The sea service is aiming to acquire AI-enabled drones that are “consumable,” Rear Adm. Stephen Tedford said Monday during a briefing at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space conference.

For major U.S. military weapon systems, sustainment can sometimes account for about 70% of the lifecycle cost. But for CCAs, the Navy doesn’t want to follow that model.

“We’re trying to get after CCAs in a revolutionary way, intentionally trying to avoid ACAT 1, 35-year lifecycle sustainment of a platform. I don’t need them that long. I need a platform that instead of buying 500, I’ll buy 60. Okay. And I can do them in a rolling wave so I can keep pace with the technology of the unmanned platforms, but also keep pace with the threat by upgrading sensors, platforms, systems, weapons, and I can do it at a recurring investment cost,” Tedford told DefenseScoop during the briefing.

“I’m also trying to do this so that my unit cost of the platform is as absolutely low as possible — trying to keep it at around the $15 million mark, okay, because I need it to be considered consumable. Okay. I want something that’s going to fly for a couple hundred hours, [and for] it’s last hour it’s either a target or a weapon. I’m either going to hit something with it or I’m going to train and shoot it down. But I’m not going to sustain it for 30 years. So if you’re any cost estimators out there, those are zeros in sustainment,” he added.

The systems could also be designed with the assumption that they won’t have to conduct nearly as many catapult launches or landings — also known as cats and traps — on an aircraft carrier as today’s manned fighter jets, he suggested.

“It’s not a different way of launch and recovery, it’s a different way of looking at risk. So, I’m not trying to design a platform that’s going to do cyclic operations on an aircraft carrier the way we know it today where you’re launching and recovering every 45 minutes to an hour and a half. [That’s] not what we’re trying to design. That 200 hours [of total lifecycle flight time] may only have 10 cats and traps. Okay. We’re trying to limit that scope because if I do try to design something that has 6,000 hours of life and can do cats and traps all day, I just designed an F-18. [That’s] not what I’m trying to get after, right?” he said.

“So, I’m trying to limit that engineering space … and if I can keep the price point low enough and keep people in a consumable mindset, then I can also keep them in an engineering mindset that is equivalent,” Tedford added. “If I only need to launch it and recover it a handful of times, instead of throughout its lifecycle, I can completely change the engineering calculus involved.”

The Navy is hoping to field its first iteration of CCAs before 2030, he told DefenseScoop.

The service has been working with Australia on manned-unmanned teaming technologies. They plan to conduct an exercise next summer where a “section or division” of drones will be controlled or directed by a manned airborne asset.

In fiscal 2025, the Navy will also be kicking off additional analysis and study for CCA-related technologies.

“We’re going to be starting primarily on payloads and systems and sensors, not the platform. Okay. Every time we talk about CCAs, because the last letter is an ‘A’ and everybody says aircraft, they stop thinking about it as a weapon. I need to think about it as a weapon. So we’re going to focus on what do I need it to do? What sensors and gaps do we need to cover in combat? And then try to find the platform that keeps me at the low cost projected,” he explained.

There are a number of key enabling technologies that the Navy is focusing on advancing as it pursues next-generation unmanned platforms. Those include propulsion and power; networks and resilient command and control; payloads and sensor perception; launch and recovery; resilient positioning, navigation and timing; and AI and autonomy.

The U.S. Air Force is also pursuing CCAs, which it refers to as “collaborative combat aircraft.” It’s aiming to field the first iteration by the end of fiscal 2028. Navy officials have previously suggested that in the future the two services could potentially control each other’s drones.

Tedford said the Air Force is taking the lead in some areas, with the Navy in a follower role.

“The Air Force has the lead on developing the government reference architecture standards for how we’re going to be getting after AI and autonomy. This is the interfaces, this is the language, this is the definitions” of autonomy, Tedford said.

The effort comes as the Pentagon is pursuing a warfighting concept known as Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2), with the aim of better connecting sensors, shooters and data across the services and key international partners.

“The government reference architecture is how we are going to be playing in this space, so that all of our systems, control systems, platforms are interoperable. Where we’re specifically going, whether it’s with a cooperative combat aircraft or existing unmanned platforms, is that we need to be able to get all of the information that those platforms ingest and transmit and get it to any and all platforms. Okay. I am not interested in pursuing a proprietary solution that will only talk to one specific proprietary platform. It has to be universal, it has to be interdependent, and it has to be interchangeable. That includes the sensors, that includes the [common operating picture], that includes the message traffic, and it includes the intel. Okay. We’re going to be taking these platforms and putting them out into combat operations, and everybody needs to be pulling from the same information-trusted source and not questioning where it’s coming from,” Tedford said.

