CCA Logistics

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This transcript was generated with the assistance of AI. Please report inconsistencies to comms@afa.org.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

So welcome, everyone. I’m Larry Stutzriem, the Executive Vice President for the Air & Space Forces Association. And this panel is all about CCAs and logistics. And for those of you who have not been listening, CCAs are collaborative combat aircraft. They’re pilotless, automated or AI-empowered aircraft that could be teamed with manned aircraft or operate independently. And as multiple war games and analyses have shown, CCAs promise to provide the Air Force war fighters with the affordable mass they need in a conflict to defeat a highly capable adversary. These novel aircraft will enable new ways to conduct counter-air missions, electronic attacks, and other types of operations. But this only happens if the Air Force can launch them, recover them in cases that they are reusable, regenerate their sorties, and that has to happen in contested environments. Bottom line, the logistics needed to generate CCA sorties from forward areas within range of an adversary’s missile forces will be crucial to mission success. So we’ve got a pretty good panel of experts today to discuss that. Let me introduce first Major General Joseph “Solo” Kunkel, the Air Force’s Director for Force Design, Integration, and War Gaming. Welcome. We also have Mike Atwood, Vice President of Advanced Programs for General Atomics, Aeronautical Systems. And we have Andrew “Scar” Van Timmeren, and that’s Anduril’s Senior Director for Air Dominance Systems. So Mike and Scar, welcome and general welcome. So let me jump into some questions here. First for you, General Kunkel. One of the more compelling cases for CCA is their potential to operate from distributed locations with a smaller footprint on the ground compared to most piloted aircraft. Air and missile threats to our Pacific bases however make this a particularly valuable attribute, so I wonder if you’d walk us through some of the desired characteristics CCA should have that would reduce their logistical footprint.

Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel:

Yeah, happy to do so. And I will tell you it’s been a pretty big week in this whole CCA market with the designation of the YFQ-42 and the 44. I mean that’s fantastic news. And for a career fighter pilot like me, and I know there’s some in the audience, and I know Scar and I flew F-22s together a while back. The fact that we now have a CCA, the first, you know, unpiloted fighter is really, really big news. And it’s going to change how we achieve air superiority. And I think that’s just fantastic. But to answer your specific question, I’ll frame it in the lens of force design because that’s, you know, my background and I think that’s where the Air Force is going. We 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 distributive basing. You know, the ability to create multiple dilemmas for our adversaries where we’re creating multiple places where they have to, you know, distribute and make choices about whether they’re going to target it or not. That’s a really big deal for us. But if you think about like that distributive basing, it also creates a lot of inefficiencies in how you might sustain something. So we’ve got to overcome that. And I think some of the design attributes that these two teams have been building into their CCAs are exactly that. You don’t want to have a huge logistical footprint that’s required for it. You don’t want to have like a big like sustainment requirements in addition to that logistical footprint. You want to have minimum sustainment requirements. You want to have, you want to be able to use commercial stuff to the max extent. You don’t want to have to take specialized refueling equipment, specialized loading equipment all over the theater. So those are the types of things that we’re thinking about as we design these things. And maybe the panel can go into that a little more detail.

Andrew Van Timmeren:

Yeah. I’m happy to kick start it here. So huge thanks to Air & Space Forces Association. Stutz, thanks for taking the time to moderate. I think it goes into exactly what General Kunkel was saying, is early on you communicate with your engineering team, not just the performance characteristics of the hardware that you want, like a turn performance in degrees per second, or overall like takeoff and landing distance, or things that are kind of key performance attributes. But you also want to say everything has to be easily accessible from the design. Everything has to be easily line replaceable. Everything has to, you know, what we do is we have virtual models of people in reaching into places to get after these line replaceable units. We have ease of access of all the panels. And that is as critical of a point of the design of the vehicle as is the overall performance that you’re getting at. So design for simplicity, that design for low maintenance, that design for low sustainment has to be from the drawing board at the very beginning.

Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel:

Yeah, and I think just to piggyback on what you just said, there’s a level of requirements that we perhaps haven’t done in the past that we may have to get to in the future. You know, and one of those that we’ve been talking about in a couple of these panels is scalability and the ability to, you know, like produce them quickly, those types of things. But I think it gets at some of the stuff you’re talking about.

