F-35 Quarterbacks and CCAs: The Behavioral Path to Sixth-Generation Airpower
The concept of fifth-generation air warfare was clearly articulated by former Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne during the early development of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. Wynne emphasized a fundamental shift from platform-centric thinking to network-centric operations, where stealth, sensor fusion, and information dominance would define a new era of air combat. The aircraft itself became a flying information node, integrating data from multiple sources and distributing targeting information across the battlespace. This clear conceptual framework guided procurement, training, and operational integration for nearly two decades.
In contrast, the sixth-generation concept remains frustratingly opaque. While the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program and the Navy’s F/A-XX effort have generated significant discussion, there is no equivalent to Wynne’s clear articulation of what defines this next generation. Various characteristics have been proposed, adaptive cycle engines, enhanced range, advanced materials, open architecture, but these represent incremental improvements rather than a transformative operational concept.
However, one element has emerged with increasing clarity: the crewed fighter operating in a “wolfpack” configuration with Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs). This human-machine teaming approach represents a genuinely revolutionary shift in how air power is generated and applied.
Yet here is the critical insight that defense planners are beginning to recognize: the F-35 itself can be reworked to serve as the quarterback in such wolfpack formations. Rather than waiting for an entirely new airframe to deliver sixth-generation capabilities, we are witnessing a hybrid transition where existing fifth-generation platforms evolve to exhibit sixth-generation behavior through integration with autonomous systems.
The F-35 as an Evolving Platform
The F-35’s design philosophy, rooted in Wynne’s vision, incorporated open architecture and continuous software upgrades from its inception. Unlike legacy platforms where capabilities were essentially frozen at delivery, the F-35 was conceived as a constantly evolving system. This approach, though criticized for creating sustainment challenges, positioned the platform for adaptation to collaborative combat operations.
The aircraft’s sensor fusion capabilities, integrating data from its AN/APG-81 AESA radar, electro-optical targeting system, distributed aperture system, and electronic warfare suite, create a comprehensive battlespace picture that exceeds what any single pilot can fully exploit. This information richness, initially designed to enhance situational awareness for the pilot, becomes the foundation for commanding autonomous loyal wingmen. The F-35 already processes and distributes more information than a single human can utilize; extending that processing to coordinate unmanned systems represents an expansion of existing capability rather than a fundamental redesign.
Recent developments in the F-35 program demonstrate this evolution. Block 4 upgrades include enhanced computing power, increased data storage, and improved communications architecture, all essential for managing multiple CCAs simultaneously. The Technology Refresh 3 (TR-3) initiative, despite its delays, fundamentally increases the aircraft’s processing capacity, enabling it to serve as a command node for distributed operations. These are not merely incremental improvements; they represent the technical foundation for sixth-generation operational concepts.
The Collaborative Combat Aircraft Revolution
The CCA concept emerged from recognition that exquisite manned platforms, operating alone, cannot achieve the mass necessary for high-intensity conflict against peer adversaries. The economics are straightforward: a single F-35 costs approximately $85 million; a CCA is projected to cost between $20-30 million. This cost differential enables force multiplication, instead of four F-35s operating independently, imagine four F-35s each commanding two to four CCAs, creating a force of 12-20 platforms with substantially greater capability than the original four.
But CCAs represent more than simple force multiplication through numbers. They enable entirely new tactical approaches by accepting risk that cannot be imposed on crewed aircraft. CCAs can penetrate dense air defense networks to serve as forward sensors, suppress enemy air defenses through saturation attacks, or provide deceptive electronic warfare signatures, all missions where the loss of an unmanned platform is acceptable but the loss of a pilot is not.
The wolfpack concept leverages this risk calculus. The crewed F-35 operates at standoff range, preserving the irreplaceable human pilot while orchestrating autonomous systems that engage more directly with enemy defenses. The human provides strategic judgment, ethical oversight, and adaptive decision-making; the CCAs provide mass, forward presence, and expendable persistence. This division of labor represents a fundamentally different operational model than either fifth-generation platform-centric operations or traditional unmanned aircraft employment.
From Fifth to Sixth: A Behavioral Rather Than Platform Transition
This realization forces a reconceptualization of generational transitions in air warfare. Previous generations were defined primarily by platform characteristics: fourth-generation fighters introduced fly-by-wire controls and beyond-visual-range missiles; fifth-generation platforms added stealth and sensor fusion. The leap to sixth generation, however, is better understood as behavioral or capability enhanced rather than platform-based transition. It’s defined by how forces operate, not what individual platforms can do.
An F-35 operating alone in 2024 exhibits fifth-generation behavior. The same F-35, upgraded with enhanced processing and communications, operating as the quarterback for a formation of four CCAs in 2028, exhibits sixth-generation behavior. The platform itself has evolved incrementally, but the operational capability has transformed fundamentally.
This represents a practical application of the force multiplier integration concept I have developed in my recent work on naval transformation. Rather than hybrid fleets where different platform types operate in parallel, we see genuine integration where the whole exceeds the sum of its parts. The F-35 becomes more capable when paired with CCAs than it could ever be through internal upgrades alone; the CCAs become exponentially more effective under human direction than they could be operating autonomously.
