The U.S. Air Force’s plan to create a fleet of drone wingmen to fly alongside piloted fighter jets will accelerate in 2024, as the service ramps up its experimentation with autonomous flight. These drones, which the Air Force calls collaborative combat aircraft, are intended to fly alongside F-35s and the future Next Generation Air Dominance platform.
The Air Force has been using a ballpark figure of 1,000 CCAs for planning, but Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall in November said the fleet will likely end up being larger than that. But before fielding the drones, the Air Force needs to do more research on how autonomous flight will work, and how it can be folded into the day-to-day operations of units.
The service’s proposed 2024 budget calls for almost $50 million to test autonomous software on F-16 fighters under a program called Project VENOM. Another $69 million would be used to launch an experimental operations unit team, which would start developing tactics and procedures to incorporate CCAs into a squadron.
The Air Force wants to collect in-flight data from the Project Venom tests about how pilots and machines work together, and use that information to create more refined autonomous software. The experimental operations unit would also help the Air Force figure out how CCAs might help with missions, and how squadrons would train to use them. Defense firms have already pitched several different concepts for CCAs, and the acquisition will take several years.
