The Air Force plans to field 1,000 highly autonomous aircraft by 2032, a move that Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said will create a “significantly different force” from the one it has today.
Speaking on Sept. 14 at the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Md., Meink said the service plans to field 500 Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) and 500 Massed Modular Aircraft (MMA) by 2032. The Air Force plans to build 100 MMAs by 2029 as it works toward the 500-aircraft goal, he said.
“We will be dramatically increasing our combat power by adding large numbers of highly autonomous systems,” Meink said. “We are using novel concepts such as open systems architecture to accelerate procurement, which has also increased competition from industry, resulting in better choices, better prices, and in the end, more combat power.”
The two programs are part of the Air Force’s broader push toward lower-cost, autonomous aircraft that can add combat capacity without relying exclusively on more expensive crewed platforms, but they are designed to fill different roles.
CCAs are autonomous fighter aircraft designed to team with crewed aircraft and extend their reach, awareness, and survivability in contested environments. MMAs, meanwhile, are envisioned as lower-cost, modular successors to the MQ-9A Reaper that could perform missions including intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance; strike; electronic warfare; and communications relay.
The CCA program includes the FQ-42A, built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, and the FQ-44A, built by Anduril Industries. Meink said the aircraft went from contract award to first flight in 18 months or less, and production aircraft are already beginning to roll off assembly lines. The Air Force awarded production contracts for both aircraft in June.
The MMA program is at an earlier stage. The Air Force and Defense Innovation Unit are pursuing concept refinement for the program as the service seeks a lower-cost aircraft that can be produced at scale.
“Many of the weapons, components, and systems we buy today have way outrun the cost curve. They perform extremely well, but the costs are growing faster than the rate of inflation. We need that to change if we want to maintain our military advantage and our economic security,” Meink said. “We need to evolve our force structure to include these lower cost systems.”
Budget constraints loom
Reaching the Air Force’s production goals will require Congress to provide the necessary resources and greater funding stability, Meink said.
The service’s FY 2027 budget request includes $996.5 million in procurement funding to begin buying the initial round of CCAs, $150 million in advance procurement funding for FY 2028, and about $1.37 billion for continued research and development.
That proposed FY 2027 funding still requires congressional approval through the full-year defense appropriations process. In the meantime, Congress has enacted a continuing resolution (CR) that maintains government funding through Dec. 11, 2026, largely at FY 2026 levels as the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1.
Meink said that kind of budget uncertainty complicates the Air Force’s efforts to increase production, noting that the current budget process “was really built for a different pace of war.” CRs, he said, make it harder for both new entrants and traditional defense contractors to invest, lower production costs, and achieve the scale the Air Force requires.
“This all impacts our ability to scale and ramp up production,” Meink said. “Long-term budget stability is what’s required for contractors, both the new entrants and the traditional defense primes, to make the investments needed to get to the point where they can produce [these aircraft] at the cost and scale that we need.”
Still, Meink pointed to multiyear procurement authorities as one potential path toward greater budget stability.
“I think [Congress] sees the problem,” he said, adding that he believes there is congressional support for multiyear procurement and other measures, though work to put those authorities in place remains underway.