Overview
- Senior Air Force leaders have moved to speed the Massed Modular Aircraft program after heavy MQ‑9 Reaper losses that reporting has put at about 45 aircraft, which has strained surveillance and strike capacity.
- The Defense Innovation Unit says it intends a prototype within about one year and scaled fielding within three years, and the Air Force is planning to buy at least roughly 180 MMA air vehicles.
- Officials set aggressive unit-cost goals, aiming for Collaborative Combat Aircraft at about $20 million for the air vehicle and MMA airframes at roughly half that price to permit tolerating attrition.
- Program requirements call for modular, open architectures with high automation, heavy payload ability (about 2,800 pounds) and very long ferry range targets near 8,000 nautical miles as tradeoffs for lower per‑unit cost.
- Near-term shortfalls persist because MQ‑9A production ended in 2025 and big buys of upgraded MQ‑9Bs are limited by budgets, and industry bidders such as General Atomics have publicly offered competing designs that they say could arrive sooner.