Frank Kendall, secretary of the Air Force and a five-time Wash100 awardee, highlighted the importance of maintaining a nuclear deterrent and the need for the Department of the Air Force to expand the use of artificial intelligence and cyber capabilities, Space Force reported Tuesday.
Kendall told the audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Monday that the effort includes the development of collaborative combat aircraft, a.k.a. CCAs.
What Are CCAs?
CCAs are unmanned combat systems that could be paired with the F-35 fighter jet and other crewed aircraft.
“We are committed to fielding these and at scale,” the secretary said of CCAs. “This is not an experiment or a prototype. We’re going to put these in our force structure. Let’s get going and that’s where we’re headed.”
More Capable Space Force
Kendall stressed the need to strengthen the U.S. Space Force to meet the security challenges in 2050.
“We’re going to need a much bigger, much more capable, much more powerful Space Force,” he noted. “… That’s a transformation that’s already started and we’ve made some pretty good progress. … We also need a lot of counter-space capabilities. … We’re going to have to do something to counter the militarization of space that China has embark upon largely to target our joint force and largely to deny us the capabilities to do the same things to Chinese forces.”
