Air Force picks General Atomics, Anduril to build first CCA drone wingmen
Anduril, Shield AI and Collins have been tapped to develop the autonomy system for the collaborative combat aircraft.
Anduril, Shield AI and Collins have been tapped to develop the autonomy system for the collaborative combat aircraft.
Drawing on Breaking Defense's TechNet Cyber 2026 coverage, this eBook examines how the Pentagon is advancing AI, cybersecurity, and cyber strategy to strengthen the future force.
In part two of our F-35 roundtable video series, Breaking Defense takes a look at why the PTMU is so important and gets into how the competition looks going forward.
The company is examining “all offers that’re out on the market today to make that decision, so it’s not going to be a quick choice,” Lockheed’s F-35 program manager Chauncey McIntosh told Breaking Defense.
While the Air Force will originally focus on a competition to place new ejection seats in the service's F-16 fleet, “decisions following the competition could extend to other platforms, including the F-22 and B-1," the Air Force said.
The Air Force is nearing a decision on whether to recompete an ejection seat contract held by Collins. If the service changes course, it will send shockwaves through the duopoly that fights over every potential ejection seat sale.
The competition sets up a showdown between incumbent supplier Honeywell Aerospace and competitor Collins Aerospace.
Breaking with service leadership, Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach said he opposes divesting certain F-22 Raptors, whose retirements have been repeatedly blocked by Congress.
However, an Army spokesperson tells Breaking Defense the service does not believe it is fully banned from all future events, and did not rule out the possibly of attending SXSW in some capacity next year.
“Now that we understand that 80 kilowatts is a must-have, it was the mission of: how do we get there, with the lowest impact to the overall airframe?” Honeywell Aerospace’s Matt Milas told Breaking Defense in an exclusive interview.
In a tour of Collins Aerospace's facilities, executives said their new thermal management solution for the F-35 achieved a key benchmark, though the Pentagon hasn't yet decided on a competition at all.