New Engine Needed for Collaborative Combat Aircraft

New Engine Needed for Collaborative Combat Aircraft

The future of military aviation will include Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), highly autonomous, uncrewed vehicles that will fly alongside and collaborate with crewed combat aircraft, such as Gen 5 and Gen 6 fighters.

“A small turbine engine will power this new breed of aircraft," said John Turco, Senior Director of Military Turbofan Engines at Honeywell.

“A CCA needs an engine that is compact, reliable, fuel-efficient and – above all else – affordable to produce at scale, because the future use of these vehicles is intended to be in much larger quantities than the front-line aircraft that they will support."

New HON1600 Engine Meets USAF Requirements

 Honeywell’s new HON1600 engine checks all the boxes for an effective CCA propulsion system. The engine also successfully demonstrated all test objectives in a core engine run performed in September 2025.

“The Air Force needs a CCA engine with a great thrust-to-weight ratio and the fuel efficiency to support diverse, long-range missions in contested environments,” Turco said.

“Our unique HON1600 design leverages Honeywell’s extensive experience in small turbine engines and our proven ability to manufacture engines at scale.”

The new engine incorporates proven Honeywell technologies in combination with the latest advents in manufacturing. Honeywell is a world leader in small gas turbine engines with approximately 150,000 turbine propulsion engines and auxiliary power units (APUs) produced over the past 50 years.

“Large-scale production of small turbine engines is a strong suit for Honeywell," said T. J. Pope, Engine Strategy and Growth Leader at Honeywell. “We manufacture more than 2,000 turbines in this class each year and can easily accommodate production to meet CCA engine demand by the Air Force and allied military forces.”

HON1600 Engine Design Builds on Proven Legacy

Honeywell based the HON1600 engine's design on a highly successful proven architecture, but the engine incorporates all-new components, modern aerodynamics, the latest material systems and contemporary manufacturing methodologies, including additive manufacturing. Honeywell pioneered turbine engines in this class a half-century ago and remains an industry leader, both in engine technology and production volume. Honeywell APUs fly on virtually every commercial aircraft in service today, along with numerous military fixed-wing and rotary-wing platforms.

The new HON1600 is the same size class as Honeywell’s most successful APU, Pope noted. “Honeywell engineers were able to leverage a familiar and reliable architecture to reduce costs, improve producibility and enable high-volume production,” Turco said. “We were able to simplify the design with all-new components and create a new engine based on a proven architecture. It’s the best of all worlds.” Honeywell’s design innovations create the ideal CCA engine, which is economical, producible, and capable of meeting Air Force requirements for power, range and mission adaptability.

“The new engine enables a thoughtful balance between high-speed performance and fuel efficiency, giving the HON1600 the power and range to accomplish a broader range of missions,” Turco said.

Air Force Pursues Ambitious CCA Strategy

The Air Force plans to field CCA platforms to meet current and future requirements for an expendable aircraft providing a distributed, harder-to-target force that is more affordable, resilient and adaptable to future conflicts against peer adversaries.

CCAs will carry weapons, engage in air-to-air combat and perform intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. They will serve as interoperable "trusted wingmen" to a crewed aircraft, act as individual autonomous platforms, and can join a swarm of collaborative drones without direct human supervision. Under Increment 1 of the program, the Air Force selected General Atomics and Anduril Industries to develop CCA prototypes. Ground testing is in progress and flight testing of the prototypes will begin soon.

The Air Force is now actively pursuing future CCA propulsion options and recently issued a request for proposal (RFP) for Increment 2 propulsion which will include a prototype.“The prototype phase will let Honeywell share its vision for the new HON1600 engine,” Turco said.