{"id":819018,"date":"2026-07-23T16:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T16:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/819018\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T16:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T16:16:08","slug":"degree-of-survivability-key-question-for-diu-usaf-mma-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/819018\/","title":{"rendered":"Degree Of Survivability Key Question For DIU\/USAF MMA Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

The degree of survivability for future massed modular aircraft (MMA) is a key question for the program.<\/p>\n

This month, the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and U.S. Air Force announced\u00a0MMA\u00a0to replace the\u00a0General Atomics-Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) MQ-9A Reaper.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Joint Force\u2019s reliance on low density, high-value \u2018exquisite\u2019 \u2013greater than $30 million\u2013manned and unmanned aircraft is unsustainable against adversaries utilizing layered defenses enabled by increasingly low-cost anti-aircraft capabilities,\u201d according to DIU\u2019s\u00a0MMA solicitation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The number of air to ground strikes in Iran by Reapers has far outstripped the number by any other aircraft, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach said in May, yet the Air Force is down to a fleet of 135 MQ-9As, as the service has lost 24 Reapers in the conflict with Iran.<\/p>\n

The MQ-9A line closed last year, but General Atomics still makes the MQ-9B SkyGuardian and SeaGuardian.<\/p>\n

The Senate Armed Services Committee\u2019s version of the fiscal 2027 defense authorization bill requires the build of at least\u00a045 MQ-9s by the start of fiscal 2029 to meet a minimum requirement of 180.<\/p>\n

\u201cCrucially, MMA must retain the ability to be outfitted with a variety of payloads, including full motion video sensors, to execute missions that the MQ-9A performs today,\u201d DIU said in the MMA solicitation. \u201cBy deploying large groups of risk-tolerant MMA, the Joint Force can overwhelm enemy defenses even while experiencing numerous MMA losses. Keeping a constant airborne MMA presence to launch weapons, gather intelligence, perform electronic warfare missions, or relay communications will force an adversary to stay on the defensive. This relentless pressure will exhaust the adversary, forcing them to burn through expensive anti-aircraft missiles and resources faster than they can be replaced.\u201d<\/p>\n

DIU wants a fleet of 20 MMA to achieve initial operational capability by fiscal 2031. The aircraft are to operate from runways of 6,000 feet or shorter, have a payload of at least 2,800 pounds, a speed of at least 200 knots, an unrefueled combat radius of at least 2,300 nautical miles with payload, and a self-deployment range of at least 8,000 nautical miles.<\/p>\n

The $30 million MMA unit cost goal and the 2,300 nautical mile range are \u201ceasily achievable,\u201d said retired Air Force Col. Mark Gunzinger, the director of future concepts and capability assessments at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.<\/p>\n

In May, Air Force Maj. Gen. Christopher Niemi, the service\u2019s head of force modernization, told Congress that he had approved a\u00a0requirements document for the MQ-9A follow-on and that the Air Force is looking to adopt, at least in part, the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) process for MMA.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou begin to go below $30 million or $20 million, you are more than likely reducing its survivability,\u201d Gunzinger said of MMA in a Wednesday telephone interview. \u201cStealth is essential to air campaigns in highly contested environments against peer adversaries, but you can still have a degree of stealth for that price point. It will really come down to survivability and what kinds of mission systems you put on the aircraft.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll that said, I think it\u2019s [MMA\u2019s] a good idea,\u201d Gunzinger said. \u201cI think we absolutely have to do an MQ-9 Next, whether it\u2019s a variant of MQ-9 or not. Obviously, there are gonna be multiple vendors pursuing it, and, frankly, it could be more than a single design, as we see with the CCA.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, the Air Force picked both the GA-ASI FQ-42A and the\u00a0Anduril Industries\u00a0FQ-44A\u00a0to continue into the\u00a0engineering and manufacturing development\u00a0(EMD) phase of CCA, and the service chose\u00a0Shield AI,\u00a0RTX\u2019s Collins Aerospace, and Anduril for an initial stab at CCA mission autonomy in EMD.<\/p>\n

