Am 24. April 2026 formalisierten das Department of the Air Force und das niederländische Verteidigungsministerium — but this story belongs in English because its implications are transatlantic. The Netherlands has become the first European nation to join the United States’ Collaborative Combat Aircraft programme, gaining full access to prototype development, operational testing, and the doctrinal groundwork for a technology that will reshape air combat within the decade. The agreement, signed in Washington, gives the Royal Netherlands Air Force a seat at the Experimental Operations Unit at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada — the classified hub where the USAF is writing the playbook for human-machine teaming in air warfare. Dutch pilots and engineers will work alongside their American counterparts to develop concepts of operations for autonomous drone wingmen designed to fly alongside F-35s.

What CCAs Actually Do

The Collaborative Combat Aircraft concept is deceptively simple in principle and extraordinarily complex in execution. An autonomous drone — cheaper and more expendable than a crewed fighter — flies alongside an F-35 or F-16, performing tasks that would otherwise require a second manned aircraft. Electronic warfare jamming. Forward sensor coverage. Decoy operations. Weapons delivery. The CCA takes the risk; the pilot makes the decisions. The USAF has two CCA prototypes in development: the Increment 1 designs from Anduril and Boeing. Both are expected to fly in the coming months. The programme envisions an eventual fleet of 1,000 or more CCAs — a number that would fundamentally change the mass calculus of Western air power. The technical architecture is deliberately open. The CCA uses platform-agnostic autonomy software, meaning different airframes from different manufacturers can run the same mission autonomy stack. This is critical for coalition operations, where Dutch F-35s need to command the same drone wingman as American ones without bespoke integration work.

Why the Netherlands Goes First

The Dutch selection as first European partner is not accidental. The Royal Netherlands Air Force operates 52 F-35As and has been one of the most technically proficient F-35 operators in Europe since the type entered Dutch service. The RNLAF has a tradition of punching above its weight in multinational exercises, consistently ranking among the top-performing F-35 units at Red Flag. More importantly, the Netherlands has the institutional willingness to invest in experimental capability. Dutch defence spending has risen sharply since 2022, and The Hague has signalled that autonomous systems are a priority — not as replacements for crewed platforms, but as force multipliers that allow a small air force to generate disproportionate combat power. The EOU at Nellis is where this theory meets practice. The unit runs rapid development cycles, testing CCA prototypes in realistic scenarios and feeding operational lessons directly back to the manufacturers. By embedding Dutch personnel in this loop from the beginning, the Netherlands will help shape CCA doctrine rather than merely adopting it later.

The Broader European Picture

The Dutch move will be watched closely in Berlin, London, Rome, and Stockholm. Europe’s major air forces all operate or are acquiring F-35s, and each faces the same force structure challenge: too few aircraft for too many commitments. CCAs offer an answer, but only if European nations gain access to the programme early enough to influence its design. The open architecture approach lowers the barrier to entry. In theory, a European manufacturer could build a CCA airframe that runs American autonomy software — or vice versa. The interoperability framework built at Nellis is designed to make this possible. But access to the EOU, and to the classified testing environment, requires bilateral agreements like the one the Netherlands has just signed. The first European drone wingman won’t carry a Dutch roundel overnight. But the engineers who teach it to think might well be Dutch.

Sources: FlightGlobal, Defense-Aerospace, Army Recognition, Aviation News EU