CCAs as a Disruptive Force
This transcript is made possible through the sponsorship of Schneider Electric
Heather Penney:
Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome to this Mitchell Institute panel on Collaborative
Combat Aircraft as a Disruptive Force. I'm Heather Penny, senior resident fellow at the Mitchell Institute
for Aerospace Power Studies.
We, at Mitchell, have said it before, and we will say it again. The U.S. Air Force is the oldest and smallest
that it has ever been. This capability and capacity problem cannot simply be solved by building a
hundred of CCAs that are simply used as slightly cheaper, more disposable F-35s or F-22s. Military
innovations are instead most effective when they're employed in novel and unexpected ways. To that
end, I strongly encourage you to pick up my colleague Mark Gunzinger's report, The Need for
Collaborative Combat Aircraft for Disruptive Air Warfare. We've got copies at our booth, not only his
report on our website, but so is his rollout.
To discuss CCAs, how CCAs can help the United States subvert established adversary strategies and
overcomes challenges that we face in the air domain, we're pleased to be joined by four incredible Air
Force and industry leaders. First, we're excited to welcome Major General Scott Jobe. As director of
Force Design, Integration, and Wargaming, deputy chief of staff for Air Force Futures, General Jobe
leaves advanced efforts for future force design, data analysis, capability development, integration, and
disruptive technology.
Seated next to him, we are glad to be joined by Dave Alexander, president of General Aeronautics
Systems. GA is a leader when it comes to remotely piloted aircraft, famously having designed both the
MQ-1 predator and MQ-9 Reaper. Next to me, we are pleased to have Otis Winkler from Kratos
Defense. At Kratos, Mr. Winkler heads efforts to align Kratos' development efforts on systems like the
XQ-58 Valkyrie with DOD and Air Force priorities. And finally, at the other side, we are happy to have
Brigadier General Jason Voorheis with us. General Voorheis serves as the Air Force Program Executive
Officer for Fighters and Advanced Aircraft. In this role, he's responsible for the fielding and sustainment
of the Air Force's fighter inventory and development of future force programs such as NGAD and CCA.
Given how much we have to dig into, I'm going to jump straight into questions, gentlemen. So General
Jobe, I'd like to toss the first one to you. As you consider future-integrated force design, how are you
thinking about optimizing capability to provide the competitive advantage for great power competition?
Maj. Gen. R. Scott Jobe:
Well, thanks Heather. So it's interesting as we're looking at force design and campaign-level analysis
through our wargames and other activities, CCA is one of those exemplars of something that's
extraordinarily disruptive to the way we have traditionally done things. Everything from human machine
teaming, what skills an Airman needs in the future, which involve a lot of data, analytics, software
programming at the tactical edge, that affects the human part of our Air Force and Space force.
So there's a human machine teaming aspect of CCAs that is disruptive internally to us and also presents
a lot of capability. As we've looked at things like mobility, there's also disruptive capabilities there.
Infilling, exfilling forces into a highly contested environment brings you a whole new level of capability
for autonomous capabilities, not just CCA. So there's a whole plethora of family of systems we can
envision in the future that dramatically change the way we do business. How mission threads are closed
or not closed can be affected by autonomy, not just things that are in aircraft, but also algorithms that
