Five businesses are vying for contracts to provide the U.S. Air Force ( USAF ) with AI-guided drones, changing the face of contemporary warfare. Part of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA ), USAF plans to introduce at least 1, 000 drones (CCAs ) to fly in collaboration with pilots.
Air and Space Forces Magazine reported on the plans in his keynote speech” One Team, One Fight” at the 2023 Air Force Association ( AFA ) Warfare Symposium. He stated that “CCAs will significantly improve the performance of our crude aircraft and significantly reduce the risk to our pilots.”
Drones equipped with weapons capabilities are intended to both enhance and aid guarded aircraft missions, providing support, scouting, and defense support. Numerous big corporations have expressed interest in the project. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Atomics, Northrop Grumman, and Anduril Industries have all placed requests to build the CCAs.
Reaper and Predator robots were originally provided by General Atomics for Middle Eastern military exercises.
Anduril Industries is a stranger to the field, founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey. Before leaving the company, Lucas founded Anduril with SpaceX and Palantir Technologies, Inc. buyers.
Further: US military providing classified information on operations.
The People’s Republic of China ( PRC ) has been shown that the addition of drones is a low-cost strategy that would quickly increase the USAF’s ability to meet its capabilities. In her notes at the National Defense Industrial Association’s Emerging Technologies for Defense Conference next year, Kathleen Hicks, assistant secretary of defense, dubbed the action” Replicator.”
” Replicator is meant to help us overcome the PRC’s biggest benefits, which is mass”, she said. ” More boats. More weapons. More citizens”.
” To keep ahead, we’re going to make a new state of the art — just as America has before — embracing attritable, intelligent systems in all regions — which are less costly, put fewer people in the line of fire and can be changed, updated or improved with significantly shorter direct times”, Hicks continued.
According to Defense News, arrangements for the fiscal year 2025 are expected to be finalized, with two or three of the competing corporations receiving funding to build and provide the drones.
In their bid to win the deal, General Atomics and Anduril Industries now showed off their existing AI robots, while Lockheed Martin included AI into its current education aircraft. Boeing demonstrated Ghost Bat, a drone that can fly just under the speed of sound while traveling over 2, 000 nautical miles.
The drone project, intended to accompany the F- 35 and new B- 21 bomber, has an anticipated a completion date of five years.
