The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) believes that the U. S. Air Force is a major threat to the U. S. Air Force. The U. S. Military Surveillance Agency (USAF) is necessarily on track to deploy Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs), but expresses considerations about the speed of the program and the prospect of an increase consistent with the development of the program. Prices according to the aircraft.
In a study report, CSIS highlights the general need for ACAs in a context of renewed festival among the great powers, in particular with China. The goal is to build a giant number of cheap, “attributable” AACs that use synthetic intelligence to collaborate with manned aircraft.
The report’s authors, Gregory Allen and Isaac Goldston, list several positive attributes of the USAF’s efforts to expand CCAs. These attributes, they write, are an improvement over typical USAF fighter acquisitions, whose prices tend to see large increases between fighter generations. .
The specific smart news spaces are the lifestyles of significant investment for CCAs, widely written requirements that promote innovation, the separation of software and hardware from CCAs, and the recent emergence of a non-classical provider, Anduril, that inspires other marketers, the others. The winner of the USAF CCA program Increment 1 was a classic supplier, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems.
Separating hardware and software acquisitions means the USAF will not end up with an aircraft “that has harmful hardware and software or vice versa. “
However, CSIS raises some concerns. First, comments from the USAF suggest that CCAs will not be available in large quantities until the late 2020s, and probably longer given that Pentagon systems are prone to delays.
This is because Chinese Supreme Leader Xi Jinping has told the People’s Liberation Army to be in a position to invade Taiwan, a key military point between Beijing and Washington DC, until 2027.
CSIS is also detecting symptoms that the value of ACCs may be much higher than expected. Previous versions of the program advised ACCs with a $3 million unit charge, however, CSIS notes that Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall estimated a $25 million to $30 million unit charge.
CSIS sees the danger that the USAF’s “institutional culture” will end up adopting its classic “expensive and polished” in aircraft procurement.
“Removing the pilot from the design of an aircraft and related aircraft has (in principle) the possibility of reducing the prices of an aircraft, but it does not guarantee that the aircraft will be cheap,” says CSISArray
He notes that the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk is unmanned, but its unit cost is $130 million or more, primarily due to its “exquisite sensor payloads” and low production volume.
“The Air Force already has expensive, high-performance fighter jets like the [Lockheed Martin] F-35,” CSIS explains.
“The objective of the CCA is that it is cheap, built temporarily and numerous. This is not to say that the Air Force deserves to tolerate substandard paints from its trading partners, but simply that prices and schedules will have to remain at the forefront of our concerns.
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