar year 2025. A lot of that will be dependent upon how fast we can move through the processes and how fast we can go through the assignment process, too.”

Meanwhile, the Air Force has also named Gen. Duke Richardson to be the service’s first capability development executive officer (CDEO) and lead the new Integrated Development Office — also created under the department’s reorganization efforts — within Air Force Materiel Command. Richardson will serve in a “dual-hat” role as both the CDEO and in his current position as AFMC commander, an Air Force official told DefenseScoop.

Naming Richardson as CDEO is the first step to standing up the Integrated Development Office, Air Force acquisition head Andrew Hunter told reporters Monday during a roundtable. In the new role, Richardson will be responsible for the service’s developmental planning efforts for prototypes and technologies that aren’t quite ready to be considered programs of record and need additional work on development or integration.

“It’s basically saying, ‘We understand where we need to go with the force, and we’ve laid the foundation for how we’re going to get there,’” Hunter said. “It’s not program management, per se, because you aren’t at the stage of the game where you’re executing a program, you’re laying the foundation.”

The post Air Force stands up ‘provisional’ Integrated Capabilities Command appeared first on DefenseScoop.