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The U.S. Air Force faces a compelling and capable adversary in China’s air force. The U.S. Air Force cannot overcome this adversary’s range and numbers solely by buying more crewed combat aircraft. Having recognized this, the Air Force has taken to experimenting with “affordable mass” in the form of autonomous combat aircraft.
The largest component of the effort to achieve affordable mass is the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, with the first increment of collaborative combat aircraft entering flight testing this year. The first increment of candidates for the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program are highly unlikely to make any difference in the Air Force’s ability to effectively project power and gain air superiority before the end of the decade. They are too technologically immature, will be too expensive to be bought in the numbers the Air Force needs, and will require a significant amount of effort to be integrated into the combat Air Force.
As such, the Air Force ought to look to other capabilities.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s LongShot program, which is developing air-launched vehicles that can carry and launch air-to-air missiles, will provide a credible and lethal solution to the problems of range and numbers. The Air Force should adopt a variant of LongShot as the second increment of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program and make every effort to accelerate the adoption of the capability into the combat Air Force.
Affordable Mass
Compared to the U.S. Air Force, China can field larger numbers of combat aircraft that will carry missiles that have significantly longer ranges than the ones carried by Air Force fighters. If tasked to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion this decade, which the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy considers a top priority the U.S. Air Force will face a numerically superior adversary taking shots before its pilots can shoot back.
The Air Force has proposed fielding “affordable mass” in the form of large numbers of autonomous combat aircraft to address current shortcomings in three ways. First, aircraft providing the “mass” will fly ahead of crewed platforms and fire air-to-air missiles, mitigating the missile-range problem posed by China. Second, fielding more combat aircraft forces adversaries to contend with more targets, complicating their decision-making and targeting. Third, it will allow the Air Force to absorb the kinds of losses that it cannot currently sustain.
Championed by former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has listed collaborative combat aircraft among his 17 priorities sheltered from budget cuts and is committed to fully funding the program. Last year, the Air Force selected two vendors to build prototype aircraft for the first increment of the program. Unlike previous uncrewed combat aircraft, collaborative combat aircraft will maneuver more like fighters and carry air-to-air missiles. This increases survivability, makes them harder to distinguish from crewed fighters, and complicates an adversary’s targeting. Their carriage of missiles forces adversaries to expend valuable missiles against them and provides a platform that effectively increases the standoff range of crewed fighters. The program has correctly identified key objectives: increase the number of available combat aircraft and the standoff range of crewed fighters at first-shot opportunity.
It is exceedingly improbable that the first increment of collaborative combat aircraft will provide the capability and capacity needed to fight an air war with China this decade. The Air Force is pursuing relatively complex aircraft with the first increment of the program: First-increment aircraft are the first unmanned U.S. military aircraft to ever receive a fighter designation. The decision to seek complexity will drive higher costs as well as long development, testing, and adoption timelines.
The technical challenge of tactical autonomy faces three inescapable barriers: a perception problem, a training data problem, and fragility to adversarial attacks. This is not to say that the companies in the first increment of the program are incompetent, incapable, or lacking in talent and technological prowess. They are working earnestly to accomplish an extremely ambitious task: field uncrewed, autonomous combat aircraft to be commanded by a human operator, controlled by sophisticated software, and reliably perform missions that the best fighter pilots in the world spend years training to execute with proficiency. Flight test campaigns may eventually mitigate or retire these barriers. However, flight tests for these aircraft have just begun.
While fighter aircraft do require critical life support functions, including ejection seats and environmental control systems, most of the cost of building a fighter aircraft does not come from accommodating a pilot in a cockpit. An uncrewed fighter aircraft will still need to fly at a high rate of speed for relatively long distances, carry weapons, host sensors that can detect friendly and enemy aircraft, sustain dynamic maneuvers that stress the airframe, contain countermeasures needed to defeat enemy sensors and weapons, have some degree of radar-absorbing materials, and house exquisite communications systems and computing power needed to function without pilots. These features will still cost a lot of money. Cost estimates for first-increment aircraft have varied from just over $˚20 million to $30 million or more. Last year, then-Secretary Frank Kendall said that the second increment of collaborative combat aircraft could cost 20 to 30 percent more than the first, making them about as expensive as Block 50 F-16s.
