The Air Force wants to kick-off a Crewed Platform Integration program next year to pair its nascent Collaborative Combat Aircraft with F-22 Raptor jets, according to fiscal year 2026 budget request documents.
The service is asking for about $15 million in procurement funding to initiate the new-start program in FY-26 and begin buying tablet-based control systems. Efforts to develop the integration kits will be ongoing as the Air Force moves forward with its push for manned-unmanned aircraft swarms.
The stealth fifth-generation Raptor appears to be the first aircraft in the Air Force’s fleet on track to receive the kit and other modifications necessary to allow it to supervise at least the first CCA increment.
The money would go toward “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,” according to budget justification documents.
The earliest tranche of combat drones is intended to serve as unmanned missile trucks, groups of which will accompany advanced platforms into battle to perform both solo or joint tasks. Prototypes are now being built by Anduril Industries and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems with a production decision set for calendar year 2026.
The Air Force had previously disclosed that the F-22 along with other aircraft — like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, B-21 Raider and F-47 Next Generation Air Dominance platform — would eventually team up with the autonomous drones to complete missions en masse.
Broken down, $12.24 million from the ask for CCA-related modifications to in-service aircraft would be used to buy 142 kits. The remaining money is slotted for support and other costs, per the budget request.
Of the 185 F-22s the Air Force has in its total inventory, just 143 are combat-coded, the document notes.
A contractor has not yet been identified to manufacture and enable the F-22 fleet with the kits, but the service is eyeing October as a potential contract date and June 2026 as a projected delivery date.
The all-new program hints that the Air Force is inching closer to its plans of fielding the first CCAs by the end of the decade. The service at the beginning of June established an Experimental Operations Unit to test and evaluate the fighter drones as they mature.
In FY-26, the Air Force is proposing $55.45 million in research, development, test and evaluation funds to continue CCA flight test activities, modeling and simulation environments and studies to refine integration into the force.
Five software vendors are additionally on contract to develop the mission autonomy for CCA increment one, the Air Force announced last July, as part of Project Venom. The names of those businesses are being kept secret due to the program’s classification status, the service has said.
Last May, former service Secretary Frank Kendall participated in a Project Venom test flight in which he took a ride in a converted, pilotless F-16 Fighting Falcon powered by multiple autonomous agents. During the experiment, the aircraft maneuvered through a series of warfighting scenarios against a manned F-16, putting on “roughly an even fight,” Kendall said at the time.
Next year, the service wants to spend roughly $6.6 million on Project Venom to conduct another government flight test campaign to assess risk reduction and maturation of enterprise autonomy.
“Autonomy test infrastructure includes a digital autonomy test environment and common test tools to ensure integration between vendors, test organizations and program offices,” according to the RDT&E justification documents. “Autonomy skills being matured include: 1) multiship behaviors 2) defensive counter-air behaviors and 3) offensive counter-air behaviors.”
Originally published Inside Defense