MMA is to have a modular design and higher and faster production rates. Companies will likely have to make design trade-offs in range, payload capacity, and stealth to meet the cost target.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe MQ-9 is serving us well in the conflict in the Middle East, but the MQ-9, depending on what sensors are on that, can cost up to $50 million a copy so by getting something that\u2019s more modular, we think we can take advantage of an opportunity, if you knew that aircraft was gonna operate in a high threat environment, taking off those packages to drive that cost to a much lower price point,\u201d Niemi told legislators in May concerning the MQ-9 follow-on.<\/p>\n

Key subsystems and cost drivers on the MQ-9A include the Raytheon Multi-Spectral Targeting System-B, the GA-ASI Lynx synthetic aperture radar and triple-redundant flight control system, and the Honeywell\u00a0TPE331-10 engine.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe what is possible is to take advantage of modern manufacturing technologies so that we can buy something that is more flexible, lends itself more to open architecture, is more easily produced in mass numbers, and ultimately you could use in a more attritable way,\u201d Niemi said of the follow-on drone.<\/p>\n

Unit Costs and New Payloads<\/p>\n

While the Air Force has estimated a $30 million unit cost for the MQ-9A, GA-ASI points to the 2020-2025 Agile Reaper Enterprise Solution contract\u2019s unit cost of about $16 million\u2013an estimate that accords with a\u00a02021 Naval Air Systems Command document<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The unit cost for MQ-9Bs, bought thus far by Air Force Special Operations Command and foreign nations, is significantly higher\u2013analyst estimates range from $30 million to more than $40 million, but GA-ASI said that the price is justified, as the MQ-9B is larger and has more endurance and fuel and can fly in inclement weather.<\/p>\n

In addition, GA-ASI said, the latest Block 5 version of the MQ-9A has been testing new munitions and launched effects, including the\u00a0AeroVironment\u00a0Switchblade 600 and the BAE Systems\u00a0Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System, while the MQ-9B has tested the Raytheon UK\u2019s Paveway IV and\u00a0MBDA\u00a0Brimstone 3 for the United Kingdom. The MQ-9B is to test the MBDA Selective Precision Effects At Range (SPEAR) cruise missile,\u00a0Kongsberg\u2018s and Raytheon\u2019s Joint Strike Missile, and\u00a0Lockheed Martin\u2018s AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile and Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, according to GA-ASI.<\/p>\n

For MQ-9B, GA-ASI said it has integrated proliferated low-earth orbit satellite control and is to add airborne early warning,\u00a0autonomy and multi-aircraft control.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you tell me you want an aircraft at $16 million each,\u201d GA-ASI spokesman C. Mark Brinkley wrote in an email response to questions concerning the Air Force\u2019s statements on the MQ-9A. \u201cThen you invent a billion dollars of new payloads and other features. Then you tell me to integrate those. Then you refuse to buy any self-protection options while you put the aircraft at risk. Then you lose some and tell people it costs too much because of the payloads you\u2019re using on it. Make it make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

He highlighted instances in which MQ-9s take out surface to air missile sites and save the cost of firing a high-cost interceptor, such as Lockheed Martin\u2019s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense.<\/p>\n

Pentagon investment in MQ-9A \u201cself-protection has never been anywhere close to investment in new capability,\u201d Brinkley wrote. \u201cSurvivability is about a lot of things, but there are self-protection systems that might have saved a lot of aircraft.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we\u2019re chasing low-cost affordable mass with the expectation that they will have a short shelf life or simply be lost in combat,\u201d he wrote. \u201cWe can show you what that looks like from a General Atomics perspective and 30 years of actually delivering these aircraft at scale. Whether any actual value or cost savings to the American taxpayer results from any of this is impossible to know.\u201d<\/p>\n

A version of this story originally appeared in sister publication Defense Daily.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The degree of survivability for future massed modular aircraft (MMA) is a key question for the program. This…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":819019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,394345,100409,786,785,394346,394347,85,41189,394348],"class_list":["post-819018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-defense-daily","tag-defense-innovation-unit-diu","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-mq-9","tag-reaper","tag-sports","tag-u-s-air-force","tag-unmanned-aircraft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}