USAF CCA candidates pass Critical Design Review

US online publication Breaking Defense reports that the two companies selected by the US Air Force to develop Collaborative Combat Aircraft designs have completed what amounts to Critical Design Reviews of their competing designs.

This milestone enables California-based Anduril Industries and General Atomics to fly their ‘loyal wingman’ Uncrewed Air Systems (UAS)), Fury and Gambit, respectively, next year.

“We’ve just finished up, basically, critical design review for both Anduril and General Atomics. Both industry teammates are on the path to get to first flight in a timeline that allows us to get operational capability by the end of the decade,” Air Force Col. Timothy Helfrich, senior materiel leader for the advanced aircraft division of Air Force Materiel Command, said during an event hosted by the Mitchell Institute in remarks cited by Breaking Defense.

“We are on track, if not ahead, in some areas,” he added.

The CCA program is pioneering a new acquisition process that doesn’t follow traditional acquisition milestones.

Breaking Defense says the CCA program aims to initially field roughly 1,000 of the UAS ‘loyal wingmen’ that are expected to fly and fight alongside USAF combat aircraft. The service expects UASs to be operational by the end of the decade.

Earlier this year the two companies beat aerospace giants Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman for the CCA contract that will fund drone prototypes from the two companies. After the prototyping phase, the USAF could award production contracts to one or both of the vendors. There will be other opportunities to join the CCA program ahead as well, reports Breaking Defense, as the service plans to launch a second tranche of the CCA program in fiscal year 2025.

Boeing Defence Australia developed a CCA contender, the MQ-28A Ghost Bat, which was designed in Australia in collaboration with the RAAF and Defence Science & Technology Group and launched at the Avalon Air Show in 2019. Designed to carry a variety of kinetic and Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) payloads, the Ghost Bat wasn’t awarded a CCA contract by the USAF and has instead been focussed by the RAAF on the ISR mission for the time being.

Eight Ghost Bat prototypes have been built so far and the RAAF has ordered a further three in Block 2 configuration for delivery at the end of this year or early in 2025.