The Air & Space Forces Association hosted a panel discussion on CCA logistics at its 2025 Warfare Symposium yesterday, at which\u00a0TWZ\u00a0<\/em>was in attendance. Air Force Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel, director of Force Design, Integration, and Wargaming within the office of the deputy chief of staff for Air Force Futures, was one of three panelists. The other two were Mike Atwood, vice president for Advanced Programs at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI), and Andrew Van Timmeren, senior director of Autonomous Airpower at Anduril Industries.<\/p>\n In 2024, the Air Force picked GA-ASI and Anduril\u00a0to design and build CCA prototypes<\/a>, now\u00a0designated YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A<\/a>, respectively, as part of the program\u2019s first phase, or Increment 1. Requirements for a second tranche of CCAs, or Increment 2, which\u00a0could be more costly<\/a>, are coalescing now. The service expects to buy\u00a0between 100<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0150 Increment 1 CCAs<\/a>, but has said in the past that it\u00a0could ultimately acquire at least a thousand of the drones<\/a>\u00a0across all of the program\u2019s increments. It remains unclear whether the Air Force plans to buy just YF-42As or YF-44As, or a mix of both, under Increment 1.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to think about how we survive and generate combat power from the inside, and how do we strengthen our position on the inside? And part of that is distributed basing,\u201d Kunkel said near the start of yesterday\u2019s panel discussion by way of introduction. \u201cThe ability to create multiple dilemmas for our adversaries, \u2026 multiple places where they have to distribute and make choices about whether they\u2019re going to target or not, that\u2019s a really big deal for us.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat distributed basing also creates a lot of inefficiencies in how you might sustain something,\u201d Kunkel continued. \u201cSome of the design attributes that these two teams have been building into their CCAs are exactly that \u2013 you don\u2019t want to have a huge additional footprint that\u2019s required. You don\u2019t want to have, like, the big sustainment requirements.\u201d![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/cca-composite-rendering-designations-1024x576.webp\")
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