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Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti hinted at such a move last week at the WEST conference in San Diego.

“We’re exploring the establishment of a new rating, a robotics rating to build and develop a team for the next generation — a team who has the reps and sets in sensors, platform autonomy and mission autonomy programs, and who can provide input and machine learning feedback processes,” she said.

The CNO and other Navy leaders are pursuing a so-called “hybrid fleet” of crewed and uncrewed systems enabled by AI capabilities and other supporting technologies. The sea service is pursuing a variety of new drones and has been experimenting with unmanned aerial vehicles, surface vessels and undersea vehicles in multiple theaters.

“RW Sailors will enable Robotic and Autonomous System (RAS) operations and maintenance at the tactical edge. RWs will be the subject matter experts for computer vision, mission autonomy, navigation autonomy, data systems, artificial intelligence and machine learning on our RAS platforms,” according to the NAVADMIN announcement from Franchetti.

The new rating will initially be limited to a “small and highly selective” group of active-duty sailors, with the primary source ratings for robotic warfare conversions coming from personnel currently or previously assigned to billets in unmanned vehicle divisions and sailors who have earned applicable Navy Enlisted Classification codes.

“E-4 through E-9 Active Duty Sailors meeting those criteria may submit an Electronic Personnel Action Request (NAVPERS 1306/7) to the Bureau of Naval Personnel, Enlisted Community Management Division (BUPERS-32),” per the announcement.

Applicable NEC codes, conversion package requirements and procedures can be found on the MyNavy HR robotics community website.

Mark Pomerleau contributed to this report.

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Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks first announced the Replicator effort in August, with the stated goal of delivering thousands of relatively low-cost, “attritable” capabilities in 18 to 24 months to help counter China’s military buildup. In December, the Office of the Secretary of Defense is expected to choose from a list of platforms proposed by the services and other DOD components for the initial tranche.

Replicator isn’t a program of record but rather an effort to give a boost to technologies that are already in the works so they can be fielded faster in larger quantities than they would otherwise if they weren’t given special attention.

“First of all, it’s exciting,” Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Doug Bush said in an interview with DefenseScoop at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “The idea of the whole DOD, you know, needing to push the envelope and go faster on unmanned capability, I think is a good thing. Replicator is part of that. So yeah, the Army nominated several systems. And the process now is working through on picking.”

Specifically, the Army proposed unmanned aerial systems for the initiative, Bush acknowledged. However, he declined to identify the drones, and Hicks has called for secrecy about some aspects of Replicator.

“I can’t [say which group of UAS they are part of], OK. But [they’re] not super small. So, I think, more focused on things with a bit longer range, with a bit more punch than like, you know, a very small quadcopter. So, bigger than that,” Bush told DefenseScoop.

When asked if the platforms might be loitering munitions — also known as kamikaze drones or one-way UAS because the systems are designed to destroy their targets by crashing into them with a warhead — he said: “Bigger than a quadcopter, yes.”

OSD is expected to make its selections for the initial tranche of Replicator this month.

“They’re gonna do it in iterations here. But for the first tranche, you know, I think there’s a good chance there will be an Army one in there, that hopefully with additional funding it’s something we can go fast with. So the perspective I took was, the … deputy secretary certainly seems to want things that we can get into production and scale up quickly. So, we have some mature systems that we thought fit the bill. But the other services nominated things, too. So, you know, it will be up to OSD to pick,” Bush said.

However, the public might not find out soon which Army systems or other platforms proposed by the services were selected.

“I would not necessarily say the candidates will be announced,” Hicks told reporters during a Defense Writers Group meeting last month. “We’re being very careful, as you know, about the way in which we talk about Replicator. Our goal here is an operational goal, which is in addition to the acquisition cycle, and that operational goal is to create dilemmas for China and any other competitor who might look at this approach and try to undermine it. So, we will be very clear and transparent with Congress. I’ve talked to Congress in classified sessions on this. But how we choose to speak about it, in terms of the particular programs or projects that we’ll be accelerating through Replicator is to be determined.”

