USAF awards CCA contracts to GA-ASI and Anduril

The USAF has awarded contracts for its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program, including for Increment 1 air vehicles from GA-ASI and Anduril, as well as mission autonomy software, in a push to rapidly field advanced combat capabilities, it says. The two companies were selected in April 2024 to build competing designs in Increment 1 of the USAF’s CCA program.

These efforts validate acquisition transformation principles to secure a critical operational advantage: decoupling hardware from software. By treating mission autonomy as “software sold separately,” the USAF is ensuring that the warfighter receives state-of-the-art physical platforms alongside agile, easily updatable software, effectively breaking traditional procurement moulds, the service says.

“Collaborative Combat Aircraft change how we project power and generate mass in highly contested environments,” said GEN Ken Wilsbach, Air Force Chief of Staff. “Delivering this capability to our warfighters faster ensures our forces maintain the tactical edge required to deter and, if necessary, defeat any adversary.”

The USAF has awarded CCA Increment 1 engineering and manufacturing development and production contracts to General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc (GA-ASI), for its now re-named FQ-42 Dark Merlin, and to Anduril Industries for its FQ-44 Fury which is already in production.

The company designed, developed and flight-tested the FQ-42A on an accelerated schedule, unlike any fighter in recent history, says GA-ASI: the aircraft went from contract award to first flight in just 15 months. Its modular design and software architecture enables rapid integration of mission systems and mission autonomy software, demonstrated through live flight tests on multiple airframes, providing the foundation for human-machine teaming in complex combat scenarios.

Flight autonomy, managing safety-critical functions like take-off, keeping the wings level, flying waypoints, landing, and more, is critical, but combat operations demand more, says Anduril. Affordable mass also demands mission autonomy: the software that enables robots to work together collaboratively to execute complex missions in an even more complex battlespace.

The USAF selected Anduril’s Lattice for Mission Autonomy software as one of six software solutions, for the next phase of the CCA program. Under the contract, Anduril says it will work to move mission autonomy from concept to production-ready capability.

Awarded four months ahead of schedule, the USAF says these contracts signify that the FQ-42 and FQ-44 meet rigorous mission requirements and are ready for full-scale manufacturing. The decision follows a competitive source-selection process, identifying the systems as the most capable and cost-effective solutions to maintain air superiority in an increasingly complex and contested global threat environment, the service adds.

“By moving fast from competitive selection into full-scale manufacturing, we position ourselves to field highly credible and combat-ready semi-autonomous systems to stay ahead of the pacing challenge,” said Troy Meink, Secretary of the Air Force. “These contracts reaffirm our confidence in the strategic path forward for the program to procure over 150 combat-capable CCA by the end of the decade.”

Equally critical to the CCA ecosystem is the mission autonomy software. The USAF has awarded six-year mission autonomy production contracts to a pool of six vendors:

• Anduril
• General Atomics
• Lockheed Martin
• Northrop Grumman
• RTX Collins Aerospace
• Shield AI

The contractual framework enables continuous competition and rapid software development, the USAF says.

Importantly, the USAF has also competitively awarded production options to Anduril, RTX Collins Aerospace, and Shield AI, to accelerate the delivery of critical mission autonomy software. This targeted award, based on the vendors’ ability to meet aggressive schedule and affordability requirements, will fund the first of two six-month competitive phases designed to speed the fielding of operational software to the warfighter.

The competitive awards are designed to deliver capability faster: following the initial six-month period, the Air Force will evaluate the vendors’ progress and execute a second competitive award period. This performance-based competition will culminate in the selection of a primary mission autonomy provider for CCA Increment 1, with award planned for selection by summer 2027.

“Mission autonomy is the cornerstone of the CCA concept, and leveraging a competitive, multi-vendor environment ensures we capture the latest technology,” Meink said. “This approach guarantees our Airmen are equipped with state-of-the-art capabilities today but keeps the door open for the breakthroughs necessary to maintain air superiority.”

Furthermore, this software contract leverages a first-of-its-kind award fee exposure strategy, which enables operator feedback and combat performance to determine what the Air Force pays for mission autonomy. The Air Force will only pay the entire licensing fee if a vendor provides a combat capability aligned with warfighter needs and feedback. The licensing approach also allows the Air Force to award software licenses to any of the six vendors within the pool at any point over the next six years. This approach ensures the Air Force can procure the best-performing and most affordable solutions as technology evolves.

A key enabler of this strategy is the government-owned Autonomy Government Reference Architecture (A-GRA). Continuous A-GRA compliance is required for all vendors and serves as the foundational open systems architecture that decouples software from hardware. This ensures that mission autonomy software from any vendor in the pool can be easily integrated, quickly updated, and ported across different physical aircraft platforms, giving the warfighter unparalleled operational flexibility to adapt to evolving threats.

“Open systems architecture is critical in modern warfare,” Wilsbach said. “It allows us to capitalize on the most advanced autonomy solutions to ensure we incorporate the best technology in our weapon systems.”

The Air Force intends to field approximately 1,000 combat-capable CCA, employing an acquisition strategy built on continuous competition to drive down cost over time while scaling fighter capacity.

According to the online journal Breaking Defense, a USAF acquisition official said a longstanding target is for a CCA to be roughly one-third the cost of an F-35 which would put the cost of the CCA effort at below US$30 million ($43 million) apiece. It’s not known how much the Australian-developed CCA, Boeing’s MQ-28A Ghost Bat Block III, will cost. The USAF is requesting roughly US$1.4 billion ($2 billion) to continue the CCA development program in fiscal 2027, alongside nearly US$1 billion ($1.4 billion) for procurement, according to Breaking Defense.