Mike Atwood:

Yeah, it’s, you know, thank you for having General Atomics. Always a pleasure to be around, you know, very like-minded people and be fortunate to be one of the CCA providers. For me, it’s a little bit of a different story. I took a lot of inspiration from Rapid Raptor, what you guys did when you guys were operating. And then we did Rapid Reaper, which was taking the MQ-9 to Palau. The 556 Squadron did that a couple years ago now. And that was very exciting for me to understand pragmatically what that looks like. Yes, there’s the requirements in the drawing board, but there’s also like, let’s just go try it. Let’s just go see what we have and where the LIMFACs are. And what we realized is contested logistics is a big deal. You know, we don’t want to send a C-130 with giant propellers every time we want to go, you know, resupply the FARP. And so we’ve been working on ACE kits for the MQ-9 Reaper that are now deployed that carry those kind of components. And then lastly, having the pedigree that General Atomics has, we have a huge infrastructure of parts already deployed around the globe for the MQ-9. So our CC aircraft uses that pedigree and has a forward deployed footprint today before we’ve even built the aircraft. Now the hope is to not open those panels, right? So the best aircraft is the one you don’t do maintenance on because you have to leverage that 8 million flight hours, that electromechanical kind of actuation, no hydraulics, and then bring the congested logistics in a way that’s a tradable and then disperse that through. And I think Rapid Raptor and Rapid Reaper have been really good front runners to guide the CCA program.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

So if we could talk a little more specifically about, especially for the industry, you know, a lot of new technologies out there and you’ve spoken to innovation. So with respect to reducing logistics, complexity or supportability out in the field, give us some ideas what you’ve done there.

Andrew Van Timmeren:

Yeah, one of the things that’s critical to the ease of supportability is leveraging as much as possible commercial components. So engines that are flight certified, already in mass production for the civilian aviation community. Wheels, tires, brakes, hydraulic, actuators, all the subcomponents that go into a vehicle. If we have to think about every single aircraft that the Air Force builds has to now have new development efforts of all these other subsystems that then roll up into an integrated capability, that just adds time. It adds time to the schedule. And I think one of the greatest capabilities we can, with commercial components, is have much lower risk. Especially when they’re certified by FAA or other bodies, then you can know that they’re trusted and you just gotta plug ’em into your jet and get ready to go. A perfect example of that actually is the engine. We’re using commercial engine that is in production, is FAA certified, millions of flight hours on it. And so that means that, getting after, I think Mike said well, that globally available footprint of logistics support. And so if you need to have, you know, the change out of an engine, you can find those engines out in the field. And so I think that, amongst other things, get into the overall greater sustainment capability of the jet.

Mike Atwood:

Yeah, to pile on what Scar said there, some innovation that we’ve been able to bring to the CCA Increment 1 is actually all electric start. So what I told the engineers is, I want Tesla Smart Summon on my CCA day one. I want you to be able to pull out, you know, your tablet, whatever your ground control element is, and basically tell it, go to CAP, go to this location. So we took, and we actually use the same engine between both of our programs. We innovated an electric start capability that over BELOS, you can hit a button, the plane will start up, taxi, and take off all on its own. You know, that wouldn’t have been possible without the satellite launch and recovery that people like Solo have invested in on the MQ-9 platform, and to build forward from that with autonomy. ‘Cause the other part about autonomy is it takes the man out of the equation. So I need less deployed footprint, less chow halls, less barracks, to do that kind of smart summon feature. And it gives the warfighter the shortest temporal path to the kill chain they can possibly have. So electric self-start is an innovation. And then using commercial components, I fully agree with Scar, that’s been an enabler.

Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel:

Yeah, I wanna build on that using commercial components, because that’s important for a number of ways. Simplicity, eliminating vulnerabilities, and supply chain and that. But what it also does, it opens up the aperture on where you can actually place these things. You know, if you can put these, if you can put them in a lot of different places, assuming access, basically an overflight, where there’s potentially like commercial aircraft that potentially helps you out, with access to parts and that.

