General Atomics\u2018 Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) subsidiary and BAE Systems said that they are teaming to demonstrate autonomous electronic warfare (EW) systems that the companies believe could one day go on U.S. Air Force Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA).<\/p>\n
Scott Bailie, BAE Systems\u2019 director of advanced electronic warfare solutions at BAE Systems, said in a joint company statement on Thursday that the companies are highlighting \u201cthe maturity of autonomous EW mission systems in support of U.S. Air Force objectives\u201d and that the companies are merging \u201cproven EW technology and secure command and control on a rapid timeline in a small form factor well-suited for CCAs.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first CCAs are to be air-to-air, but others may be those for intelligence or jamming missions. The Air Force has said that it plans to field 150 CCAs in the next five years to complement F-35s and possibly other manned fighters.<\/p>\n
General Atomics and BAE Systems said that they recently demonstrated \u201cunique\u201d EW features through a \u201csecure, jam-resistant Link 16\u201d network provided by BAE Systems, on a General Atomics MQ-20 Avenger jet drone\u2013\u201cused extensively\u201d for autonomous drone\/CCA development.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe demonstration helps accelerate emerging networked electronic attack capabilities for U.S. Air Force Autonomous Collaborative Platforms,\u201d the companies said. \u201cThe demonstration took place at GA-ASI\u2019s Desert Horizon flight operations facility in El Mirage, California, and is part of an ongoing series of technology insertion and autonomous flights performed using internal research and development funding to prove important concepts.\u201d<\/p>\n
In April, the Air Force said that it had chosen privately-held drone makers, General Atomics and Anduril, for the first round of CCA.\u00a0 General Atomics offered its Gambit design and Anduril its Fury.<\/p>\n
The companies beat defense industry heavyweights Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman, though these companies and others are free to bid on future CCA increments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
General Atomics\u2018 Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) subsidiary and BAE Systems said that they are teaming to demonstrate autonomous electronic warfare (EW) systems that the companies believe could one day go […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1698,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[329,331,330],"class_list":["post-1632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-air","tag-autonomous-ew","tag-cca","tag-general-atomics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/CCA.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1632"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1699,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632\/revisions\/1699"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedefencenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}