🔷 CCA Lowdown

In That Number

30 tons

The Army is purchasing a whopping 30 tons of powdered sugar for use in smoke grenades.

On the Radar

Army Overhaul. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll announced that significant changes to the acquisition process are imminent, vowing to implement a "Silicon Valley" mindset aimed at delivering tools, technology, and weapons to soldiers more rapidly through rapid prototype and experimentation, and iteration. The so-called FUZE initiative plans to commit $750M annually to the cause.

• The Merge’s Take: We’re skeptical, but time will tell. The FUZE initiative is essentially a re-branded roll-up of 4 pathways that already exist: the xTech program, the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, the Tech Maturation Initiative (TMI), and the Manufacturing Technology office (ManTech). That said, the Army (and military writ large) doesn’t have a prototyping or experimentation problem—it has an adoption problem.

Dutch CCA. The Netherlands formally joined the US Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. The partnership grants the Netherlands full access to the CCA initiative and sets the stage for significant Dutch industrial and technological involvement.

• The Merge’s Take: This is the first-known international partner for the US Air Force CCA program, and it might be surprising that it wasn’t one of the usual suspects (UK, Australia, etc). The reason: almost every country with the potential ability is working on its own CCA to revive its sovereign industrial capacity—working to address a second-order effect of large centralized multi-generational aerospace programs (ahem, F-35).

Army CCA. The US Army revealed it is looking at concepts for CCA “loyal wingman” to accompany its rotary wing fleet. These are likely to be Group 4 VTOL designs, though the Army is early on in concept refinement, but industry was ready with plenty of its own. A few weeks ago, Sikorsky unveiled its Nomad family of scalable VTOL. Boeing nailed the event timing, revealing its modular tilt-rotor Collaborative Combat Rotorcraft (CCR).

• The Merge’s Take: While the platform concepts take shape, it's not too early to think about all of the other pieces that make it possible. Right now, the Army is the only service that has yet to sign the US CCA agreement—a collaborative framework where the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps are coordinating on autonomy, control systems, and data-links to ensure the future CCA fleet has interoperability. Git-R-Done.

Navy CCA. General Atomics offered some updates on how it’s approaching the Navy CCA program. One of 4 vendors selected to develop designs, GA indicated its modular chassis Gambit offering is in the mix.

• The Merge’s Take: There’s a saying in aviation: everything that flies is a compromise. Gambit is interesting because it doesn’t bake those trade-offs into the design, but is designed to retain some flexibility in the field. You can see how it works on the website, sort of. Gambit 1 through 4 variants are listed, but the Navy CCA concept is Gambit 5. We got you, though. To learn more about Gambit 5, here’s an article from last year when it debuted at the Farnborough airshow. GA-ASI: update your website.

HADES. After resolving an award protest, the Army has officially restarted work on its new spy plane program dubbed the High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES). The Army plans to field the Bombardier’s Global 6500-based jets in late 2026. Now that it's back on track, the Army is looking for a 1000-mile-range launched effect to shoot off of it in 2027.

• The Merge’s Take: The Army has baked launched effects into the HADES program requirements, but what’s new here is the range. The 1,000-mile range will be an interesting design tradeoff due to the physics with propulsion, payload, comm links, and the hardpoint limits (1,800 lbs. including the pylon on the inboard station). Unless it’s a cruise missile… 

TRIVIA

In 1987, an Iranian missile hit a re-flagged Kuwaiti tanker that the US Navy was there to protect. On October 19th, the US Navy responded by attacking 2 Iranian oil platforms. What was the name of the operation?

A) Desert Shadow
B) Praying Mantis
C) Nimble Archer
D) Rapid Hammer

They Said It

“The point is, you’ll never come up with anything new when you’re in my industry. And so if you’re not going to come with anything new, you really need to go back and look at what people thought about it before — because they probably had some other ideas you should be ripping off too. Rip them off.”

— Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril Industries

Knowledge Bombs

• General Atomics successfully fired a 155mm maneuvering artillery round that can hit targets from 70+ miles away in GPS-denied environments

• The Army selected AEVEX’s Atlas and Anduril’s Altius 600 for its Launched Effects-Short Range (LE-SR) program

• Auterion unveiled a 1,000-mile strike drone

• AV unveiled a smaller Switchblade 400 variant

• Textron Systems unveiled Damcoles, a coaxial-rotor launched effect that looks like it's based on the Ascent Spirit

• Anduril unveiled Eagle Eye, an AI-powered soldier headset

• Lockheed Martin unveiled a ram-jet anti-ship variant of its Precision Strike Missile (PrSM)

• Sikorsky unveiled the U-Hawk, a clam-shell-nosed uncrewed H-60 Black Hawk

• The Army down-selected the Spike NLOS system for its M-LRPSM competition (Mobile-Long Range Precision Strike Missile)

• Kratos unveiled the Ragnarök, a 500-mile low-cost cruise missile that fits inside the XQ-58A Valkyrie

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ANSWER
C. The responsive action was called Operation Nimble Archer and used 4 destroyers to shell 2 old oil platforms (turned observation posts) with 5-inch guns. The counter-strike operation occurred within the larger Operation Earnest Will, the effort to protect Kuwaiti shipping amid the Iran–Iraq War.