Mike Atwood:

You know, it’s interesting, deploying the Reapers, we showed up at these World War II leftover airfields, and we quickly realized these airfields were in really bad shape, right? Really bad shape. And we started to really appreciate runway distance. And so in doing so, it’s hard to make a fast-moving aircraft use a lot less runway. And so what we realized is we needed a trailing arm landing gear. And so having a landing gear that can handle this off-nominal performance, to open up that infrastructure without requiring the Air Force to go do all the barracks, you know, the airfield improvements and do that, I think is gonna allow that force structure to have the dispersed spacing that the force needs.

Andrew Van Timmeren:

I think to piggyback as well on what Mike said, when it comes to the availability of parts, I can’t quite see, I don’t know if there are any two alphas in the crowd, you know, aircraft maintenance folks, but if you think about the sourcing of those components, if we have a blown tire, which aircraft do, I never have because I’m a great pilot, but if you land and you blow a tire, you gotta go replace that. Well, you might have to go out into the community and find it. How you’re gonna find a mil-only developmental tire, or you can go to the local FBO and buy it. And so I think that’s one of the critical enablers is just another example of commercial components, which then we get after that lower supply chain and requirement.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, we’re gonna talk a little more about this, but let me back up just a bit, General. You know, fighting from the inside, you’ve got threat both to forces on the ground, forces in the air. And when we talk about ACE, backing up a moment, talking about ACE, how do CCAs actually help enable that concept and where do you see that as a powerful additive inside?

Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel:

Yeah, I think it starts with how they’re built and how we designed them. I mean, this is gonna be the first aircraft that we have developed specifically for ACE. If you think about the F-22, when it was developed, we weren’t thinking about ACE. You know, if you think about the F-15, the F-16, we didn’t develop those for ACE. It was enterprising Airmen that started with Rapid Raptor that said, “Hey, perhaps there’s a new way “we need to employ these.” So the CCAs, we specifically designed them to operate in this type of manner. And I think that’s the difference. That’s gonna be the game changer for us. What they’re gonna deliver for United States Air Force, what they’re gonna deliver for the Joint Force of America is they’re gonna strengthen our position on the inside. And that’s exactly what we wanna do and that the force design describes that. Strengthen our position on the inside, strengthen our position close to the adversary so we’re in a position where we can generate combat power and then bring the fight to the adversary as quickly as possible.

Andrew Van Timmeren:

Yeah, I mean, this is exactly the use case of what it should be. Inside, as you’ve defined, missionary one. Like, so when you think about the ease of logistics as you get closer to missionary one, it’s gonna be much more challenging. But the opportunities that the CCAs that we’re gonna provide and are blessed to be able to do so, the fact that we’re gonna be able to increase that combat capability while lowering the risk on the dudes who are still in the jet, while then also not creating an already overtaxed demand on our mobility system, I think it’s key, it’s so key.

Mike Atwood:

Yeah, and agile combat employment, what I wanna give Solo is adaptable combat employment. So one of the things that we realized is you can only take a landing gear jet power aircraft so far, so we embarked on the DARPA Long Shot Program. And that was just another way to project power where we talk about missionary one, two, and three. I can bring that from a fighter, I can bring that from a helicopter, I can bring that from a balloon, I can bring that from a rocket-launched sled and allowing Kunkel to work in all the different aspects of those force employments. Do I want a pre-position? Do I wanna manage the temporal problem and the timing of that kill chain? We have to be adaptable ’cause I don’t think we have all the answers and the threat’s changing so fast. It’s not just about being agile, but it’s about being adaptable.

Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel:

Yeah, if you don’t mind, I’ll add one more thing onto this and this is agile combat employment concept. What we really need is we need sustainment that can keep up with it. And there’s a lot of folks that are talking about, yeah, we need to think about logistics under attack. And how do we conduct logistics under attack? The best way to conduct logistics under attack is to keep your logistics free from attack. And the way you do that is you build it into the platforms that you have by minimizing the logistics footprint, by keeping as much of the logistics out of that area where it can be attacked, and then creating really hard problems for the adversary in terms of their targeting. So keeping logistics free from attack is something that we’re integrating in the agile combat employment concept and I know it’s something that you guys are thinking about as you develop these aircraft.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, well, let me stick with that for a second, General. We could use CCAs perhaps as cargo carrying aircraft and that could also be one way to minimize the risk that we have on the manned aircraft, larger airframes. Do you see that as being a valid application?

Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel:

Yeah, listen, I do, I do see that. And we’ve done it. And Mike talked about what was done previously and I know when I was a AEW commander over in the AFSINT AOR we used MQ-9s to ferry parts between bases. I mean, that’s something we’ve done in the past and something I think we’ll continue to do. I think what you’re hitting on though is this mission area one and the concept of logistics, what we need for airlift is gonna change potentially. And you need a cargo aircraft that can very agilely deliver parts and deliver weapons and deliver material to places that are in the inside. So like everything else that’s gonna be in this mission area one, this high ground threat density, they’ve gotta be able to generate from within those areas and then they’ve gotta survive within that area as well. So I think CCAs, you’ll find an additional use case for that and Enterprise and Airmen have done that for years with MQ-9s is what we have, but I think you’ll find expanded use cases with CCAs.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, yeah.

Mike Atwood:

Can I just kind of add to that a little bit? So been very involved in MQ-9 contested logistics and deploying things, but it’s relatively small. And so GA realized that we needed more than just the collaborative combat aircraft, but the collaborative mobility aircraft. And some people know the DARPA Liberty Lifter Program. And it was the idea, how do I swing the pendulum to the other side? How do I bring 40,000 pounds of cargo flying over the surface of the water in ground effect and bring that? And that was a really hard problem. That was a DARPA hard problem, super cavitating airfoil, hydrofoils and all kinds of weird stuff. And I think CCA can actually be in some cases a mobility aircraft. One of the reasons that GA chose to have an internal weapons bay was for carrying not just missiles and kinetics, but to do that logistics. And so one thing is also not exposing your logistics to the adversary. So it’s so important to have that inner bay so you can carry that around and kind of hide where you’re moving the most sensitive stuff, whether it’s missiles, whether it’s fuel, whether it’s avionics repair equipment. So I’m hopeful that the increment one will provide a utilitarian nature that where we can kind of take Rapid Reaper, take collaborative mobility aircraft and find something very pragmatic in the near term.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Which is right in gear with the AMC’s concern about having a smaller transport aircraft. Doesn’t have to be manned necessarily. So let me say a little bit here. We know that munition stockpiles might be an issue in a highly contested fight. But CCAs may help with determining the force mix. They might be designed in different ways. They may be carrying munitions. But can you talk a little bit about that? About how CCAs may help us with that mix? Or influence that mix?

Andrew Van Timmeren:

I’ll start first. So certainly if we assume that CCAs will be operating within mission area one, they need to be able to accept that risk. But then also if they’re going to be carrying capabilities, then they need to be able to be affordable, mass producible as well. And so I think we have a real challenge on our hands right now with the availability or challenges associated with the availability of over exquisite munitions. Then I think one of the great enablers of success and survivability within mission area one might be the usage of a CCA with a very affordable, mass producible something. And so I think there’s a real opportunity. And then getting into that overall design of what an affordable munition could look like, as I said earlier with the CCA, the very beginning, designing that for manufacture outside of even the United States where you don’t need exquisite manufacturing, you don’t need exquisite technicians. You can get all these materials, whether it be the raw or finished goods out and about. I think all that brought together enables some of these greater capabilities or munitions that may not be carried just on a CCA, but also on other platforms that will be also operating in mission area one and be augmented by the CCA.

Mike Atwood:

