For the first time, the U.S. Air Force is asking Congress to fund the purchase of Collaborative Combat Aircraft, marking the beginning of the “loyal wingman” era.
The service’s fiscal 2027 budget request includes $996.5 million in procurement funding to begin production of Increment 1 Collaborative Combat Aircraft, plus $150 million in advance procurement for FY28.
Combined with roughly $1.37 billion in continued research and development, up from $827 million in FY26, the total program request reaches roughly $2.37 billion, according to Pentagon comptroller documents released April 3.
The CCA procurement line stands out as the single largest new addition to the Air Force’s $30.64 billion aircraft procurement account, the clearest sign yet that the program is moving from the test range into the operational fleet.
Unlike traditional remotely piloted drones such as the MQ-9 Reaper, Collaborative Combat Aircraft are jet-powered, semi-autonomous systems designed to operate alongside crewed fighters such as the F-35, F-22 and future F-47. The pilot in the manned jet serves as mission commander, while the CCAs, the “loyal wingmen,” use onboard autonomy for navigation, maneuvering, sensor fusion and weapons employment.
Increment 1 CCA will focus primarily on air-to-air and strike missions, with electronic warfare and ISR variants planned for later increments. The Air Force has previously signaled interest in acquiring 100–150 aircraft in Increment 1 as part of a longer-term goal of hundreds to low thousands across multiple increments.
The CCA program was developed to address a core operational problem. Crewed fighters alone cannot generate sufficient combat mass against a peer adversary like China. CCAs are designed to be affordable enough to lose, capable enough to fight and numerous enough to matter, accepting risks that would otherwise fall to crewed fighters.
The Air Force’s notional plan calls for each manned fighter to command two CCAs, though testing and simulation suggest one pilot can effectively manage three to five, potentially more.
The FY27 request backs that vision with real procurement dollars for the first time. It commits the service, industry and Congress to treating CCA as a permanent part of the future fleet rather than an experiment.
That shift, however, forces several key decisions the Air Force has not yet made: where the aircraft will be based; who will maintain them; how pilots and maintainers will be trained; and how they will integrate into existing fighter squadrons.
Despite those challenges, the increased R&D funding signals that Increment 1 is only the beginning. Nine vendors are already under contract for Increment 2 prototypes, and service officials have indicated wargaming favors larger numbers of lower-cost CCAs for a Pacific fight.
A final production decision for Increment 1 is expected this summer. General Atomics’s YFQ-42A and Anduril’s YFQ-44A are the lead competitors, with Northrop Grumman’s YFQ-48A in testing for later phases. Budget documents do not specify exact CCA quantities for the FY27 lot, but analysts estimate roughly 30 airframes, depending on final unit costs.
Col. Timothy Helfrich, the program’s portfolio acquisition executive, said during a Defense One panel on March 25 the program is currently tracking below the original $30 million per-unit target.
While beating cost targets is a welcome development, production transitions are seldom without hiccups. Autonomy software, supply chain maturity and integration with manned platforms remain works in progress. Whether to aggressively scale Increment 1 or accelerate Increment 2 could prove a challenging balancing act, and how CCAs will be fielded across active-duty, Guard and Reserve units remains unclear.
Those operational questions will ultimately be shaped in large part by Congress, where approval itself remains another hurdle.
While the CCA procurement request sits squarely in the base budget, offering a cleaner path than items pushed through reconciliation, lawmakers have already requested detailed briefings on mission sets, human-machine interfaces, production scaling and integration plans. Any push for minimum quantity language or additional oversight is likely to appear in the FY27 markup.
While the program waits on Congress, an outside vote of confidence has already arrived. On April 23, the Netherlands became the first ally to commit funding for two Increment 1 CCAs. Under the partnership, the aircraft will remain U.S. property and operate with the Air Force’s Experimental Operations Unit at Nellis AFB, with Dutch personnel embedded to help develop concepts of operations.
“The future fight will be fought with allies and partners,” Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said in an April 23 statement. “By aligning our approaches early, we ensure interoperability and shared advantage in the era of human-machine teaming.”
Source:
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