The Economic and Strategic Logic
The hybrid transition approach offers compelling advantages over waiting for a clean-sheet sixth-generation platform. The F-35 production line is mature, with over 1,000 aircraft delivered and production rates approaching 150-180 per year. The industrial base exists, the training pipeline is established, and international partnerships are solidified. Pivoting entirely to a new platform would sacrifice these advantages and create a dangerous capability gap during transition.
Moreover, the F-35’s development history decades of cost growth and schedule delays should instill caution about betting everything on a new program. The NGAD program encountered major turbulence in 2024, when Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall pressed ‘pause’ on the fighter segment for several months to reassess the design concept amid projected unit costs on the order of $300 million per aircraft. In an era of constrained budgets and rising peer competition, the risk-adjusted approach favors evolving existing platforms rather than pursuing revolutionary new ones. Just calling it an F-47 will not solve the problem.
The CCA development approach reflects this pragmatism. Rather than specifying detailed requirements and pursuing a single solution, the Air Force has embraced an incremental approach with multiple contractors developing competing designs across different capability increments.
Internationally, this approach leverages the F-35’s unique position as the most widely adopted fighter aircraft in history. With partners including the UK, Italy, Japan, Australia, and many others operating F-35s, the wolfpack concept can proliferate globally through CCA integration rather than requiring these nations to develop entirely new platforms. The interoperability advantages are substantial. Allied forces could integrate their CCAs with partner nation F-35s, creating flexible coalitions that share the burden of developing autonomous systems while maintaining commonality in the crewed quarterback platform.
Training and Cultural Transformation
The shift to wolfpack operations requires fundamental changes in how pilots are trained and how air warfare is conceptualized. As my recent research at Italy’s International Flight Training School demonstrates, fifth-generation pilot training has already moved beyond traditional stick-and-rudder skills to emphasize information management and decision-making within complex networks. The transition to commanding autonomous wingmen accelerates this cognitive transformation.
Pilots must develop new skills in delegation, trust calibration with autonomous systems, and management of distributed forces. The traditional fighter pilot ethos, individual mastery of the aircraft, must expand to encompass orchestration of multiple platforms. This is not a diminishment of the pilot’s role but an expansion into command responsibilities previously reserved for more senior officers. The lieutenant flying an F-35 with four CCAs is effectively commanding a formation, making tactical decisions that previously would have been made by a flight lead or mission commander.
This cultural shift presents challenges, particularly for air forces steeped in traditions of individual aerial combat. Yet it also creates opportunities for innovation in tactics, techniques, and procedures that would be impossible with crewed aircraft alone. The Live-Virtual-Constructive training environments that I observed at IFTS provide the ideal laboratory for developing these new approaches, allowing pilots to experiment with wolfpack tactics in simulation before risking actual CCAs in flight.
The Path Forward
The hybrid transition is already underway, though it has not been officially recognized as the primary path to sixth-generation capability. The Air Force’s CCA program aims to field initial operational capability with F-35s and potentially upgraded F-15EXs serving as the command platforms. Software upgrades to the F-35 continue to enhance its ability to integrate off-board sensors and direct autonomous systems. Industry partners are developing the enabling technologies from AI-enabled mission planning to secure datalinks to human-machine interfaces.
What remains is official acknowledgment that this represents the sixth-generation transition, not merely a bridge to some future clean-sheet platform. Such recognition would have practical implications for resource allocation, requirements development, and strategic planning. Rather than hedging between F-35 evolution and NGAD development, the Department of Defense could commit fully to the wolfpack concept, accelerating both CCA development and the F-35 upgrades necessary to command them effectively.
This approach does not preclude eventual development of a new crewed platform. But it recognizes that sixth-generation behavior, human-machine teaming in distributed operations, can be achieved through evolution of existing systems paired with revolutionary autonomous platforms. The urgency of strategic competition with China does not allow the luxury of waiting for perfect solutions; it demands fielding effective capabilities rapidly using available platforms.
Conclusion: Behavior Defines the Generation
Secretary Wynne’s clarity about fifth-generation warfare centered on the operational concept: it was about how aircraft operated within networks, not merely what the individual platforms could do. The sixth generation should be understood through the same lens. It is defined by the wolfpack behavior, crewed platforms commanding autonomous systems to achieve effects impossible for either alone, not by any particular airframe configuration or technology.
The F-35, continuously upgraded and paired with increasingly capable CCAs, can exhibit sixth-generation behavior. This hybrid transition offers the most pragmatic path to fielding the capabilities necessary for high-end conflict in the 2030s. It leverages existing industrial capacity, preserves international partnerships, and allows incremental risk reduction through rapid iteration of autonomous systems.
The conceptual clarity that defined the fifth generation has been absent from sixth-generation discussions. Perhaps that is because we have been looking for it in the wrong place, in platform specifications rather than operational behavior. Once we recognize that sixth-generation warfare is about the wolfpack, the path forward becomes clear: evolve the F-35 into the quarterback it was always designed to become, and pair it with the autonomous teammates that technology now makes possible. That is sixth-generation warfare, and it is achievable today, not in some distant future.
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