According to Sandboxx, an online site devoted to covering all things military, two experimental collaborative combat aircraft (CCA), have exited their experimental testing stage and are now entering low-rate production to be fielded with several US Navy and US Air Force squadrons. Formerly known as the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A drones, they will each drop their “Y” prefix and “A” suffix and become the FQ-42 and FQ-44 respectively. Its not clear which combat squadrons they will be assigned to or the control aircraft they will fly alongside, so lots of speculation will certainly circulate as to their ultimate deployment and exact mission once they reach full operational status.
Both aircraft will likely be painted in a low-observable grey pattern and there’s a good chance each will carry the squadron insignia of their control aircraft as a means of differentiating them from one another. Its not clear how many CCAs will fly alongside each control aircraft, likely dependent upon the type of mission they are being charged with completing and risk associated with their use.
Its entirely possible that a squadron of CCAs could be painted in multiple schemes dependent upon each aircraft’s mission. For instance, a CCA tasked with a long-endurance flight designed to strike at night might be painted in a matte black pattern so it could blend in with the night sky. On the other hand, a low-flying drone assigned a SEAD (Suppression of Enemy Air Defense) mission could be shrouded in a multi-color camouflage pattern, particularly if it is maintaining a nap-of-the-earth profile in which it is flying to its target at a tree-top level. We will have to see what the Defense Department has to say about CCAs in both the near- and long-term, and whether they will be made available for export purposes, likely in lieu of control aircraft such as the F-35 Lightning II.