Luftwaffe CCAs: The Emerging Art of the Possible
The understanding of collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) and the roles that they can perform is starting to become clear. This article explores how CCAs could best contribute to the Luftwaffe as this understanding grows.
By Christoph Bergs, research analyst for airpower at RUSI, published on April 10, 2026. You can find Christoph on X.com here: https://x.com/MilAvHistory
Blessed with remarkable financial liquidity and the promise of lucrative contracts, the German defence industry continues to pull prototypes “off-the-shelf” to achieve the Luftwaffe’s aspiration to field a collaborative uncrewed system, commonly referred to as UCAV or CCA, before the end of the decade. Most recently, Rheinmetall and the Australian subsidiary of Boeing announced a strategic partnership, stating an intent to offer Boeing’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat to the Luftwaffe. This is alongside similar announcements made in 2025 by competitors Airbus and Kratos with XQ-58A Valkyrie, Helsing’s CA-1 Europa and a previously announced partnership between Rheinmetall and Anduril.
The popular appeal of the so far ill-defined UCAV/CCAs is the desire to field cheap, scalable mass to augment Western crewed combat air. This aspiration stands against current price estimations of $10-15 million per unit for the MQ-28, and $20-30 million per unit for the US’s Increment 1 CCAs.
In time, unit cost may fall with large-scale production, a higher risk-tolerance and certification adjustments for lower life-hour requirements on various critical systems like engines. But the final hardware and software specifications must be informed by exact capability requirements. These are still emerging.
- The growing collaborative combat aircraft marketplace
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The art of the possible, and likely the primary challenges of the Luftwaffe’s effort, will be to identify, on the one hand, what operational problems CCAs can solve as cost-effective solutions, and correspondingly, how CCAs can be integrated into the force. For Germany, the instinct will likely be to align uncrewed capabilities in support of the primary mission profiles of a rejuvenating Luftwaffe. This would suggest application in Deep Precision Strike (DPS), Counter-Air and Electronic Warfare (EW) missions.
The Numbers Game
An XQ-58 Valkyrie from Kratos which was selected by the USMC in January 2026, flying in formation with an F-35. Credit: USMC.
UCAV/CCAs sit in an uncanny valley of costs and aspiration. In the performance triangle of speed, range and payload, upfront costs are unavoidable. More specifically however, a UCAV/CCA in a DPS role competes with western munitions designed to fulfil the same effect. Long-range precision munitions have high costs exactly because they require sophisticated electro-optical and/or electromagnetic sensors, navigation modules and communication arrays. Yet notably, these munitions sit at unit costs below current UCAV/CCA estimates. Thus, if cheap, attritable mass is the sole defining requirement, increasing order volume and thereby lowering the price tag of pristine Western long-range munitions may prove a more sustainable investment; especially given the expected munitions expenditure rates in a peer conflict.
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On the other hand, if UCAVs/CCAs must be survivable, then the corresponding low observable characteristics and countermeasure systems come with a premium. In the German case, uncrewed systems with a DPS mission profile would have to penetrate a formidable, highly combat-experienced and layered Russian Integrated Air Defence System (IADS). This IADS presents a threat to even the most exquisite, crewed combat aircraft. This suggests that relatively affordable UCAV/CCA concepts would struggle to penetrate Russian IADS in sufficient numbers with sufficiently potent munitions to damage key targets. If designed to be survivable so that this mission profile becomes viable, then UCAV/CCAs risk approaching traditional combat aircraft unit costs.
We may indeed be approaching an inflection point in the appreciation of UCAVs/CCAs as cost and benefit become clearer. Notably, “loyal wingman” concepts of high-end uncrewed fighters proposed by various primes have disappeared over the span of the last two years, and instead many industrial players such as Helsing are concentrating on UCAV concepts.
CCAs as Combat Air Enablers
The CA-1 Europa during its unveiling in 2025. Credit: Helsing
These challenging cost/capability trade-offs suggest it may be more helpful to assess CCAs/UCAVs as enablers for traditional combat air operations and munitions, rather than as direct replacements. CCAs and UCAVs offer multiple potential avenues through which a modular platform could augment European combat air by plugging specific capability gaps, at an affordable price point. For Germany, this could include stand-in electronic attack (e.g. as part of the German LUWES programme) for SEAD missions, or ISTAR capabilities. Both mission sets would benefit from current software-defined UCAV/CCA approaches and the higher risk tolerance an uncrewed system promises. If sufficient air-to-air munitions are procured, these uncrewed systems could equally increase offensive counter air (OCA) reach in contested airspace, perform defensive counter air (DCA) missions, or escort high value aircraft.
By augmenting emerging German SEAD and EA capabilities, a UCAV/CCA would provide an additional capability that tackles the critical problem posed by the Russian IADS. Equally, uncrewed ISTAR capabilities could act as a significant force multiplier for other strike assets and ground forces, both in high-risk areas and on secondary tasks that do not merit a large crewed ISTAR asset. While this would necessitate broader investments into specialist branches helping to process, evaluate, disseminate and exploit gathered data, the software driven approach of current CCA capabilities lends itself well to rapid platform updates and the exploitation of EW and ISTAR data. In short, UCAVs/CCAs could serve as combat air enablers, assisting in the augmentation of traditional firepower and potentially helping fill current operational bottlenecks.
Calibre comment: The hurdles in the way of collaborative combat aircraft
More broadly, the operational and sustainment challenges and opportunities involved in operating uncrewed systems alongside traditional combat aircraft are not yet sufficiently understood. Questions remain around how many uncrewed systems are fielded per fighter, degrees of mission autonomy, TTPs, associated maintenance and sustainment structures, and beyond. Operational analysis must tackle these questions, although, in the German case, the need to do so is set against a challenging timeline and the ambition to get a CCA into service by the end of the decade.
The lead image shows Eurofighter of 31 Tactical Air Wing and a Tornado IDS (Interdiction Strike) of 33 Tactical Air Wing flying together in an operational formation during the Performance Verification Exercise 2018. Credit: German Air Force/Stefan Petersen.
