General Atomics-Aeronautical Systems Gambit drone (GA-ASI)
DUBAI AIRSHOW — Following a request for information from the Air Force that identified engine thrust range targets for its forthcoming Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program, a General Atomics executive name-checked some appealing candidates that could power the company’s own unmanned offering.
“The [Williams International] FJ44, that’s a really nice engine. Pratt & Whitney has a real nice set of turbofans that we’ve used in the past,” David Alexander, president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, said in a Tuesday interview with Breaking Defense at the Dubai Airshow. (Alexander did not specify the Pratt turbofans, though GA’s MQ-20 Avenger uses the PW545B, which offers nearly 4,000 lbs of thrust.)
“In this size class that we’re talking, there’s quite a few engines. We have really good working relationships with several of them,” he continued, underscoring that many options are available on the market. “And to be clear, the best program for a new platform is, you wrap an airplane around a reliable engine.”
The Air Force envisions a fleet of CCA drones that will fly and fight alongside manned fighters to augment combat operations, conduct surveillance and, likely, draw enemy fire. The service is planning to field an initial tranche of up to 1,000 of them, though that number could grow. The Air Force is eyeing a thrust range of 3,000 to 8,000 lbs for CCA, and Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has said he wants their production to start by fiscal 2028.
General Atomics is pitching its Gambit drone series for the CCA effort, which the company describes as a modular family of aircraft that can incorporate payloads from sensor packages to missiles, with multiple potential designs. As the company looks for a powerplant that can power Gambit within the range the Air Force has identified — reportedly more thrust than offered by some current drone wingmen on the market — Alexander also emphasized that development of a new engine is off the table given the service’s timeframe.
“That’s the beauty of going into the bizjet [commercial business jet] market,” he said, pointing to favorable characteristics like whether engines are in production, can leverage economies of scale and offer high reliability. “So you really want something that is popular.”
Some experts have raised concerns that engines within the Air Force’s desired thrust range might be expensive, cutting against the service’s goal of “affordable mass” offered by CCA. But Alexander downplayed that concern, asserting, “We can hit the Air Force’s numbers with any engine out there that’s being produced in substantial quantities.”
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Kendall has at times used various metrics to describe the cost goal of CCA, recently stating that it would be a quarter to a third the cost of an F-35, which would work out to a range of roughly $21 million to $28 million based on the F-35A’s $82.5 million flyaway cost.
Despite Kendall’s somewhat vague descriptions, Alexander insisted the Air Force has expressly communicated its cost target to industry behind closed doors. “It’s crystal clear what the Air Force wants in production costs,” he said, though he purposefully did not share figures.
Air Force acquisition chief Andrew Hunter has sketched out a robust market for CCA, where he envisioned dozens of vendors that could compete to offer both drone hardware and artificial intelligence (AI) software. Asked about General Atomics’s approach to using a mission system that could fly Gambit, Alexander described a “partnering enterprise” set up by the Air Force, adding that the company is keeping its options open.
Additionally, Alexander said AI offerings “could be” similar to government furnished equipment — like engines are for traditional airplane acquisitions.
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“Think of it as perhaps apps that could go into the AI part of the aircraft,” he explained, where all vendors could bring their best to plug in. “That doesn’t mean we won’t want to play in that bucket too,” he said of General Atomics’s own AI solutions.
On Sunday at the Dubai International Air Chiefs Conference, Air Marshal Radhakrishnan Radhish of India warned conference attendees he thinks he “would be lying” if he said his country’s vision for a family of drones, known as the Combat Air Teaming System program, would be realized sooner than 10 to 20 years from now — possibly serving as a reality check for the US Air Force’s own ambitions.
Asked about Radhish’s timeline, Alexander said, “Each country has got to go at their own pace,” adding that what the US is asking for from industry is “realistic.” There’s also been discussions of shared production and moving to some kind of common configuration among America’s partners, according to Alexander. “I think they want to bring partners in to help share the burden,” he said.
As work on artificial intelligence accelerates across the military, the White House and DoD have moved to set up guardrails to ensure the technology is used safely. Alexander seemed to welcome the moves, saying that “it’s all the stuff we have worried about” and prepared for accordingly.
“What I’m saying is we don’t let crazy in our box,” he said.
