The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) believes that the U. S. Air Force is a major threat to the U. S. Air Force. The U. S. Military Surveillance Agency (USAF) is necessarily on track to deploy Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs), but expresses considerations about the speed of the program and the prospect of an increase consistent with the development of the program. Prices according to the aircraft.
In a study report, CSIS highlights the general need for ACAs in a context of renewed festival among the great powers, in particular with China. The goal is to build a giant number of cheap, “attributable” AACs that use synthetic intelligence to collaborate with manned aircraft.
The report’s authors, Gregory Allen and Isaac Goldston, list several positive attributes of the USAF’s efforts to expand CCAs. These attributes, they write, are an improvement over typical USAF fighter acquisitions, whose prices tend to increase particularly between fighter generations. .
Specific smart news spaces are significant investment lifestyles for CCAs, broadly written requirements promoting innovation, separation of software and hardware from CCAs, and the recent emergence of a non-classical vendor, AndurilArray, inspiring other contractors (the other winner of Increment 1 of the USAF CCA program was a classic supplier, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems.
Separating hardware and software acquisitions means the USAF probably wouldn’t end up with an aircraft “that might have harmful hardware and software or vice versa. “
However, CSIS raises some concerns. First, the USAF’s comments suggest that CCAs won’t be available in large numbers until the late 2020s, and likely longer given that Pentagon systems are prone to delays.
This is worrying because China’s ideal leader, Xi Jinping, has told the People’s Liberation Army to be in a position to invade Taiwan, a key military point between Beijing and Washington DC, until 2027.
CSIS is also seeing signs that the value of ACCs may be much higher than expected. Previous versions of the program advised ACCs with a unit charge of $3 million, however, CSIS notes that Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall estimated a unit charge of $25 to $30 million.
CSIS sees the danger that the USAF’s “institutional culture” will adopt its classic “expensive and refined” technique for aircraft procurement.
“Removing the pilot from the design of an aircraft and related aircraft has (in principle) the possibility of reducing the prices of an aircraft, but it does not guarantee that the aircraft will be cheap,” says CSISArray
Note that the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk is unmanned, but its unit cost is $130 million or more, basically due to its “exquisite sensor payloads” and low production volume.
“The Air Force already has very capable fighter jets like the F-35,” CSIS explains.
“The purpose of the CCA is to be cheap, temporarily built and numerous. This is not to say that the Air Force deserves to tolerate poor paint from its commercial partners, but rather that prices and schedules will have to remain at the center of our concerns.
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