F-22 Raptors Will Be First To Control ‘Fighter Drone' Collaborative Combat Aircraft

Yahoo

09-07-2025

F-22 Raptor stealth fighters appear set to be the first operational airborne controllers for the U.S. Air Force's future Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drones. The service is looking to start adding tablet-based control systems and make other relevant modifications to the F-22s starting in the next fiscal year. This is on top of a host of other newly planned upgrades for the Raptor fleet to ensure the jets remain at the very tip of the service's spear for years to come, as you can read about more in TWZ's recent reporting here.
The Air Force's budget request for the 2026 Fiscal Year includes an all-new line item for CCA-related modifications to other aircraft. Within that section is a call for just over $15 million in funding for what is currently named the Crewed Platform Integration program. Separate sections of the Air Force budget documents say the service currently has 143 combat-capable F-22s, with the rest of the total fleet of 185 jets being dedicated to training and test and evaluation duties. A significant number of the small, but highly capable and heavily in-demand Raptor force is typically down for maintenance at any one time, as well.
It isn't clear exactly what will be used for communications between F-22s and CCAs under their control, but the F-22's hard to intercept and jam Inter-Flight Data Link (IFDL) that is currently used to share data between F-22s is very likely the solution. Work has also been done using the XQ-58 Valkyrie, which has served as a CCA surrogate, to bridge communication gaps between F-22s and F-35s, which could also be useful in future operational CCAs.
In the 2026 Fiscal Year budget proposal, the Air Force is also asking for $870 million to continue work on the CCA program itself. Two prototype designs, General Atomics' YFQ-42A and Anduril's YFQ-44A, are currently in development as part of the first phase, or Increment 1, of the CCA effort. Requirements for a follow-on Increment 2 competition are being finalized now. Air Force officials have said they are looking to acquire between 100 and 150 Increment 1 CCAs, and around 1,000 of the drones, at least, across all the future increments. The current goal is for the first examples to enter operational service before the end of the decade. The service is also actively collaborating with the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps on CCA-related developments, including a common command and control architecture.
'The Crewed Platform Integration program will procure and integrate kits for F-22 installation which will allow for F-22 control of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA),' according to the Air Force's proposed Fiscal Year 2026 budget. 'The procurement effort includes, but is not limited to, tablets, cables, and associated materials; activities associated with system integration, assembly, test and checkout; certification; aircraft and CCA communications integration; software updates; systems engineering; training; support equipment; and Program Support Costs (PSC).'
The budget documents also say that, of the roughly $15 million in Crewed Platform Integration requested, just over $12.2 million will go toward the procurement of 142 tablets and associated cabling. This would put the unit price of each of these installation kits at approximately $86,218. The 142 figure aligns with the total number of combat-coded F-22s currently in service.
The F-22 is one of a number of platforms the Air Force has previously said it envisions controlling CCA drones in the future. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and the future F-47 sixth-generation fighter are also on that list. The service has said CCAs might be paired with a broader array of aircraft types, including B-21 Raider stealth bombers and aerial refueling tankers, down the road, as well.
In the past year or so, Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor for the F-22 and the F-35, has touted work it has already been doing to enable those jets to serve in the aerial drone controller role.
'Lockheed Martin has demonstrated its piloted-drone teaming interface, which can control multiple drones from the cockpit of an F-35 or F-22,' the company said in a press release in January. 'This technology allows a pilot to direct multiple drones to engage enemies using a touchscreen tablet in the cockpit of their 5th Gen aircraft.'
In terms of the physical architecture in the cockpit to allow pilots to control CCAs, tablet-like devices have already emerged as a user interface of choice, at least initially. Questions have been raised about the effectiveness of that control scheme, especially for single-seat combat jets, and multiple companies are exploring alternatives.