Once first-increment aircraft achieve key programmatic milestones, the Air Force will face a series of new challenges in developing the tactics, organization, training, and logistics required to operate these aircraft. First, it will have to figure out how to tactically employ the aircraft. It will also have to discover how frequently the aircraft need to be flown for pilots, maintainers, and others to gain and maintain proficiency in flying with and maintaining them. Additionally, it will need to develop training curricula to teach others how to employ, operate, and maintain the aircraft. Finally, it must determine supporting functions needed for these aircraft to integrate into the combat Air Force, including the frequency of required, programmed depot maintenance and software updates for algorithms piloting the aircraft. If the program achieves the nearly unprecedented feat of costing less than expected and are delivered on schedule, 100 operational first-increment aircraft by 2029 will not provide the numbers needed for a conflict with China.
Maj. Gen. Joe Kunkel — the Air Force’s director of force design, integration, and wargaming — has called for fielding a lower-end, less expensive capability for the second increment of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program. In his analysis, the Air Force needs an aircraft that can solve the range problem by flying ahead of a crewed fighter aircraft to fire missiles but cost little enough to provide the numbers needed to complicate an adversary’s targeting calculus while accepting losses.
To field this capability before the end of the decade, the Air Force should look for an asymmetric improvement to currently fielded capabilities that allows airmen to utilize existing tactics, organizations, training, and logistics.
Fortunately, the same organization that pioneered stealth technology, the internet, and global-positioning satellites is building such an aircraft.
LongShot
The LongShot platform, built by General Atomics, is an air-launched vehicle that can carry and launch air-to-air missiles. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is developing the platform and designing it to launch from a variety of aircraft. The program is currently undergoing testing and is uniquely positioned to deliver the affordable mass that the Air Force needs this decade for four reasons.
First, the LongShot platform is a simpler and more narrow application of autonomy than the first increment of collaborative combat aircraft. First-increment aircraft must take off and recover semi-independently from and to remote airfields in the Pacific, rejoin with airborne fighters, and cooperate with them during the fight in a tactically effective way without imposing excessive cognitive load on the pilots that command them. They also require the development of complicated schemas for transfer of custody. While thrilling to imagine, this level of autonomy simply does not exist today. Like first-increment aircraft, LongShot will operate autonomously after launch, executing various behaviors selected by the crewed aircraft operator. Unlike a first-increment aircraft, LongShot will be air-launched at a particular, tactical moment and operate continuously forward of its crewed counterparts, executing a one-way mission. Thus, LongShot requires only rules-based, expert-system autonomy of the kind that has been convincingly demonstrated on the X-47.
Second, LongShot is a much less expensive platform than first-increment aircraft of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program. Depending on the final cost of a production first-increment aircraft, the Air Force will be able to field five to ten times as many LongShot platforms, which would enable the combat Air Force to field much higher numbers of combat aircraft in the event of a conflict. Crucially, because LongShot also carries air-to-air missiles, this cost reduction delivers a greater targeting dilemma to the adversary, as enemy fighters would also have to expend air-to-air missiles against LongShot or risk getting shot down themselves.
Third, as an air-launched platform that carries air-to-air missiles, LongShot resembles a two-stage air-to-air missile, as opposed to first-increment aircraft, which are essentially uncrewed fighter aircraft. Aside from the technological progress needed to deploy tactical autonomy that helps rather than hinders crewed aircraft, the need to develop new tactics, organizations, training, logistics, and other supporting functions makes the first increment a much more complicated capability for the Air Force to adopt quickly and effectively. This complexity and technological optimism will likely result in delays. Adopting LongShot is a much simpler endeavor, as it will use many of the existing tactics, employment concepts, and support infrastructure required by air-to-air missiles.
Indeed, American fighter aircraft have recently started carrying two-stage missiles. Last year, U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets were seen carrying a large missile revealed to be an air-launched version of Standard Missile-6: the AIM-174. Standard Missile-6 was originally developed as a defensive, ship-launched missile that was later re-engineered into an offensive missile by the Defense Department’s Strategic Capabilities Office. Unlike previous air-to-air missiles like the AIM-7 and AIM-120, the AIM-174 is a two-stage missile, with two rocket motors that give it a much longer range than any other operational air-to-air missile currently fielded. LongShot could potentially have a similar range and has a distinct advantage over two-stage missiles. If a fighter aircraft launches a two-stage missile, the enemy will be forced to expend countermeasures in the form of chaff or flares to disrupt the missile’s tracking and guidance systems. By contrast, if a LongShot is launched, it will present a two-dimensional targeting dilemma: The enemy will have to expend an air-to-air missile to shoot it down, and if the LongShot launches a missile, they will also have to expend countermeasures to defeat the missile. A first-increment aircraft will provide the same two-dimensional targeting dilemma. However, because LongShot is a physically smaller platform than a first-increment aircraft, it will be easier for engineers to minimize LongShot’s radar cross-section, thereby making it harder for enemy aircraft to sense, detect, and track LongShot.
