500 drones by 2032, $996.5M on hold: Air Force sets CCA goal as first production buy waits on FY2027 money

The money

How much is in the FY2027 budget for CCA?

The request puts $996.528 million on a new CCA line in Aircraft Procurement, Air Force, the program’s first request to buy aircraft, plus $150.5 million in advance procurement and $822,000 for CCA modifications ^[3, 7]. Fiscal 2026 carried only a $15.048 million CCA modifications line ^[10]. The $996.5 million comes from the base budget rather than the $350 billion reconciliation piece of the $1.5 trillion defense request ^[3].

Research money is larger. The Air Force CCA program element carries a $1,373.740 million FY2027 request ^[7]. That compares with $111.365 million authorized on the same line in the FY2026 NDAA ^[10]. DefenseScoop reported the service received $827 million in total CCA research funding for fiscal 2026 ^[3]. Much of the difference is the 2025 reconciliation law, which appropriated $678 million “to accelerate the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program,” available until Sept. 30, 2029 ^[11].

The Marine Corps has its own CCA development line: $213.934 million requested for FY2027, against $58 million authorized for FY2026 ^[7, 10].

The Air Force has not said how many aircraft the $996.5 million buys. Travis Sharp of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments estimated about 30, noting that “weapons systems typically cost more per unit initially” ^[3]. The program office says it is beating its target of roughly one-third the cost of an F-35, about $30 million per aircraft ^[1, 5].

Can CCA production start under the continuing resolution?

Not on stopgap funds, as the bill reads. Section 101 continues defense programs at the fiscal 2026 rate, and Section 102 bars money for “the new production of items not funded for production in fiscal year 2026 or prior years” and for any P-1 line item that had no funds that year ^[9]. The CCA aircraft line is new in FY2027; only the modifications line had fiscal 2026 money ^[3, 10]. The stopgap carries no CCA exception, and Section 106 ends it on Dec. 11, 2026, unless full-year bills pass first ^[9]. In June, Col. Timothy Helfrich, the portfolio acquisition executive for fighters and advanced aircraft, said the first-lot award would come as soon as the FY2027 budget is approved ^[2]. The September brief on space launch walks through the stopgap’s other defense terms.

The programs

What did Meink announce about CCA?

Speaking at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber conference, Meink said both Increment 1 aircraft have begun coming off production lines and gave them names: General Atomics’ FQ-42A Vengeance and Anduril’s FQ-44A Fury ^[1]. “We intend to have at least 500 of these in service by 2032, and they’ll be performing many of the same missions that we do with manned fighters today,” he said ^[1].

The target sits on top of the June contracts. On June 17, the Air Force gave both companies engineering and manufacturing development and production contracts covering the first three lots, with at least 150 aircraft due by the end of the decade ^[2, 5]. Helfrich said the contract value is classified ^[5]. More Increment 1 lots will follow, he said, but the competition will not reopen to companies other than General Atomics and Anduril, and both will have “equal opportunity” for orders ^[2]. The service’s long-range goal is a fleet of around 1,000 CCAs of different types ^[5].

Software is bought separately. Anduril, Shield AI and Collins Aerospace each hold a six-month contract line to mature mission autonomy, after which the field narrows; a single provider is due in summer 2027 ^[5]. The aircraft-and-software split lets the service order licenses from any of six vendors in the pool ^[2, 5].

Who can compete for CCA Increment 2?

Increment 2 is the next opening for companies outside the first pair. Nine unnamed vendors are refining concepts under contracts that had about 10 months left in late July, and the Air Force expects to carry roughly six into prototyping ^[4]. Helfrich said new entrants could come in at later phases ^[4]. The engine work is already on contract: Beehive Industries, Honeywell, Pratt & Whitney and a GE Aerospace-Kratos team are designing engines in the 1,400- to 1,600-pound thrust class through May 2027, and GE Aerospace and Rolls-Royce are working on 5,000- to 6,000-pound engines ^[4].

Meink also set dates for two adjacent drone and weapons efforts. The Massed Modular Aircraft, an inexpensive successor to the MQ-9 Reaper, is on track for 100 aircraft by 2029 and 500 by 2032 ^[1]. For the Family of Affordable Mass Munitions, a low-cost cruise missile, production is expected to start this fall, and FY2027 budget documents show plans to buy nearly 28,000 over five years ^[1].

The politics

Authorizers in both chambers back the procurement start. The House-passed H.R. 8800 and the Senate Armed Services Committee’s S. 4784 each authorize the $996.528 million production line and the $150.5 million advance procurement line at the requested level ^[7, 8]. The July brief on the House vote covers that bill’s broader terms.

They split on research. The House bill cuts the Air Force CCA research line by $137.374 million, exactly 10 percent, to $1,236.366 million, and trims the Autonomous Collaborative Platforms line by $5.721 million; the table labels both “Program decrease” without further explanation ^[7]. The Senate committee funds both lines at the request and adds $10 million for CCA propulsion technology integration in a separate science and technology line ^[8].

The House bill also asks for paperwork. Section 1089S wants a report within 180 days on planned sensor and electronic warfare investment for CCA, and Section 1089T a strategy, prepared with U.S. Transportation Command, on storing, sustaining and deploying the aircraft, including cost per flight hour and the “primary factors inhibiting deployment of CCA in the Indo-Pacific region” ^[7].

Both bills settle how CCAs count against the fighter floor. Each rewrites 10 U.S.C. 9062(i) to require at least 1,800 fighters from Oct. 1, 2026, to Oct. 1, 2035, and defines a fighter as an aircraft “manned by one or two crewmembers” that “does not include collaborative combat aircraft” ^[7, 8]. The production designations begin with F, but 500 FQ-42s and FQ-44s would not count toward that 1,800 ^{[1, 7, 8]}. The August brief on the F-15 Eagle Crest contract covers the floor’s effect on fighter buys.

Advocates want the money moving. In a June commentary, Heather Penney of the Air & Space Forces Association’s Mitchell Institute wrote that “Congress should support that objective” of moving CCA into production, and that “programs move at the speed of resourcing” ^[6]. She cautioned that “manned aircraft still have a role in modern warfare” and argued for pairing the two ^[6]. Meink framed it as a force-structure shift: “We will be dramatically increasing our combat power by adding large numbers of highly autonomous systems,” he said ^[1].

Next milestone

The stopgap runs out Dec. 11 ^[9]. Until a full-year FY2027 defense appropriation is enacted, the Air Force cannot place the first-lot order it described in June, and it has not said how many aircraft that lot will hold ^{[2, 5, 9]}.