Air Force faces key questions for next-gen fighters' drone wingmen - Breaking Defense

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."“When we first got into this part of the business … which was back in about 2015 with the Mako, we were very focused on control of the uncrewed aircraft from a crewed aircraft, kind of in a one-to-one ratio,” he told Breaking Defense in an August interview. What’s changed is an “increase in the need and desire to have the [unmanned] airplane be able to make a decision,” with a much greater focus on using multiple drones that are all capable of collecting data, and synthesizing that data in a way that provides a human pilot with recommendations.

While industry is still waiting for the Air Force to hand down formal requirements for CCAs, Fendley thinks it’s likely that the service ends up buying multiple types of drones, each with varying price points and capabilities, he said.

“I think what we’ll see is there’ll be low numbers of the very exquisite systems, and I think there’ll be very high numbers of attritables and expendables,” he said."

Got to figure out how to manage them effectively