Whatever the next chapter of U.S. air power will look like, there will be drones — and lots of them — accompanying manned fighters into battle.
But as Air Force leaders translated their vision into an acquisition strategy, a novel meeting of the minds — at least by Defense Department standards — may have saved the service from a major miscalculation: A new cohort of so-called collaborative combat aircraft, as originally envisioned, wouldn’t be able to fly far enough to be effective in combat, which would have been a serious problem in the Pacific theater.
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Key to catching the range shortcoming, he said in a July interview, was the unique approach the Air Force took to buying the autonomous drone wingmen known as CCAs. The service brought operators from Air Combat Command into the room alongside acquisition experts, who would normally have taken the lead on a major procurement like this.
“We had … a lot of discussion about range to understand operationally, what was meaningful and what was going to be effective,” said Hunter, the service’s assistant secretary for acquisition, technology and logistics.
With ACC operators’ insights, he said, the Air Force was able to push contractors to find the “sweet spot” of enough range, at a reasonable price and on the right timeline.
Bugs Marlowe