Think tank raises concerns about CCA timeline and costs | News

The Center for Strategic and International Studies believes the U.S. Air Force is on track to field the Cooperative Combat Aircraft (CCA), but raises concerns about the pace of the program and potentially higher-than-anticipated costs per aircraft.

In a research report, CSIS outlines the broad need for CCAs in the face of renewed great-power competition, particularly with China. The goal is to build large numbers of low-cost, “exhaustible” CCAs that use artificial intelligence to work with manned aircraft.

Report authors Gregory Allen and Isaac Goldston list several positive features of the USAF’s efforts to develop the CCA. These features, they write, are an improvement over typical USAF fighter purchases, which tend to see huge cost increases between fighter generations.

The good news includes the existence of significant funding for CCA, broadly worded requirements that help drive innovation, the separation of CCA software and hardware, and the recent selection of an unusual supplier, Anduril, which should encourage other entrepreneurs – the other winner of the U.S. Air Force CCA Increment 1 program was a traditional supplier, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems.

Separating hardware and software purchases means the USAF won’t have to deal with an aircraft “that might have attractive hardware and unattractive software, or vice versa.”

Still, CSIS raises some concerns. First, the USAF’s comments suggest that CCAs won’t be available in large numbers until the late 2020s, and perhaps longer, given that Pentagon programs are prone to delays.

This is worrying because Chinese leader Xi Jinping has ordered the People’s Liberation Army to prepare for an invasion of Taiwan – a key flashpoint in the military conflict between Beijing and Washington – by 2027.

CSIS is also detecting signs that the price of CCA could be much higher than originally anticipated. Earlier versions of the program suggested a CCA with a unit cost of $3 million, but CSIS notes that Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall estimated the unit cost at $25 million to $30 million.

CSIS sees a danger that the USAF’s “institutional culture” will eventually adopt a traditional “high-cost, high-end” approach to aircraft procurement.

“Removing the pilot from the aircraft design and the necessary equipment associated with it has (in principle) the potential to reduce the cost of the aircraft, but it does not guarantee that the aircraft will be cheap,” CSIS notes.

The report indicates that the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk is an unmanned aircraft with a unit cost of $130 million or more, largely due to its “superior sensor capabilities” and low production volume.

“The Air Force already has expensive, capable fighter aircraft like the (Lockheed Martin) F-35,” CSIS said.

“The goal of CCA is to be cheap, fast, and plentiful. That doesn’t mean the Air Force should tolerate poor performance from its industrial partners, but simply that cost and schedule must always be the focus.”