Navy’s Vision For Disposable Carrier-Based Loyal Wingman Drones Comes Into Focus
The Navy wants carrier-based drones to cost less than $15 million and be ‘consumed’ as weapons or targets when their short service ends.
BY
JOSEPH TREVITHICK
|
PUBLISHED APR 10, 2024 6:02 PM EDT
JOSEPH TREVITHICK
View Joseph Trevithick's Articles
FranticGoat
The U.S. Navy wants its future fleets of carrier-capable drone wingmen to be made up of designs that cost no more than $15 million to buy and have zero long-term sustainment costs. These uncrewed aircraft would be "consumable," ending their relatively short service lives, which will be measured in hundreds of flight hours rather than years, as one-way kamikaze drones or flying targets for use in training or testing.
The Navy is now actively using the phrase Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) to refer to its planned future drone force. These uncrewed aircraft will be highly autonomous, but still designed primarily to work closely together with crewed platforms, at least initially. The Navy's CCA program is formally intertwined with the Air Force's program of the same name, especially when it comes to architectures that will allow both services to seamlessly exchange control of drones during operations, but the two efforts are distinct. The Navy is currently aiming to begin fielding the first of its CCA drones sometime in the second half of this decade. The service also has a long-standing goal for the composition of its carrier air wings to eventually become up to 60 percent uncrewed.
"For the U.S. Navy, we are in the development process" and "we're trying to get after CCA in a revolutionary way," Navy Rear Adm. Stephen Tedford, who runs the Program Executive Office for Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons, or PEO (U&W), within Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), said on Monday. Tedford was speaking at the Navy League's annual Sea Air Space conference.
https://www.twz.com/air/navys-vision-for-disposable-carrier-based-loyal-wingman-drones-comes-into-focus
