DAYTON, Ohio — The Air Force plans to winnow a pool of nine vendors down to as many as six next year for a second round of its drone wingman program, according to a top service official.
An ongoing “concept refinement” stage is slated to last “another approximately 10 months,” Col. Timothy Helfrich, the Air Force’s program acquisition executive for fighters and advanced aircraft, said Tuesday during a media roundtable with reporters here at the Life Cycle Industry Days conference.
At the end of that concept refinement stage, the Air Force expects to get up to “six closed conceptual designs,” Helfrich said. Mirroring a similar construct for the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program’s first round, or “increment,” the Air Force subsequently expects to issue deals for prototyping and then, eventually, production contracts, Breaking Defense previously reported.
Helfrich did not specify when the deals would be awarded, or whether the up to six conceptual designs the service is aiming for could be carried forward into prototyping.
“We will continue to maximize competition through all the phases of CCA increment 2,” Helfrich said, emphasizing that new entrants who lose out on earlier deals could still compete for later stages.