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The demo took place Nov. 15 off the coast of Virginia. The trial came as the United Kingdom, United States and other nations’ militaries are pursuing new robotic platforms for strike, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and other missions.

The drone’s avionics and flight control systems stem from General Atomics’ MQ-1C Gray Eagle and the iconic MQ-9 Reaper. The technology also leverages U.S. Army investments in open architecture, autonomy and “machine learning processing” capabilities, according to the manufacturer.

The platform is 29 feet long with a 52-foot wingspan. It can fly for more than 25 hours, carry up to 16 Hellfire missiles and ISR equipment, reach an altitude of 25,000 feet, and fly at a top speed of 140 knots, per a product description.

During this week’s demo, which entailed takeoff, circuits, approaches and landing back onto the Prince of Wales, the UAS was remotely operated from a control station onboard the aircraft carrier, General Atomics said in a release.

The flight deck of the ship is 70 meters wide and 280 meters long, according to the Royal Navy.

The sea service has been operating drones from its carriers — including hand-launched systems — but they are smaller than the Mojave and aren’t capable of performing long-endurance missions, it noted in a release.

“The Mojave trial is a European first – the first time that a Remotely Piloted Air System of this size has operated to and from an aircraft carrier outside of the United States,” Rear Adm. James Parkin, director develop for the Royal Navy, said in a statement. “The success of this trial heralds a new dawn in how we conduct maritime aviation and is another exciting step in the evolution of the Royal Navy’s carrier strike group into a mixed crewed and uncrewed fighting force.”

The event had been highly anticipated after plans for it were announced earlier this year.

“With so many international partners interested in the results of these Mojave trials on board HMS Prince of Wales, I am delighted that we are taking the lead in such exciting and important work to unlock the longer-term potential of the aircraft carrier and push it deep into the 21st Century as a highly-potent striking capability,” Second Sea Lord Vice Adm. Martin Connell said in a statement.

The demo came about three months after General Atomics tested the Mojave’s ability to conduct short takeoffs and landings on a dirt strip near El Mirage, California.

“We knew our STOL capability would enable a UAS to safely take off and land on the Prince of Wales. Seeing our Mojave operate successfully in this environment opens myriad new ways our aircraft can be used to support multi-domain naval operations,” General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. CEO Linden Blue said in a statement Friday.

The company is also planning for a STOL variant of the larger and more capable MQ-9B drone that would also be able to operate from a flat-deck warship, according to the contractor.

C. Mark Brinkley, a General Atomics spokesperson, told DefenseScoop that the company’s STOL capabilities for medium-altitude, long-endurance drones offer possibilities for the U.S. military services, as well as special operations forces.

“We are actively discussing and promoting both the Mojave STOL and MQ-9B STOL concepts at air shows and trade shows around the world, including U.S. military shows, and talking about the possibilities with defense leaders at every opportunity,” he said in an email in August shortly after a demo of the Mojave in California took place.

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The service is still working through the requirements for the initial CCA systems — which they’re aiming to move into production by fiscal 2028 — and many details of the program are highly classified. However, on Wednesday a senior official provided additional insights into the latest thinking.

“We think that particularly in the initial tranche of CCAs, their range will be relatively the same as our current fighter fleet, potentially a little bit longer, which helps with the flexibility of how we would actually employ them. And we’re working through those concepts of employment right now. Future tranches and increments of CCAs will probably be refueled [mid-air by tankers]. That adds to the fueling complexity and the fuel needed in theater, but we think those are problems that are solvable going forward,” Thomas Lawhead, Air Force assistant deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and requirements, told DefenseScoop during a Mitchell Institute event.

For comparison, an F-35A joint strike fighter has a range of more than 1,350 miles with internal fuel, according to the Air Force. The service’s crewed platforms can also be gassed up via aerial refueling.

Lawhead said the first set of CCAs could also potentially have the capability to be refueled mid-air, “depending on the offeror.”

In September, the Air Force issued a request for information to examine options for CCA propulsion systems, which would affect the aircraft’s range and fuel requirements.

“This RFI focuses on capability at discrete intervals defined as near (3 years), mid (5 years), and far (7 years) terms from a program initiation assumed to be Q1FY25. For these intervals, the government questions seek information on capability vs. cost, schedule, and risk centered on off-the-shelf, modified off-the-shelf, derivative, and new engine designs. For the purpose of this response, the engine characteristics of interest include 3000-8000 lbf thrust class engines,” it stated. “For the purpose of this response, the desired aircraft characteristics of interest for evaluating the enabling capabilities of the engine’s options are as follows: increased range, reduced runway take-off distance, increased Mach capability, increased power and thermal capacity, and increased payload.”

