Lockheed Martin’s Vectis unmanned fighter will have both air-to-air and air-to-ground capability

The F-35 manufacturer expects future uncrewed fighter requirements to include larger payloads, longer ranges, and better survivability.

Lockheed Martin’s developmental Vectis collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) will have the ability to conduct both air-to-air and air-to-ground missions.

Chief executive Jim Taiclet says Lockheed is confident in its strategy that the nascent market for uncrewed fighter aircraft will move toward larger designs with more combat capability as operational concepts develop.

“We think we know what the endgame looks like,” Taiclet said during a 22 October quarterly earnings call.

For that reason, Lockheed made the decision to invest “fairly heavily” in Vectis, according to Taiclet, even before any formal solicitation has been published. In September, the head of Lockheed’s famous Skunk Works division said the company now plans to self-fund the construction of five Vectis prototypes, with work on the first already underway.

A first flight is expected before the end of 2027.

Hunting future sales

The company is eyeing CCA opportunities with the US Air Force (USAF), Navy and Marine Corps, in addition to allied air forces. A top priority in the coming years will be competing Vectis for the USAF’s forthcoming CCA Increment 2 requirement, which the service is still developing.

“Increment 2, we anticipate, will have [a] larger payload, larger range, and larger survivability requirement,” Taiclet says.

That would favour a design like Vectis, which Lockheed says will incorporate advanced stealth features and fall into the Group 5 UAS category, with a length of 10.3m (34ft) and a wingspan of 11.5m.

The two Increment 1 CCAs the USAF has under contract — the Anduril Industries FQ-44A Fury and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems FQ-42A Vengeance — are smaller, prioritising a low fly-away cost and high-rate production, in line with USAF priorities. Those jets will also be focused solely on air-to-air combat, at least initially.

“We know what the range, payload and survivability requirements will be for CCAs,” Taiclet says of future opportunities. “We’re designing to our expectation of what that’s going to be based on our experience in manned fighters and also our ability to seamlessly connect the manned fighter to the CCA.”

The Vectis will use a single jet engine, have a deeply recessed air intake situated on the upper fuselage, tailless control surfaces and an internal weapons bay. It also features the serrated trailing edge found on other tailless stealth aircraft.

F-22 and F-35 modernisation

Unsurprisingly, much of that CCA integration work will focus on Lockheed’s two fifth-generation fighters: the twin-engined F-22 air superiority platform and the single-engined F-35 strike fighter.

The USAF has already said the F-22 will be its first priority for integration with Increment 1 CCAs, although other types like the F-35A and Boeing F-15EX are expected to follow. Last week, an F-22 took control of a YFQ-44 prototype in flight for the first time.

Elsewhere within Skunk Works, Lockheed is focusing on delivering significant modernisations for both the F-22 and F-35, after the company failed to secure a sixth-generation fighter development contract with either the USAF or US Navy.

For the F-22, Taiclet envisages a “fifth-generation-plus” level of capability, with new sensors, a distributed aperture system, data links, and beyond-line-of-sight capabilities. On the F-35, the Lockheed CEO wants to bring unspecified sixth-generation technology to the tri-variant jet that would bring it to “80% of what a sixth-generation clean-sheet aircraft would look like at 50% of that clean-sheet aircraft cost”.

Meanwhile, Lockheed says it has reached a framework agreement with the Pentagon for the next 10 years of F-35 production that will include at least 850 aircraft for the US military, plus any future overseas orders.

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