POWERING THE NEXT ERA OF AIR COMBAT

Allvin: In the last part of the 20th century, our approach was to bring all we needed as close to the fight as we could before the fight really started. What that required was to get all the forces and capabilities within the range that was required to sustain tempo without having to generate combat power from within the contested environment.

But here's the thing, what adversaries are doing is pushing us out further, creating a range problem, creating a tempo problem. We can still find our way deep into contested environments with highly capable but expensive platforms. 

So how can you sustain the tempo when you're pushed out to a different range? We have to think differently about generating combat power from within the contested environment.  This is where collaborative combat aircraft operations will make a difference instantly, because they'll provide more affordable mass. Are they going to be of the exact exquisite capability of a fifth-gen and sixth-gen fighter aircraft? They're not designed to be. They're not expendable, like drones, but they are survivable enough to add required firepower to sustain tempo.  They are attritable to where you can factor that into the equation and get more effectiveness for the cost. Plus, you don't carry the additional risk of more humans in harm’s way. So, that's the immediate operational impact.

The longer-term impact, I think, is we've got to get our head into autonomy and human machine teaming. And if we don't do that now, we're going to be following.

Allvin: The number one thing is, how do they buy down the risk for us to be able to solve that challenging problem of being able to support the joint force in an area where the contested geography is increasing. That's thing number one—getting the concept of operations right.

Thing number two is, as we are developing CCA, you need focus on building to adapt.  In the past, we’ve championed a “built to last” mentality, but we need to bake in the ability to rapidly ingest updates and modifications as the dizzying pace of technology offers new opportunities.

So, this Increment One that we put out there has certain capabilities, and the Air Force put certain restrictions, and key performance parameters that need to be adhered to.

We need to make sure that those requirements stay firm, and we keep the open architecture, because in five, to seven, to nine years, there's a possibility where those CCA Increment One platforms that we delivered aren’t meeting the mission.  So, we either need to be able to upgrade them or take them out of the inventory and we make target drones out of them or something.  But we’ll be okay with doing that because we haven't sunk cost into a depot facility and sustainment tail, and we can afford to jump to Increment Two, which is what we're already starting to work on conceptually now. 

So, Increment One to be effective, needs to at least be able to do some of the mission to create affordable mass to support the fifth-generation combat capabilities, but they also need to have the open architecture to be able to adapt into the next Increment Two. And as we start getting more confident with human machine teaming, this needs to be a baseline on which we can build.

Allvin: Yeah, I think it's time and practice. And I think you don't over promise. Right now, CCA Increment One is really not overpromising.  The program is doing what we expected to do, but it will be getting reps and sets. I know that some of the some in industry are working with our pilots and putting them in a simulation environment just to understand how an actual pilot will respond and what that human-machine relationship looks like. Because it's not even going to be all autonomous, it will be sort of mission management, if you will. There will be someone in a crewed fighter that will have 2,4,6,8,10 . . .CCA under their control to manage a given mission. The Air Force is trying to figure out what the right number is, but as we gain reps and sets and understand what it can and can't do, that's where we build the confidence.