Air Force Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel raised the possibility of procuring air-launched CCAs\u00a0on May 8 during a virtual talk<\/a>\u00a0hosted by the Air & Space Forces Association\u2019s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Kunkel is currently Director of Force Design, Integration, and Wargaming and Deputy Chief of Staff for Air Force Futures at the Air Force\u2019s headquarters at the Pentagon.<\/p>\n The Air Force\u2019s CCA program is being run in iterative development cycles. General Atomics and Anduril are currently developing what have now been\u00a0designated as the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A<\/a>\u00a0as part of the program\u2019s first phase, Increment 1. Requirements for the follow-on Increment 2 are now in the latter stages of being finalized, and Kunkel has previously said his service may be leaning\u00a0toward lower-cost and less complex designs<\/a>\u00a0for the second tranche. The Air Force has said it is looking to acquire\u00a0between 100<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0150 Increment 1 CCAs<\/a>, and around 1,000 of the drones, at least, across all the future increments.<\/p>\n \u201cAs you look at how we generate combat power and the number of sites we can use, there\u2019s something to a shorter takeoff length, and there\u2019s something to vertical takeoff,\u201d Kunkel said. \u201cWe [have] got to figure out what that takes, because generally, when you do a vertical takeoff aircraft, you decrease the payload, you decrease the range. And so there\u2019s a balance that we need to strike here as we\u2019re thinking about how we generate combat power, how survivable it is, but then what the requirements are on the aircraft in terms of payload and range? But we\u2019re absolutely looking at that and what it takes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re also looking at, maybe we don\u2019t generate them [CCAs] from the ground at all,\u201d he continued. \u201cMaybe we generate them by dropping them out of the aircraft. And so those are, those are all concepts we\u2019re looking at. But you\u2019re absolutely right. We don\u2019t necessarily want to be tied to air bases for our CCAs.\u201d<\/p>\n YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A are both designed to take off and land from traditional runways, but are already\u00a0being engineered from the ground up<\/a>\u00a0to align with\u00a0the Air Force\u2019s Agile Combat Employment<\/a>\u00a0(ACE) concepts of operations. ACE focuses heavily on the ability to deploy in\u00a0irregular ways to a disaggregated array of operating locations<\/a>, which include remote sites with limited infrastructure. This, in turn, helps upend enemy targeting cycles and reduces vulnerability.\u00a0<\/strong>General Atomics has previously said the YFQ-42A incorporates\u00a0specific design features that could help<\/a>\u00a0with operations from shorter and less well-maintained\u00a0runways. The\u00a0Fury design<\/a>\u00a0that serves as a base for Anduril\u2019s CCA, originally developed by Blue Force Technologies, also has features that allow for shorter field performance.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.fie.undef.edu.ar\/ceptm\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/cca-composite-rendering-designations-1024x576.webp\")