The robot wingmen the US hopes can outlast China’s missiles

Facing a shrinking fighter force and a surging Chinese air arm, the US Air Force is betting that robotic wingmen — not more manned jets — will decide who controls the skies over the western Pacific.

This month, multiple media outlets reported that the US Air Force awarded engineering, manufacturing and development, and production contracts to General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Anduril Industries for their respective FQ-42 Dark Merlin and FQ-44 Fury drones, initiating the service’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) Increment 1 program.

Concurrently, the service tapped Anduril, RTX’s Collins Aerospace, and Shield AI to advance a separate competition for the uncrewed fighters’ mission autonomy software.

Under a system-of-systems approach designed to decouple hardware from software, the Air Force aims to rapidly procure and field a split operational fleet of more than 150 semi-US autonomous, modular wingmen by the end of the decade.

The service is utilizing nearly US$1 billion in its fiscal 2027 procurement request to fund the initial production lots, meeting a stringent unit cost threshold of under $30 million, roughly one-third the cost of an F-35A.

Designed to seamlessly pair with crewed jets like the F-35 and F-15EX, the distinct physical platforms completed initial flight testing at California facilities, including Edwards Air Force Base, in late 2025.

This dual-source acquisition strategy seeks to lower technical risk, maximize industrial capacity and inject rapid technological updates via a standardized government software architecture, ensuring the military projects mass and maintains air superiority in highly contested environments.

The urgency behind the CCA program stems from a widening airpower imbalance between the US and China.

Mark Gunzinger and Lawrence Stutzriem mention in a February 2024 report for the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies that as the US Air Force grapples with its oldest, smallest, and least ready combat fleet in history, US command of the skies faces an unprecedented threat from China’s rapidly modernizing military.

Looking at US fighter readiness in particular, the Heritage Foundation’s 2026 Assessment of US Military Power says the US Air Force is now fielding the oldest, smallest and least prepared fighter fleet in its history.

According to the assessment, active-duty combat-coded fighters have dwindled to just 800 aircraft—well short of the 1,200 baseline required to fight two major regional conflicts simultaneously.

Compounding this capacity deficit, it says individual monthly flight hours have plummeted, breaking the double-digit threshold only once in five years at 10.7 hours in FY 2022, falling drastically short of the required 11.7-hour minimum.

In contrast, the China Aerospace Studies Institute (CASI) mentions in a May 2026 report that the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) fields a formidable combat fleet of over 3,150 aircraft, including approximately 2,400 dedicated combat aircraft.

The report says the PLAAF is rapidly transitioning away from legacy platforms and that its modern fighter fleet is organized into 51 active aviation brigades. It notes that 15 brigades lead this force, equipped with advanced 5th-generation J-20 stealth variants, and 22 brigades fly 4.5-generation multirole J-10C and J-16 fighters.

It states that remaining frontline fighter capacity is rounded out by 10 brigades operating 4th-generation J-11 and J-10A variants, leaving just four legacy brigades relying on older 3rd-generation J-7 and J-8 aircraft.

Gunzinger and Stutzriem say that US defense planners are prioritizing the deployment of CCAs, which are semi-autonomous, lower-cost uncrewed aerial vehicles that operate alongside fifth- and sixth-generation fighters to increase affordable combat mass at range dramatically.

They note that CCAs, functioning as disruptive force multipliers, are designed to suppress hostile air defenses, absorb enemy fire and enable resilient, runway-independent forward operations in highly contested environments.

Nonetheless, the CCA program might encounter substantial obstacles before it can fully succeed. As noted by Gregory Allen and Isaac Goldston in an August 2024 report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the CCA program promises affordable mass production but faces significant schedule, cost, and cultural pitfalls.

Allen and Goldston warn that fielding a meaningful number of CCAs will not be until September 2029,  too late to forestall a possible Chinese invasion of Taiwan before that date.

They also point out that the targeted cost per unit has ballooned from an initial $3 million to $25–$30 million per aircraft, triggering concerns that the US Air Force is “gold-plating” the CCA program by adding expensive capabilities that destroy the program’s core purpose of providing affordable numerical mass.

As to how the US envisions using CCAs in a Taiwan conflict scenario, Travis Sharp, in an April 2025 report for the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), mentions that during a modeled mid-2030s Chinese invasion targeting southwest Taiwan, the US Air Force would deploy 500 CCAs across dispersed Japanese and Philippine bases.

Sharp notes that these CCAs, operating unrefueled within a 1,300-kilometer radius, would perform combat air patrols around Tainan Airport. He states planners would use them via “rapid return” profiles for air-to-air missile strikes or “stay-on-station” profiles for persistent sensing and electronic warfare. He says that CCAs, as a frontline stopping force, would deliver counterattacks to blunt Chinese assaults.

However, China’s massive missile buildup may challenge the premise of US operations that its forward bases are a sanctuary against attack. Analyses by the Stimson Center and Hudson Institute warn that in a Taiwan conflict, most US aircraft losses would occur on the ground.

In Japan, concentrated hubs face paralyzing, multi-week runway closures from precision ballistic salvos that trap fighters and anchor vital refueling tankers. Meanwhile, US dispersal strategies stall in the Philippines due to political restrictions banning offensive combat staging.

This combined infrastructure deficit shrinks allied airfield capacity near Taiwan to just 15% of China’s, creating a dangerous asymmetry that invites a devastating, preemptive first strike.

Furthermore, Michael Blaser notes in a July 2024 Proceedings article that the US’s Agile Combat Employment (ACE) concept assumes the US aircraft launch cycle can outpace China’s kill chain – the processes and assets required to find, identify, track, and engage targets accurately. Blaser notes that China can now compress that kill chain to under 24 hours by pairing AI with persistent space-based sensors.

However, those developments wouldn’t necessarily put CCAs out of a fight in Taiwan. Sean Ziegler and other writers mention an “extreme” adaptation of the ACE strategy in a June 2025 RAND report.

Ziegler and others say that by utilizing incredibly lean support crews and minimizing time on the ground, CCAs can dynamically maneuver between highly dispersed outposts throughout the First Island Chain.

They note that future operations may discard vulnerable runways entirely, utilizing small teams to launch runway-independent drones directly from mobile rails hidden in open fields.

They state that CCAs, operating from civilian-class vehicles, can shift locations reactively, adding that replacement aircraft can be concealed in standard shipping containers or basic warehouses, rendering them nearly invisible to preemptive enemy surveillance.

Thus, the real test for US  drone wingmen will not be whether they can fly autonomously, but whether they can restore combat mass without recreating the vulnerabilities they were designed to overcome.