U.S. Air Force Set To Award CCA Inc. 2 Contracts, Requirements In Flux

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland—The U.S. Air Force is in a decision-making moment with two phases of its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) effort, looking to make a decision on which companies to continue refining their designs for a follow-on increment while also making a production decision on its first phase.

Two Air Force officials, speaking to a small group of reporters on the sidelines of the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air Space and Cyber conference on Sept. 24, said the aggressive timeline will continue, with the programs largely on or before schedule.

For CCA Increment II, the Air Force will award concept refinement contracts potentially to “several” companies imminently. The award is expected by the end of the calendar year or early in fiscal 2026, says Col. Timothy Helfrich, the senior materiel leader for advanced aircraft and director of the service’s Agile Development Office. More than 20 vendors were solicited to compete for the effort, and the exact number of awards will be “dependent on several factors.”

CCA Increment 2 will largely follow the steps taken for the first increment, in which the Air Force awarded concept refinement contracts to Anduril and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. In traditional acquisition terms, awarding the contract means the program will move into a technology maturation and readiness review phase, Helfrich says.

General Atomics ASI’s design, the YFQ-42A, achieved its first flight earlier this month and the company says it will progress into regular flights to mature mission autonomy. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said Sept. 23 that Anduril’s YFQ-44A will fly for the first time in October.

“One of the things with CCA [is] we have, from the outset, set these pretty aggressive timeline and schedules and we are continuing to hit them with our industry teammates,” Helfrich says. “And as you are seeing with both aircraft vendors being ahead of schedule for the first flight.”

The Air Force will make its production decision next year for CCA Inc. 1. The service has the capability to take multiple vendors into production—including, potentially, competitors other than Anduril and GA-ASI.

At the same time, the Air Force will also make a separate award for mission autonomy “where we will be selecting, in parallel, what companies are going to be developing the mission autonomy for the operational aircraft,” he says.

Aviation Week reported that RTX was selected to provide autonomy for GA-ASI’s YFQ-42A, while Shield AI will provide autonomy for Anduril’s YFQ-44A.

While it has long been expected that the second increment would aim for lower-priced, less-capable systems that could be produced en masse, that decision is not set. Helfrich says his office has been working with the service’s requirements community “and finding out what are the real use cases that will be helpful in filling any potential operational gaps in the future.”

The service has narrowed down a few use cases and initial attributes of what the system could look like.

“There’s potential that it could be high-end capability. There’s potential that it could be low-end capability,” he says. “It really is going to come down to what drives the best cost per effect. It’s less about an individual system, but how they will affect the overall system.”

Increment II will also see increased collaboration with international partners, the service says. This could mean designs that are selected are available for foreign military sales. Brig. Gen. Jason Voorheis, the program executive office for fighters and advanced aircraft, says the CCA approach is overhauling how the service can partner with the international community early on to set requirements and drive a program.

“What I’m suggesting is that with the dynamic of our international partnerships, is there could be two separate use cases that drive two separate designs that go forward,” he says. “Not just for USAF, but for USAF and a partner.”