Air Force Tests Portable Ground Stations for Commanding and Controlling CCAs

The Air Force said Aug. 13 it recently tested prototypes for a portable ground station for commanding and controlling semi-autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft.

The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s Agile Development Office revealed the progress on the so-called Portable Command and Control Enclave, or C2E, in a release explaining how it evaluated the prototypes at Springfield Air National Guard Base, Ohio.

The release did not specify when the evaluations took place or which contractors contributed prototypes, merely noting that “leading industry partners” participated. A spokesperson for AFLCMC could not immediately provide further details.

CCAs are semi-autonomous drones the Air Force is pursuing to bolster its combat “mass” at a lower cost than manned fighters. The first iteration of CCAs, which will be made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Anduril Industries, will focus on air-to-air missions, but future versions could carry out missions such as air-to-ground strikes, reconnaissance, or electronic warfare operations.

The CCA concept has long been for these drones to fly alongside crewed aircraft as “wingmen” and take directions from the human pilots. But the Air Force has discussed the potential for controlling them from other locations.

Col. Timothy Helfrich, the service’s portfolio acquisition executive for fighters and advanced aircraft, first mentioned the C2E program in June, and a spokesperson subsequently described the idea as separate from the software fighter pilots will use to control CCAs and instead called it “an application suite on a range of networks to enable the right operator, with the right permissions, to operate CCA.”

Beyond fighter pilots, CCAs could be controlled from battle management aircraft like the E-7 Wedgetail. But the portable C2E effort is focused on the ground. The prototypes being evaluated are specifically meant to be command-and-control systems that can be rapidly deployed and operated anywhere worldwide, even austere environments, the Air Force’s Aug. 13 release said.

After the command-and-control systems’ mobility and footprints were tested, the Air Force said vendors carried out another round of demonstrations to show how well their software operated.

The Air Force said these evaluations mark “a pivotal milestone in advancing the tactical control of semi-autonomous systems” and are a critical first step towards selecting a vendor to integrate a C2E system.

While the release did not specify what contractors participated in the evaluations, Anduril has already touted the ability of its own system, the Menace-T, to control its YFQ-44A Collaborative Combat Aircraft. Back in April, the firm said it used Menace-T—which consists of two portable cases and a rugged laptop— to upload mission plans, initiate autonomous taxi and takeoff, task the aircraft while in flight, and manage post-flight data ingestion and checks.

The information collected from the Air Force’s Ohio demonstrations will help speed up the acquisition strategy for C2E and help shape the selection process going forward. A second C2E prototype phase will soon begin, the Air Force said, and vendors are expected to further refine and demonstrate their systems’ cloud capabilities.

Once the Air Force selects a C2E system, the service said, it will go to the Experimental Operations Unit currently testing CCAs to support agile combat employment operations. The C2E system will be used to directly control production CCAs, the Air Force said, “ensuring service members maintain a decisive advantage in contested environments.”

“Getting prototypes into the hands of our operational and acquisitions wafighters for a swift, combined evaluation is a direct embodiment of acquisition transformation,” Agile Development Office director Col. Eric Reagan said. “This partnership allows us to accelerate the fielding of the best-value capabilities to the Department of War,” using the alternative name for the Defense Department.