Yeah, so I’m gonna disagree with Scar a little bit, just for support here. So Elon Musk gave a great address at West Point and he talked about replicator hellscape and he talked about combat mass. And he added an important variable to his talk and he said it’s about mass and kill ratio. Right, ’cause you have a high kill ratio, you need less mass. And how you layer these things together to have the best force presentation structure I thought is really interesting. So something that I’ve had as a principal the last couple of years is how do I enhance that kill ratio without adding cost? And so it’s really important to me that we think about survivability. And so many people think about survivability in the air, in the air combat phase, but just as important as survivability on the ground. So minimizing your turn time on the aircraft, having a single point rapid fill that uses commercial means, not doing over the wing refueling, gets you to have a turnaround time that makes it extremely difficult for the adversary to get inside that targeting loop and attract you and not attack you ’cause they can’t even see it. And so then that ups your kill ratio. And so you start adding value. And then when you get to that point of value and you’re surviving, how do you enhance the missiles we already have? There are a lot of missiles that have been degraded by the threat kill chains. And I think CCA, whether the Andro aircraft or the General Atomics aircraft, can really be an enhancer on taking legacy weapons that we already have a hot production line on that aren’t that expensive and bring those to a mass and a kill ratio where we don’t need as many rails in the fight. So it’s not necessarily about affordability and driving affordability down where they’re so cheap that we need so many. It’s you gotta bring that kill ratio back in. And that’s why you see the General Atomics design of a bit more survivable features that we’ve baked into the design.

Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel:

I’ll agree with both of you, all right? So I think there’s something to the mass and kill ratio. I think there’s something to a high-low mix. Where I would like to take this from a force design perspective and maybe switch the conversation just a bit is we need scalable production and we need to put ourselves in a situation where we can produce as quickly as we’re expending. I don’t know how to do that. I’m certain that industry can figure this out. But we need to put ourselves in a position where we’re not in conflict, depleting our stockpile to a point where we get, not the weapons we want, not the choice weapons. And I’ll give you a story. Operation Allied Force 1999, 494th Fighter Squadron. We’re executing combat operations in Kosovo. And then night one, we are dropping the GBU-24 Paveway 3 weapon. I mean, it’s a fantastic weapon. It would hit this box right here. I mean, it’s highly accurate. Paveway 3s, that’s what we had the first couple nights. And about two weeks later, we’re like, the Paveway 3s are gone. We step out to the jets and it’s Paveway 2s. That’s interesting. Where did the Paveway 3s go? All right, then a few weeks later, we keep expending the Paveway 2s with the dialer codes. And the next thing you know, we’re dropping the lesser model of the Paveway 2. And then we get down into even a lesser version of the Paveway. And finally, we’re to a point where it’s like, we’re getting ourselves to a point where we depleted the entire stockpile of laser-guided bombs. I mean, that’s a little bit of an overstatement, but not much. And then that whole time, our combat, the capability of the weapons we were employing decreased. I think in future weapons, what we’d like to see is that the combat capability or the weapons that we have to employ on day one are kept as solid all the way out to date, 200 plus or whatever, whenever the war ends. So I think that’s something that we need to think about. Part of that’s innovation pipeline. Part of that is scalability of how we produce. But there’s something there that we need to figure out.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Let me tell you, that’s an extraordinary thought because we look back to the big war, World War II, it took years to generate enough industrial capacity to get to where we needed to go fight, not just sustain it. And so what you’re talking about is an incredible enhancement to deterrence that your adversary sees they can’t deplete you in any way. That’s extraordinary. So I’ll throw it to you guys on plan that what is industry doing technology-wise that could get to that point at some point?

Andrew Van Timmeren:

Well, I think one of the things that we’ve done is we are gonna build a modern manufacturing facility in Ohio, we’re calling it Arsenal One. And it is gonna leverage some of those modern manufacturing techniques. It’s not gonna be anchored to capabilities of the past. It’s gonna have access to some of the workforce that’s in the Midwest and it’s in the greater Columbus area. And one thing I wanna just continue to get after, in the same way, I know Solo, you understand this, is many wars, most wars, if not all wars, are actually won at the mission planning table. They’re not won once we get kinetic. You win it because you prepped, you prepared, you practiced. That is called the design phase of something. You win during the design phase of something. And so if you could design it for scale manufacturer, you could design it for non-exquisite materials, and then it could be manufactured by people that don’t have to be cleared and don’t have exquisite skills that can’t be replicated or trained, then that is a key enabler to get to what you’re describing. And so I think sometimes the bottleneck we need to focus on is that modern manufacturing with a different design focus point, and that will get you to what you’re describing, ’cause I think there’s a really reasonable chance if Raptor One will go out there and win their four-hour required fall. But then the next four hours may not be successful because we don’t have the munitions or whatever, but if we redesign and remanufacture how we go about doing this fundamental chore called manufacturing and delivery of capability, then that changes the entire calculus.

