Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter said the service anticipates somewhere between 20-30 competitors to build the drones themselves, and that a similar number of contractors are already part of a vendor pool providing autonomous technologies.
WASHINGTON — As many as 30 vendors could soon be in the running to build the Air Force’s forthcoming collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) drone wingman, the service’s acquisition czar said today, part of a strategy that seeks to “lower the stakes” of losing a bid so that more companies can stay in the mix.
“So I think we will expect in the not-too-distant future we’ll have upwards of 20 to 30 competitors to provide collaborative combat aircraft meaningful capability,” Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter said during a discussion hosted by George Mason University’s Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting.
Separate from building the actual aircraft itself is fielding its underlying autonomous technologies, Hunter said, where the Air Force already sees a large number of vendors participating.
The 20-30 vendor pool number is “the system itself,” he said. “Within the system, the autonomy piece and the mission systems, we already have 20 to 30 competitors in our vendor pool providing capabilities there. So, I would say we’re already working with on the order of 35 industry vendors on CCA today.”
The Air Force is pursuing risk reduction for the drones by expanding the number of autonomous test beds — a problem industry officials recently described as a choke point — by means of a program called the Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Operations Model (VENOM). Through VENOM, six F-16s will be outfitted with autonomous capabilities, according to a previous report in Airman Magazine, building off work with the Air Force’s X-62A Variable In-flight Simulator Aircraft (VISTA).
Hunter explained that the service’s approach to acquiring CCAs relies on continuously driving competition so that no single bid is make-or-break for any business, particularly smaller vendors who may not always have the financial resources of a larger prime.
“Lowering the stakes means more people can participate,” he said, underscoring that competitions won’t be a “life-or-death struggle” where a single winner locks both the government and the vendor in a “50-year franchise” that can be difficult for others to break into.
Key to keeping a viable vendor pool is an iterative design approach, Hunter said, where successive competitions can provide an on-ramp for more companies along the way.
“If you don’t succeed in the first increment of CCA — if you’re not selected — that may be a one-year bump in your business plan. And you can come back strong the next year and win,” he said.
Air Force officials have said they expect to field an initial increment of 1,000 CCAs, with two drones tied to a single fighter in a first tranche of 200 Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) fighters, as well as two drones each for 300 F-35s. Work is underway to develop a concept of operations for how the drones will be used in combat, with future applications largely focused on providing extra missiles, sensors and electronic attack weapons.
Service leaders say the drones will provide an “affordable mass” of new capabilities by being less pricey than fighters but still able to pack a punch in conflict. The service’s fiscal 2024 budget formally kicks off the CCA program as a new start, with an attached funding request of $392 million.
Besides the possibility of a continuing resolution derailing the start of the program, the looming prospect of a budget default would also have “devastating” consequences, Hunter said.
Besides effects like payroll lapses since the Treasury wouldn’t be able to pay its bills and seizing up of credit markets that could impact lending for contractors, any drastic budget cuts would likely be sourced from research and development efforts, Hunter said, where numerous priorities from drones to NGAD would be at risk.
“There’s a lot of bills you have to pay. R&D is one of the few things you can say ‘You know what, we’re just going to take a knee for awhile,’” he said. “So I think you would see a huge hit to our research and development, which is right now one of our priority areas of pursuit.”
Original Article: https://breakingdefense.com/2023/05/air-force-expects-sizeable-vendor-pool-for-drone-wingmen/