The Pentagon wants $1 billion to stop building drone wingman prototypes and start building drone wingman weapons. The difference matters — and the price tag signals just how seriously the Air Force is taking it. The FY2027 budget request, submitted to Congress this spring, includes $996.5 million for initial Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) procurement, plus another $150 million in advance procurement to lock in FY2028 production capacity. Add $1.37 billion in research and development — up a staggering $543 million from the prior year — and you’re looking at roughly $2.37 billion committed to a program that barely registered as a funded line item two years ago. This is the largest single new addition to the Air Force’s $30.64 billion aircraft procurement account. Not a marginal increase. Not a rounding error. The Air Force is betting big on autonomous wingmen.

From Prototype to Production: What’s Actually Changing

The CCA program has been running in the background for years — quiet, classified, and largely theoretical as far as the public was concerned. Two contractors, Anduril Industries and General Atomics, were awarded development contracts in 2024 to build competing prototypes under what the Air Force called “Increment 1.” Those prototypes flew. The Air Force liked what it saw. Now the service wants to buy real, production-representative aircraft — not just demonstrators. The FY2027 request marks the transition from “can we build these?” to “how many can we afford?” The answer, apparently, is a lot: the current plan calls for more than 150 CCAs delivered before the end of FY2031. That is not a paper program. That is actual aircraft on actual ramps at actual bases.

What a CCA Actually Does

Collaborative Combat Aircraft are semi-autonomous, jet-powered systems designed to fly in formation with crewed fighters. Think of them as expendable, weaponizable sensor platforms that extend what a single F-35 or F-22 pilot can see, target, and shoot. The concept solves a painful math problem. In a high-end conflict with a near-peer adversary, crewed aircraft are both extremely capable and extremely expensive to lose. A single F-35A costs roughly $80 million. A pilot costs a decade of training. CCAs offer a different calculus: send the drone forward into the most dangerous airspace, let it absorb the missile shot, use its sensors to cue the crewed jet to shoot from standoff range. They also multiply mass. One F-22 with four CCAs is effectively a five-aircraft formation with one human in the loop. Against an adversary who fields hundreds of aircraft and thousands of missiles, mass matters enormously.

The F-47 Connection

The CCA program assumed new urgency in early 2025 when President Trump announced the Next Generation Air Dominance program’s crewed component — officially designated the F-47, built by Boeing. The stealth fighter is designed from the ground up to operate alongside CCAs as a system of systems rather than a standalone platform. That architectural decision changes everything. The F-47 doesn’t need to carry every weapon or sensor itself — it can delegate to its drone wingmen. The crewed jet becomes a command node as much as a shooter. The CCAs become the expendable forward edge of a distributed, lethal formation. This also means the CCA program can’t slip — if the F-47 arrives without its drone wingmen, the architecture that justifies its existence is missing a key pillar.

Two Contractors, One Mission

Both Anduril and General Atomics remain under contract for Increment 1. Anduril’s Fury — a sleek, low-observable design — drew significant attention when imagery emerged in 2024. General Atomics brings decades of production experience from its MQ-9 Reaper line. Different philosophies, different designs, same mission requirement. The $996.5 million procurement line doesn’t specify which contractor wins the work — that decision may come later, or the Air Force may split the buy. Either way, the money is real, the timeline is locked, and Congress is being asked to make it official. Production decisions in the defense world are how you know something is real — and this one is very real. Sources: U.S. Air Force FY2027 Budget Justification Documents; Breaking Defense; Air & Space Forces Magazine; U.S. Department of Defense