The Air Force hasn’t formally kicked off the industry competition for the CCA program, but a sizeable number of vendors have been developing related technologies and are expected to compete.

The service envisions the drones serving as robotic wingmen for crewed fighters, such as the Next-Generation Air Dominance system and F-35, or performing missions independently of manned aircraft. It plans to field them in increments as capabilities evolve.

The platforms are seen as a relatively inexpensive way to add capacity to the fleet. On Monday, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall estimated that they will cost about one-quarter or one-third of an F-35A, which has a price tag of approximately $80 million.

In fiscal 2024-2028, the service intends to invest about $5.8 billion in research, development, test and evaluation for the main collaborative combat aircraft program, plus another $400 million or so for an experimental operations unit and an autonomy testbed that will support the initiative.

The Air Force is planning for a future force consisting of 1,000 CCAs or more.

While the drones could carry a variety of payloads and play a number of roles, air-to-air operations will be the main task of the first tranche, Lawhead noted.

“The concept has evolved in that we’re trying to narrow our focus a little bit. So there’s the autonomous collaborative platform umbrella of things that could be done in a uncrewed state. We think one of the critical needs that we have is to bring affordable mass to the battlespace, and we’ll do that with … collaborative combat aircraft that will be initially in the air-to-air role and then we will seek to expand to other mission sets,” he said.

Air Force officials will also be examining runway requirements and how that might shape the future fleet. Pentagon officials are concerned that fixed sites such as air bases and other infrastructure, could be easily targeted by adversaries armed with precision-guided munitions. Having aircraft with short take-off and landing capabilities could help mitigate that problem, although there may be tradeoffs involved.

“We’ll explore the trade space in terms of runway length required versus runway independence, and what that gets us from a payload and range capability standpoint,” Lawhead said.

Another area being explored is how CCAs can best fit into the broader force structure.

“That, frankly is exactly what the [team] and the experimental ops unit are going to try and get after is what does what does the fighter squadron of the future look like? Is it a 24 [primary aircraft] squadron with you know, 12 CCAs or 48 CCAs attached to them as part of the squadron? Are they separate? What is the kind of day-to-day battle rhythm of those CCAs? Do we forward deploy and … set the theater with CCAs already in theater, keep a small number back for testing, training, and then do a predominance of our actual crewed-uncrewed training in the virtual arena?” Lawhead said.

“All of those are issues to be worked out as we see one what kind of CCAs we actually get out of this increment one to let the [team] and the experimental ops unit folks develop those tactics, techniques and procedures for how we want to employ them, and then what’s the best way to organize, train and equip those squadrons most efficiently, most effectively,” he added.

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Griffon Aerospace and Textron Systems have each received contracts to design and build prototypes of the tactical unmanned vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft for the Army, beating out Northrop Grumman and Sierra Nevada Corps. for phase 2 of the program.

The Army’s program executive office for aviation confirmed to DefenseScoop that the awards are based on the results of a competitive evaluation and could reach $25 million, depending on how far each company progresses through the option agreements.

Phase 2 of the rapid prototyping effort began Tuesday and will have the Army evaluate weapon systems designs from both winning contractors to achieve critical design review, “which will establish the final system design and initial product baseline,” according to an Army press release. 

If chosen to move on to the third phase of the program, remaining vendors will conduct flight demonstrations and undergo modular open systems architecture third-party verification, the release said. A final phase will include delivering the system for developmental testing and soldier touch points, it noted.

The FTUAS is part of the Army’s future vertical lift modernization efforts, alongside the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) and the Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) programs. The service wants the unmanned VTOL aircraft to eventually replace its Textron-made RQ-7 Shadow drone currently used to conduct reconnaissance, surveillance, target acquisition and battle damage assessment missions.

Unlike the trailer-launched Shadow, the FTUAS drone will be able to rapidly and vertically take off and land in different environments without the need for a runway. The new system will also offer more maneuverability, the ability to be controlled by operators while on the move, a smaller logistical footprint and a lower noise signature, according to the service.

