The Air & Space Forces Association's Air, Space & Cyber Conference opened earlier this week at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink's disclosure that the Space Force had launched "space control weapons" into orbit quickly dominated the news cycle.
Beyond the USAF's new space warfare capabilities, Meink's remarks about the service's plan to build out an upgraded unmanned aircraft fleet over the next six years warrant closer attention. His remarks offered potential clues about plans for a successor to, or an alternative operating alongside, the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper.
The following excerpts from Meink's speech suggest a shift in unmanned aircraft procurement and hint that a Reaper replacement may be approaching, although they do not, on their own, establish that one is imminent:
And this is not the only class of autonomous aircraft we are aggressively pursuing. As we saw in Epic Fury, ISR strike platforms have been essential. We have used MQ-9 and even now the ULTRA aircraft to great effect.
Building on these lessons, we are developing a family of low-cost multi-role strike platforms called the Mass Modular Aircraft, or MMAs.
MMAs will provide affordable, attritable, long-range strike, and we will be able to field them at scale. Our intent is to field 100 MMAs in 2029 at even a lower cost than the CCAs and a fraction of the cost of manned aircraft we build today. Then by 2032, 500 of these platforms will join our force operational fleet.
One platform worth watching is ULTRA, a Group 5 unmanned aircraft system developed by DZYNE Technologies, now part of Ondas.
ULTRA could assume part of the MQ-9 Reaper's surveillance workload, particularly missions that prioritize endurance and operating costs over weapons capacity. Its potential role is strongest in intelligence gathering, where extended flight times could reduce aircraft rotations.
In late summer, The National Interest examined the Air Force's search for a Reaper successor in an article titled "Why the US Air Force Wants a Replacement for the MQ-9 Reaper." Mounting Reaper losses in the Gulf conflict have increased the focus on a lower-cost alternative. ULTRA's capabilities support the case for a much cheaper alternative with longer endurance and, considered alongside Meink's remarks, may suggest that the alternative has been found: ULTRA.