The Air Force’s aircraft fleet is replete with fighters, bombers, tankers and other aircraft which might be still flying after many years and even generations.
However the service’s planned collaborative combat aircraft — drones that may fly alongside crewed fighters — probably won’t last even a single generation before they should be replaced or heavily overhauled, Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin said Thursday.
Allvin, speaking on the Air and Space Forces Association in Arlington, Virginia, said planning from the beginning to repeatedly replace CCAs is the most effective solution to keep their missions easy and costs down, so the service can field them in significant numbers.
“I don’t desire a set of collaborative combat aircraft that’s going to last for 25 to 30 years,” Allvin said. “If it’s going to last 25 or 30 years, then it’s gotta do every little thing but make you toast within the morning.”
Making CCAs into complex, multi-mission aircraft will inevitably drive up the associated fee, Allvin said, meaning the Air Force could only buy a limited variety of them. ‘
Air Force officials have repeatedly talked concerning the need for CCAs to enhance its crewed fighters and supply what they call “inexpensive mass.” A smaller fleet of dearer drone wingmen, as Allvin is attempting to avoid, would make achieving that inexpensive mass goal harder to succeed in.
Allvin as a substitute envisions technology advancing quickly enough that after a decade, a category of CCAs may be outdated and prepared to get replaced – or heavily updated with recent technologies.
“That CCA won’t be as relevant — however it may be adaptable, and that’s why we’re constructing within the modularity,” Allvin said.
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has told the service to plan for a CCA fleet of about 1,000 drones to fly alongside the F-35A Joint Strike Fighter and the service’s planned Next Generation Air Dominance fighter. The missions CCAs would perform will likely vary and include strike operations, gathering intelligence and reconnaissance, conducting electronic warfare, and serving as decoys.
Kendall also made affordability a requirement for the CCA program, and has said each drone must cost a fraction of an F-35′s price tag.
In April, the Air Force announced it had chosen Anduril and General Atomics to further develop designs for his or her CCA concepts, after which construct production-representative test aircraft.
At Thursday’s event, Allvin noted the financial stresses the Air Force is facing, including inflation and limited budgets.
“All of those pressures are coming to bear against us, and we do should ask the basic query: What does an efficient Air Force appear to be in the long run and the way much of that depends on external resources?” Allvin said.
But when asked if the service will have the ability to provide NGAD because it has planned, Allvin didn’t explicitly commit to the sixth-generation fighter.
“We’re going to should make those selections, make those decisions across the landscape,” Allvin said. “That’s going to probably play out in the subsequent couple of years.”
Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.