In 2023, the Air Force unveiled plans to acquire a fleet of autonomous unmanned collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) that would fly under the custody of manned aircraft pilots as loyal wingmen and perform forward sensing, air-to-air attack, and electronic warfare. Moving the CCA from promise to reality will require difficult work stretching far into the future. To succeed, the Air Force must start with an honest accounting of what is required and where things stand.
In Ready Player None?, CSBA Senior Fellow and Director of Defense Budget Studies Travis Sharp uses a new framework—the end-to-end process cycle—to assess the CCA program’s progress to date. For evidence, the assessment draws on interviews, a survey, and a historical case study. With its novel framework and wide-ranging evidence, the report scrutinizes the CCA program in ways that no study has before.
Sharp finds that the CCA program has made significant progress on defining the problem and generating resources, but it has fared less well on the development, deployment, and employment steps essential to fielding CCAs successfully. This finding illustrates two larger themes of the assessment. First, harnessing new technology is necessary, but not sufficient, for the CCA program to succeed. The Air Force must devote attention to each step of getting the CCA from the drawing board to the adversary’s doorstep. Second, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to CCA employment and design. Making tradeoffs today, even if they prove to be imperfect later, is better than deferring decisions in search of optimal solutions that may never come.
This report includes a companion volume, No Dominant Strategy for Air Dominance, which analyzes CCA employment, basing, and sortie generation during a Chinese attempt to invade Taiwan in the early to mid-2030s.