Fourth, LongShot is designed to launch from fighter, bomber, and cargo aircraft, which could drastically expand the capacity of the Air Force to project power and gain air superiority in the event of a conflict with China. The scale of the threat from China and sclerotic state of today’s Air Force demands creative exploitation of the latent capacity in operational aircraft that airmen already know how to employ effectively. In fielding a capability that can be launched by fighter, bomber, and cargo aircraft, the Air Force can enable hundreds of additional aircraft to carry and launch an attritable aircraft that carries and launches air-to-air missiles.
There are two arguments frequently made against LongShot. First, LongShot is a runway-independent, air-launched platform, and as such, detractors assert that it violates the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment concept. This objection appeals to technological optimism by way of logistical illiteracy. At present, the agile employment of collaborative combat aircraft requires the aircraft to be pre-positioned on the first island chain in the Western Pacific, lying dormant until they are commanded to launch and autonomously prosecute combat operations. This concept of employment would require delivering hundreds of novel, unmanned aircraft to bases in the Pacific; maintaining, refueling, and resupplying them; providing software updates; launching and recovering them with a dedicated team of airmen; and solving for command and control via complex chains of custody. This logistical, operational, and tactical complexity presents more problems than it solves. By contrast, air-launched systems — including air-to-air missiles and miniature air-launched decoys — have been employed effectively for decades. Compared to a first-increment aircraft, LongShot requires a fraction of the logistical infrastructure developments and intermittent upgrades.
Second, detractors object that LongShot is wasteful because it is non-recoverable. This ignores the context of LongShot in combat. If a pilot chooses to launch a LongShot, it is exceedingly probable the pilot urgently needs its effects. Additionally, because a LongShot platform costs a fraction of a first- increment collaborative combat aircraft, the choice to expend a LongShot during an air battle would be no more costly than expending a two-stage missile like the AIM-174.
Like most aircraft, the most expensive component of LongShot will be the engine. In recent years, supply chain issues have hampered the ability of manufacturers to build aircraft engines, including engines for combat aircraft. LongShot’s smaller size and weight will require a far less powerful engine than other proposed designs for a second-increment aircraft, streamlining the production and manufacturing of the platform.
In short, as an air-launched platform that carries air-to-air weapons, LongShot is an asymmetric improvement to currently fielded capabilities that can be much more quickly developed, adopted, and employed by the Air Force.
Capability, Capacity, and Constraints
If the Air Force wants to successfully field affordable mass in the form of collaborative combat aircraft, it should once again recognize that there is an inverse correlation between capability and capacity. A fully operational first-increment collaborative combat aircraft that has undergone rigorous testing and validation would be a more capable and versatile platform than a LongShot. However, additional capability invariably requires additional cost, and as such, the Air Force will trade capacity for capability. More importantly, the additional complexity will drive lengthy development and test timelines exacerbated by the program’s software intensiveness and technological optimism.
First-increment aircraft could eventually make an impact on the ability of the Air Force to prevail in future air battles. However, they will almost certainly not achieve the technological maturity needed to impact the ability of the Air Force to prevail in any major conflict before the end of this decade. There are a litany of engineering challenges that will need to be overcome before fielding a performant first-increment aircraft. Developing the autonomy needed for first-increment aircraft will require far more extensive testing and development than current timelines allow. It will also require a complete remaking of the support structures and tactics that deploy and enable the aircraft.
With its upper-$30M target for the first increment, the Air Force aspired toward a highly capable aircraft that would require revolutionary leaps in technology, as well as new tactics, ways of organizing, training curricula, and logistical infrastructure. It can continue to pursue such ambitious objectives for the long term.
At the same time, when the Air Force selects a second increment for collaborative combat aircraft, it should select a platform that provides a capability this decade that is an asymmetric improvement to current systems that can be quickly fielded in significantly larger numbers and at lower cost.
LongShot is a simpler, less complicated capability than the first-increment collaborative combat aircraft, which makes it a less expensive aircraft that will quickly provide greater effective capacity. If the Air Force truly wants to prepare to fight and win an air war against China before 2030 by fielding large numbers of attritable, missile-launching aircraft and increasing the ranges at which it can engage enemy fighters, then LongShot is the right call for the Air Force. It’s time to adopt LongShot as the second increment of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program.
Ben McNally works as an analyst for JAB Innovative Solutions, a firm that provides professional and information technology services federal, state and local government agencies. He has worked as a consultant in the defense technology industry, and led events, programming, and outreach for the Center for Defense Innovation at the Capital Factory in Austin, Texas. He is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a fellow at the Clements Center for National Security.
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