The U.S. Air Force plans to field 100 new low-cost, long-range autonomous aircraft by 2029 and 500 by 2032, according to officials speaking at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference in Washington, D.C., this week. The service’s Massed Modular Aircraft effort is drawing new industry offerings, including Swarm Aero’s Gamera and Lockheed Martin’s expanded Vectis program.
Swarm Aero unveiled its Gamera aircraft at the conference, a Group 5 uncrewed system with roughly the wingspan of a Boeing 737, a projected unrefueled range of 9,000 nautical miles, and seven hardpoints for weapons and sensors. The company says Gamera can carry long-range weapons such as the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile and Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile-Extended Range, with more than 2,800 pounds of payload capacity. Gamera has not yet flown, and Swarm Aero has not demonstrated its projected range, cost, or operational performance.
Swarm Aero CEO Peter Kalogiannis and Chief Revenue Officer Oliver Palmer told Military.com they founded the company in 2022 and began pursuing the concept about four years before the Air Force publicly articulated the requirement. “This is a very risky go-to-market motion,” Palmer said. “As a startup, we bet that the customers would get there.” The company also showcased its Legion command-and-control software, which Palmer said allows a single operator with relatively short training to control dozens of live assets in complex operations. Swarm was one of three companies selected from roughly 130 considered for command-and-control software under the Pentagon’s Replicator initiative, Palmer said.
Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works division announced it will build four additional Vectis collaborative combat aircraft beyond the first prototype already under construction, bringing the planned fleet to five aircraft. The company displayed a full-scale Vectis model for the first time at the conference. Ron Fehlen, vice president and general manager of Skunk Works, called the expansion a “strategic investment to accelerate the production progress and the maturity of Vectis.” He said the development work on the four additional vehicles is underway, with the company intending to build and fly them faster than the first prototype. Vectis remains on track for a first flight by the end of 2027.
The Vectis aircraft is approximately 34 feet long with a wingspan of about 38 feet, featuring a tailless lambda wing design and a submerged air inlet. Lockheed says the design reduces drag and lowers the risk of foreign object debris ingestion when operating from austere locations. The company says it has used a manufacturing technique called minimal tooling determinant assembly, which Fehlen said reduced labor hours by as much as 80 percent and increased first-pass yield.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach told the conference that recent combat operations demonstrated the importance of integrating aircraft, weapons, people, and information rather than viewing individual platforms in isolation. “We must be ready to fight, built to endure, and integrated to win,” Wilsbach said. “When we pair manned aircraft with low-cost autonomous systems, we will be able to unlock combat power at scale,” Meink said.
Meink said, “Because of the steps we’re taking today, we’ll have a radically different looking Air Force by 2032.”
Sources: The Aviationist · Shephard Media