Mike Atwood:

Yeah, I think we’re at an interesting time. Our SPO has been phenomenal with digital transformation. They’ve brought a lot of knowledge parity, and with digital transformation comes digital truth. And so I’ve been trying to figure out how do I take that digital truth and scale that into manufacturing? And the answer is you gotta take the humans out of manufacturing. And I think Andrel’s got it right with Arsenal One and the level of robotics they’re talking about. One specific technology that I put inside that digital transformation is additive manufacturing. And we’ve taken that to the next level with a company named Divergent in a partnership where we laser center aluminums and titaniums in glorified 3D printers, and five-axis robot arms pull it out of the printer and build it in situ. So it can scale to any rate. It can run 24 hours a day. I can add more robots to add surge capacity. But the real value is in the determinism, that design optimization that Scar talked about. I don’t have all that human error in the process, and I can build it in extreme scale. And I’m really excited by that. Divergent has some articles on the floor, and I encourage you to go by and look at that. But I really think that’s the future. And RCC Increment One is leveraging that as much as possible to the scale that is needed on this first program.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, so when you say “in situ,” for general, what are you talking about? In the combat zone, in the high, dense threat zone?

Mike Atwood:

From a manufacturing perspective, it’s in situ in terms of it’s literally assembling the components in free space. Not in the warfighting sense, but in the production, real-time throughput sense.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Sure. What do you think about that, though?

Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel:

I’ve seen it. I think it’s fantastic. I think it’s incredible. And when I saw it, I was like, hey, this is exactly what we’re talking about, what we need. But where my mind went, and what I think we need to think about is how do you optimize the building of the weapon to the point where it’s put on aircraft? And that’s an area that we really haven’t thought about. And so I think technologies like that give us opportunities where you can start going from this factory to placement on an aircraft very quickly. And not really important right now. In the wars we’ve fought, you scale and you build a bunch of weapons and you have them stockpiled. But in the future, where you’ve got an innovation pipeline, you’ve got scalable manufacturing, then I think this distance between where you manufacture and where you employ, that might be a factor. I don’t know that it is. We haven’t done the analysis behind it. But I think there may be something there.

Andrew Van Timmeren:

I think one of the models that might be of reasonable interest is the Weapon Systems Evaluation Program, or WESIP.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah.

Andrew Van Timmeren:

If you go down, and you know this, when you go down to WESIP, typically operated out of Tyndall Air Force Base, it is a full end-to-end exercise of build the weapon, load the weapon, fire the weapon, assess did the weapon work. And I think that’s a reasonable model to be altered and added to the front end of industry build the weapon. And then take it to the ammo dump. How quickly can we do that? I think we already have, we’re rounding third and heading towards home with the existing WESIP. How can we move that a couple steps forward into manufacturing and then demonstrate that we cut all the time that we need off of that?

Mike Atwood:

You know, it’s funny, when I hear them talk about the weapon side of that, you know, the Seek Eagle process is like the bane of my existence. It takes so long to qualify a weapon for carriage. You know, I talked about adaptability, not just being agile, but adaptable. One of the things that that additive or more robotic manufacturing gives you is heterogeneality. If we get it wrong, if we go do a storage step testing and the thing flies in the wrong direction, I can reprint the next day, you know, the altered tail fin configuration or whatever it is. And to be honest, it’s what the F1 industry is using for, you know, Drive to Survive right now. I mean, they’re in a design cycle that is beyond anything that I can imagine for the Department of Defense. And they’re doing that with that digital thread and that determinism with kind of robotic manufacturing.

Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel:

But I think it’s gonna be required in the future. You know, when you start looking at revolutions of military affairs, I think that’s gonna be one of them. I know, Stutz, we got you way off script here.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

No, no, no, no. It’s extraordinary discussion. And I appreciate, especially industry. You guys have got to figure out what he wants. That’s gonna be fun. We might schedule next time another panel that just talks about what just happened right now for the whole panel. So I gotta say, ’cause there’s a couple more things that folks are interested in. And we’ll start with you again, General. But once again, industry’s gotta help with this. But do you foresee with CCA a new type of Airmen or a new skill set? We know we’re not gonna get a lot, perhaps, money for more manpower. So that might be an issue. But what is that cadre of the first Airmen that have to sustain, maintain, launch, recover, potentially, CCA?

Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel:

Yeah, I think we’re figuring that out. And the great power competition work or the stuff that we’ve been doing recently with Airmen Development Command and thinking about how we bring Airmen into the service, then how you train them, and then how you actually field capabilities. We’re putting a lot of thought into that. And we’re putting thought into the dot mil PFP portion of a capability development. Areas where we haven’t spent as much time because it just, there frankly hasn’t been stuff that’s been fundamentally new. The CCA and the YFQ-42 and 44 are giving us opportunities where we do need to think differently about that. And the Experimental Operations Unit that’s been stood up at Creech Air Force Base, where we’ve got Airmen, and we’re putting these capabilities in the hands of war fighters, they’re gonna figure that out. So we don’t know all the answers yet, but I’m certain as we progress here in the next year, we’re flying to things this summer. We’re gonna find out exactly what we need.

Andrew Van Timmeren:

I think just to piggyback on what General Kunkel said, it’s once you give a capability into the hands of uniformed warriors, the EOU has real potential to make a meaningful difference here. And to tie back to the overall thread and the topic of the panel, is they will tell us what the exact logistics requirement would be. Like how many people do we need? How many spares do we need based off the utilization rate? And it should be baseline to less than what it is right now. Like that should be the baseline understanding. And so I think that just to reiterate that the sooner we get hardware and tails into people’s hands to start breaking them, then we’ll learn the most we can at that point.

Mike Atwood:

Yeah, I mean, I’ve been at GA a little over 20 years and I feel like I’ve been part of the problem and the manning, right? We gave birth to these unmanned airplanes and then we made it remotely piloted. And then we made it two pilots to one aircraft. And then we added an Intel and a SOC and all these things around it. And so I’m actually leaning the pendulum completely to the other side that when we talk about operating these aircraft, there shouldn’t be Airmen. It should be autonomous. We should use the autonomy that we have. It’s more deterministic than a human will be. We can implement the ROE in a way that we need to do. You know, it’s gonna take time to get there, I get it. But if I don’t aim my company at being, you know, a human-less system, you know, as far on the loop or outside the loop as possible. So I lean in very deeply on things like Common Mission Control Center, JFN, as being, you know, the Airmen that will operate the airplane. Obviously there’s a logistics tail. You know, if I do my job right, we’re not maintaining these airplanes. They’re big lighters. You know, they’re not Zippos. We’re not, you know, necessarily changing the flint in them. And so if I can bring, you know, the eight million flight hours we have on the MQ-9 in a new, reliable way, I think we still have the highest availability in the entire Air Force on the MQ-9, and those same parts are in the CCA. I think there’s a good chance it’s a big lighter, and I think it’s a big lighter that operates itself.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, really potential to repurpose that airframe. It’s just amazing. So, sticking with this, what we’re talking about right here, we have another challenge right now, and that is, you know, do we have sufficient support equipment? And we don’t. The Air Force has, you know, now we’re gonna introduce CCAs. So, what is that all about? It’s not gonna use existing support equipment. Is that part of the design that you’re looking at right now?

Andrew Van Timmeren:

Yeah, I’ll just, again, I’ll just kick this dead horse. Again, it’s the efficiency of the design. So when you have a kit required to execute the maintenance on these vehicles, it is not a bespoke wrench, or a bespoke tool, or a bespoke anything. It is stuff that’s readily available and already in production for the support of other assets. There’s minimal to zero bespoke or unique ground equipment, ’cause then the moment an aircraft, or a moment, I’ll just say a capability, injects a unique skew into the logistics readiness footprint and then creates a demand signal on a warehouse somewhere that is unique to itself, that is a problem. And that is, so starting from the very beginning, that you are not gonna do that, you’re gonna do a minimal amount of that, but using the maximum amount of commercially available capabilities in the maintenance realm that lowers to as close to zero possible the unique demand on that logistics system.