The computer-generated video below from Collins Aerospace shows tablet-like devices and other means being used to control CCA-like drones.
'There's a lot of opinions amongst the Air Force about the right way to go [about controlling drones from other aircraft],' John Clark, then-head of Skunk Works, told TWZ and others at Air & Space Forces Association's (AFA) main annual conference in September 2024. 'The universal thought, though, is that this [a tablet or other touch-based interface] may be the fastest way to begin experimentation. It may not be the end state.'
'We're working through a spectrum of options that are the minimum invasive opportunities, as well as something that's more organically equipped, where there's not even a tablet,' Clark added at that time.
'We started with [the Air Force's] Air Combat Command with tablets … There was this idea that they wanted to have this discreet control,' Michael Atwood, vice president of Advanced Programs for General Atomics, also said during a past appearance on The Merge podcast in 2024. 'I got to fly in one of these jets with a tablet. And it was really hard to fly the airplane, let alone the weapon system of my primary airplane, and spatially and temporally think about this other thing.'
The issues that Atwood named could be mitigated, at least to a degree, through improving the autonomous capabilities of future CCAs. However, officials across the U.S. military have repeatedly stressed that much work in that realm remains to be done.
'Let's get this thing out there. Let's start integrating. Let's then start working to [sic] warfighting functions of our CCA, and move forward,' Marine Col. Derek Brannon, director of the Marine Corps' Cunningham Group that is tasked with plotting out the service's overarching future aviation vision, said at the annual Modern Day Marine exposition in March. 'It's an exceptional piece of capability.'
However, 'we still have a lot to learn to simply get to this thing airborne, flying, and executing next to an F-35, and not hitting each other,' he added. 'I know there's a lot of work out there, but that's important to make sure that we become lethal.'
For the Air Force, in particular, significant questions remain about how it plans to just deploy, launch, recover, support, and otherwise operate CCAs, let alone employ them in tactical combat operations. The service has already been using a number of different drones, as well as the unique pilot-optional X-62A test jet, a heavily modified two-seat F-16D also known as the Variable Stability In-flight Simulator Test Aircraft (VISTA), to work on answering these questions. A group of six additional F-16s are being modified to further help with those test and evaluation efforts as part of a project called Viper Experimentation and Next-Gen Operations Mode (VENOM).
Furthermore, the Air Force has established a dedicated CCA test force called the Experimental Operations Unit (EOU). In June, the service announced that it had expanded the EOU from a small detachment into a squadron-sized formation. Whether or not the unit has any flying assets now is unclear. Last year, the Air Force did say that it had approved additional CCA purchases to equip the EOU, but did not say how many of the drones would be headed to Nellis. Whether these will be YFQ-42As, YFQ-44As, or a mix of both, is also unknown.
The Air Force is asking for close to $55.5 million and nearly $6.6 million to support the EOU and Project VENOM, respectively, in its 2026 Fiscal Year budget request. The service received around $44.5 million and $6.1 million for those two lines of effort in the 2025 Fiscal Year.
In the upcoming fiscal year, the goal is for the EOU to 'continue to stand up as a fully manned squadron with investments in facility modifications, critical infrastructure, and equipment,' according to the Air Force's latest budget documents. The 'EOU continues to invest in ACP prototypes, modeling and simulation environments, and studies to refine integration of CCA into the force.'
'VENOM will conduct [a] government flight test campaign for risk reduction and maturation of enterprise autonomy skills toinclude integration of the latest autonomy reference architecture, testing of autonomy skills, and developing the autonomy testinfrastructure,' the budget documents add. 'Autonomy test infrastructure includes a digital autonomy test environment and common test tools to ensure integration between Vendors, Test Organizations, and Program Offices. Autonomy skills being matured include: 1) multi-ship behaviors 2) Defensive Counter-Air behaviors and 3) Offensive Counter-Air behaviors.'
With plans now to add the tablet-based control systems to the bulk of the F-22 fleet, the Air Force looks to be further laying the groundwork to operationalize the lessons learned from the EOU and efforts like Project VENOM as it moves toward fielding its first CCAs.
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