“FTUAS will provide a critical capability to the Brigade Combat Team’s ability to conduct reconnaissance and surveillance operations that collect, develop, and report actionable intelligence information about the enemy in Multi-Domain Operations,” an Army press release stated.

The Army began modernization efforts of the Shadow unmanned aircraft in 2018, eventually awarding AeroVironment an $8 million contract in 2022 to provide its Jump 20 system as a provisional replacement known as “increment 1.”

Shortly after, the service began “increment 2” and in February selected Griffon Aerospace, Textron Systems, Northrop Grumman, Sierra Nevada Corps. and AeroVironment to compete in prototyping efforts for FTUAS. Although it previously won the contract for the first increment, AeroVironment announced in May that the Army had eliminated the company from the program.

During the first phase of increment 2, vendors built prototypes that were evaluated on performance, cost, schedule, risk and modular open systems approach requirements — ultimately ending with preliminary design reviews, according to an Army press release. 

According to budget documents, the Army requested a total of $28.2 million in fiscal 2024 for research and development of the FTUAS program — which includes newly added funds for test and evaluation worth $14.6 million — as well as $46.2 million to procure four systems.

The competitive prototyping phase is scheduled to wrap up by the end of 2024, with test and evaluation ending shortly after during the first quarter of fiscal 2025, according to the Army’s latest budget request.

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The flight was conducted by the 40th Flight Test Squadron on Aug. 22 at the Eglin Gulf Test and Training Range. Building upon a previous demonstration in July that trained the algorithms controlling the vehicle’s flight, the latest test pit the Valkyrie drone against “simulated opponents using simulated mission systems and simulated weapons,” according to an AFRL release. 

“The opportunity to fly alongside this trained AI-piloted air vehicle really set into stone this technology is very real and here to stay,” Capt. Tyler Brown, autonomy flight test lead at the Air Force, said in a statement.  “I feel we are at an inflection point of an exponential curve for the application of AI. It is imperative we understand the power of AI, its strengths and weaknesses, and that it is implemented in the right way.”

The event helped the Air Force train a “tactical autonomy algorithm,” according to AFRL. This demonstrates a shift from algorithms tested at the previous flight, which focused on performing common aviation, navigation and safety-related tasks while the Valkyrie drone flew alongside an F-15E Strike Eagle jet.

The ongoing demonstrations with the Valkyrie, which is manufactured by defense-tech company Kratos, are building upon previous work done by AFRL for the Skyborg Vanguard program.

The efforts are closely linked to the Air Force’s collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) program, which aims to develop autonomous systems that will serve as robotic wingmen for the service’s current and future aircraft. The Air Force is planning for a fleet of 1,000 CCAs, hoping to begin fielding before the end of this decade.

The AI algorithms tested during the August demonstration used neural networks — a type of machine learning process that teaches computers to process data in a manner inspired by the human brain — to fly a real-world Valkyrie drone against the simulations, the AFRL release said. 

“AI testing requires combining new and traditional test and evaluation techniques. The team has a lot of lessons learned that will be used to inform future programs,” Ryan Bowers, lead test engineer for the effort, said in a statement.

The Air Force did not immediately respond to DefenseScoop’s questions about the specifics of the types weapons and opponents that were simulated during the flight test.

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The services want their respective robotic wingmen to have common aircraft architecture, communications links, autonomy architecture and ground-control segments, Brig. Gen. Dale White, PEO for fighters and advanced aircraft, told reporters Wednesday during a roundtable at AFA’s Air, Space and Cyber conference.

“We do have those four focus areas that allow us to leverage the interoperability that we think we need [for] a CCA because this is not just a single-service solution, and we know that going in,” he said.

Both the Air Force and the Navy want their CCA drones to fly alongside their sixth-generation fighter jets — the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) and the F/A-XX fighters, respectively — as well as be compatible with aircraft currently in the fleet. 

The Air Force is currently planning for 1,000 such systems, and it hopes to have the initial iteration ready for fielding before the end of this decade. At the same time, the Navy already has draft requirements documents and a draft acquisition strategy in the works, according to an August report by Aviation Week.

White noted that the Air Force’s collaboration with the Navy isn’t about each of their requirements, “but the fundamentals of what it takes to make a CCA capability successful.”

Both of the services have indicated that they want to pass off control of each other’s robotic wingmen, and there has already been cross-service work done in regards to the networking components that will be needed to optimize CCAs.