Mike Atwood:

Yeah, so I employ the James Bond model. I only wanna maintain something that I can jump out of the back of a C-130 with and maintain it. There is no Home Depot in Palau, right? There is no even standard craftsman tool that you can get. So whatever we’re gonna use has gotta be on a guy’s back that comes out and can parachute to a site. And then you’ve just gotta build in condition-based maintenance. So because these are highly autonomous systems with lots of computers, while it’s flying, it should be doing a health check. It should tell you when it’s starting to cough a little bit and get sick. And I should know long before it hits when the agile combat sites, you know, a micro spoke, a spoke, a hub, exactly what my opportunity for repair is, right? Because we’re sharing parts with MQ-9, I keep bringing that up, I can cannibalize an MQ-9, right? So I could land an MQ-9, you know, take an aileron servo out of there, put it on there. I could take the landing gear shock and put it on there. And it has to be on-demand responsive and it has to be within the enemy’s observation or targeting cycles, right? So I’m not depending on commercial tools. I’m depending on the minimalistic amount of tools to land at a Klaski airport with a parachute and maintain the CCA.

Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel:

Yeah, I think there’s a side benefit to the conversation we’re having here and the use in commercial parts. And that’s the ability to field things quickly. And the work that the Agile Development Office has done, you know, working with you all to move very quickly, we’re gonna field this capability faster than I can remember any capability in the history of my career, which is fantastic. So there’s something there that you guys got in addition to just the logistics benefits.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Man, this is going fast. I wish we could keep going. We got about four minutes, but I wanna ask at least one more question here, maybe two. So, and this is for you, General Kunkel. You know, the concept is to have a dispersed CCA footprint, you might say. So that means host nation support big time, very different perhaps from what we have today. What is, or what do you foresee asking for from host nation support as that’s negotiated just for the addition of CCAs?

Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel:

Yeah, I think access and placement is the big thing, right? We just need access to sites and we need to be able to place equipment and the aircraft there. And we’re well on our way there. We’re getting to the point where we know exactly what that takes and we’ve done it before. And so we’ll get there. That’s frankly the big thing. And I’ll stop there if anyone’s got any of those thoughts so we can get to another–

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

 I’m sure Mike does.

Mike Atwood:

Oh yeah, just real quick. I mean, our SPO has been amazing. You know, part of the speed to ramp was enabled with next gen acquisition. We could not be sitting on the stage with the success, you know, the YFQs if it wasn’t for the commitment of the SPO. Oh my God, I just forgot what the question was. Oh, FMS. So I think the way you get host nation basing is you include them in the process. And I think our SPO has done a great job in terms of including the allied partners early in the process to understand what the capability is. And if they’re sharing in the metal that’s on their sovereign soil, you know, and what it can do and how it can aid their national security, I think that’s kind of the recipe. So I think early dialogue, early involvement, and especially with this new administration, there’s a lot of interest to bring them in and have purchasing power for that. And I think that’s gonna be an enabler.

Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel:

Yeah, I agree with you. And we’ve, most recently we signed an agreement, a CCA agreement with Japan, you know, so that’s a step in the right direction. And you know, these Mission Area One capabilities, the capabilities are meant to be spread to our allies and partners. I think that’s one of the benefits.

Andrew Van Timmeren:

The ubiquity that these, when these vehicles get fielded by other partners and our allies in the region, is just gonna create the synergies and effectiveness and efficiency to facilitate this lower of demand on the logistics system.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

Yeah, yeah. Well, my gosh, I wish we could continue this discussion, and we could at the bar, if you’re willing. Major General “Solo” Kunkel, the force design guy, you’ve had a lot of, any final comments you wanna bring up?

Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel:

It’s an exciting time. If I could restart career at second lieutenant, I said it yesterday, I’ll say it again, I’ll trade with anybody in the room, all right? The Air Force is on a fantastic track. We’re developing the capabilities of putting the hands in the Airmen that are gonna be dominating for the next 30 years. I’m confident in this track. CCA and YFQ-42 and 44, the first unmanned fighter in the world. This is gonna be a big part of it. So thanks for the opportunity.

Maj. Gen. Larry Stutzriem, USAF (Ret.):

You bet. Okay, well, that’s all we have. I really appreciate the panel. It was a great discussion. Thank you very much. Round of applause, please.