During a separate roundtable discussion with reporters on Monday, Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter highlighted the benefit of working with the Navy, especially as the sea service continues developing sophisticated networking technologies.

“I think what’s really driving us together is that in many ways, the missions we’re looking to perform are very common,” Hunter said. “If the Navy has a solution that really works — and in some cases they do — then it pays for us to adopt it and vice versa.”

Despite predicting that future missions will require the Air Force and Navy to have some common baselines for their CCAs, White emphasized that the services’ still operate in vastly different domains. Because of this, the four common components will still allow for adaptability to different environments, he said.

“Now each service has a little more flexibility to go off and address specific requirements,” White said. “In the Navy’s case, marinisation is very different. I don’t have that challenge. So that’s the kind of flexibility.”

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The so-called Low Altitude Stalking and Strike Ordnance initiative is being led by project manager soldier warrior and product manager soldier precision targeting devices under Program Executive Office Soldier.

“LASSO is a man-portable, tube-launched, lethal payload munition, unmanned aerial system. It includes electrical optical /infrared sensor, precision flight control, and the ability to fly, track and engage non-line-of-sight targets and armored vehicles with precision lethal fires,” according to an Army release issued last month.

The service is currently using an “urgent capability acquisition pathway” with the aim of quickly delivering the new capability to infantry brigade combat teams. But the Maneuver Capability Development and Integration Directorate is also working on an “enduring requirement” to support a future program of record, per the release.

The effort comes as Pentagon officials are watching what’s happening in the Ukraine-Russia war, where both sides are widely deploying unmanned aerial systems. The Biden administration has committed large quantities of kamikaze drones — also known as one-way attack UAS or loitering munitions — and other systems to Ukraine as part of security assistance packages to help Kyiv in its fight against Russian invaders.

According to a Defense Department fact sheet, the systems include Switchblade and Phoenix Ghost kamikaze drones, as well as the CyberLux K8, Altius-600, Jump-20, Puma, Scan Eagle, Penguin, and “Hornet” UAS (which is reportedly the Black Hornet nano drone).

“On the UAS side, I think in some cases, yes, what we’re sending to Ukraine are also going to fit into our future [acquisition] plans. So, we are initiating a new program — the acronym is LASSO — to provide infantry units primarily with a loitering attack munition. We are though going to take a competitive approach. So, I think early increments of that might be some of the things that have been sent to Ukraine. But there’s a lot of companies in this space, so we’re going to leverage competition as well as maybe having more than one version so we can have more production capacity,” Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Doug Bush told DefenseScoop and other reporters during a media roundtable at the Pentagon on Monday.

“So yes, there is probably some overlap between what we’re sending [to Ukraine] and what we’re going to buy ourselves,” he added.

The service is also keen on acquiring a variety of counter-drone technologies to defend against adversaries’ systems.

“On counter-UAS, I think we’ve been buying systems quite extensively, both for fixed site and mobile sets. A lot of that equipment is — we’re confident in it because of how it’s done in the Middle East. Frankly, that’s where they’ve seen the most action. Some of that … is going to Ukraine. Also, though, we’ve seen some very innovative work from the defense industry on some very low cost, low-tech approaches to counter-UAS that have gone to Ukraine that are quite promising,” Bush said.

The Army and the Pentagon’s Joint Counter-small UAS Office (JCO) are spearheading efforts to tackle the challenge posed by drones on the smaller end of the spectrum, working with industry to experiment with systems and helping develop requirements.

They are “doing a good job of seeing the landscape. And I think all that will inform, yes, a broad push to invest more in both unmanned aircraft systems, but also counter-UAS. The war [in Ukraine] is showing how much they’re here and are affecting the war every day. I think you can see it in videos every day. So  … we have to keep up,” Bush said.

Not all counter-drone tech needs to be a high-end capability, he noted.

“Ukraine has been able to combine in some cases just machine guns — high caliber, you know, large caliber machine guns — with some night vision equipment into something pretty effective when it’s cued by a sensor,” he said.

However, to take out some of the larger, more sophisticated drones in the Group 3 category, such as the type of Iranian-made kamikaze drones that the Russians are using in Ukraine, more expensive missile systems are needed, according to Bush.

The Army is also interested in electronic warfare tools to defeat enemy UAS, particularly smaller drones.

“Electronic warfare is proving highly effective in Ukraine against those on both sides. So, we should learn from that,” Bush said.

The push for new EW capabilities is part of a broader modernization effort across the Army.

“With all of our weapons, we are constantly having to update them to account for … in this case, enemy jamming capability. And that’s ongoing and we are taking lessons from what we are seeing in Ukraine. More to the point, what we’re seeing reinforces the Army’s commitment. We’ve got the programs underway,” he noted, including the TLS-BCT and TLS-EAB.

The service is trying to revamp its EW arsenal after divesting much of its equipment after the Cold War ended.

The Army is “fundamentally reinvesting in rebuilding our tactical electronic warfare capability after that largely left the force over the last 20 years. So, it adds to the urgency of those programs. They’re on track, I feel good about them. But certainly, what we’re seeing in Ukraine is adding to that urgency to get those going,” Bush said.

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The CCA drones are expected to fly alongside the Air Force’s manned aircraft, including the forthcoming Next-Generation Air Dominance fighter jet and other manned platforms. The service is planning for a fleet of 1,000 modular drones, with a goal to begin fielding them by the end of the decade.

In the meantime, Brig. Gen. Luke Cropsey, integrating program executive officer for the Air Force’s command, control, communications and battle management (C3BM) enterprise, is taking the lead on addressing the complexity that CCAs will bring to the service’s future aerial network architecture — an area he told DefenseScoop gets into “some really wicked-hard physics” and is imperative to get right.

“This is a part that’s one of those fixed costs in the systems and we can’t afford to screw it up, so we’re going through a very deliberate engineering analysis right now that’s with [Air Force], Navy — we’re pulling in everybody that has a piece to this conversation,” Cropsey said Tuesday in an interview on the sidelines of Air Force Life Cycle Industry Days in Dayton, Ohio. 

Once the analysis is finished, the Air Force hopes to release an “integrated aerial network roadmap” sometime this fall that outlines how it will execute that connectivity, Cropsey said.

As the Air Force marches forward with CCA research and development, the Navy is pursuing its own next-generation drones for future carrier air wings — which are expected to be more than 50% uncrewed — and new unmanned controls stations for the systems.

Both services have indicated the desire to be able to pass off control of each other’s combat drones, and there has been a lot of collaboration between the Air Force and the Navy’s Air Warfare Division, N98, Maj. Gen. Anthony Genatempo, PEO for the Air Force’s command, control, communication, intelligence and networks portfolio, told reporters during a media roundtable Monday. 

“I think the Navy is especially going to bring a lot to bear, but we’ll also be utilizing a lot of what [Cropsey] produces,” Genatempo said. While Cropsey is leading the effort in articulating the entire end-to-end network architecture for CCAs, Genatempo’s program office includes the Air Force’s aerial networks division.

Genetempo pointed to the Navy’s Tactical Targeting Network Technology (TTNT) and Network Tactical Common Data Link (NTCDL) efforts as some key modernization efforts that could be leveraged. However, more universal tactical data links like Link-16 shouldn’t be ignored, he said. 

“That is all going to flow to how we can command and control and send information through the network to the forward edge that CCAs are most likely going to be,” Genetempo said.

Some of the conversations within the Air Force have been focused on nailing down the right hardware — especially networking nodes — for both the CCAs and the manned aircraft they’ll fly with, as well as how the signals are going to be received and transmitted, he noted. 

“Understanding what those requirements are, and then being able to say, ‘This is the hardware, this is the software that’s going to need to be implemented’ — that will then basically give me the marching orders of what I’m going to go out to provide,” Genetempo said.

At the same time, the Air Force is also focusing on keeping CCAs platform-agnostic so that any type of manned aircraft can leverage the drones, according Brig. Gen. Dale White, program executive officer for fighters and advanced aircraft, which is overseeing the overall CCA acquisition program. 

Collaborative combat aircrft are part of the Air Force’s larger NGAD family-of-systems. But because autonomous technology is already being developed in both the Pentagon’s research-and-development cadres and in the commercial sector, the service wants to field the CCA drones with aircraft already in its fleet before the sixth-generation manned fighter is ready to field.

White told DefenseScoop during a media roundtable Tuesday that officials have tried to simplify the platform integration challenge in order to field the CCA drones faster and broaden how many manned platforms can use them. That doesn’t just mean the Air Force’s aircraft, but the other service’s aircraft as well, he added.

“We need to have some interoperable nature of what these capabilities are, because we’re not the only service pursuing this capability,” White said.

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