Carrier CCA is coming. Weather is a pacing threat as important as enemy air defenses.

The US Navy recently awarded conceptual design contracts for a carrier-based Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) to Anduril, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and General Atomics, with Lockheed Martin providing the common control layer. It's the first formal step towards adding autonomous combat aircraft to the modern carrier air wing.

credit: USNI

The strategic logic is sound - mass + reach win

China has built deep ISR and long-range weapons to hold carriers at distance. The air wing needs more sensors, more decoys, more EW, more throwable weight - without risking pilots or blowing out budgets. Carrier-based CCAs give attritable mass to scout, jam, and soak risk, while manned platforms prosecute high-value tasks. The concept is right. The question (always) is execution: Can the US Navy field reliable mass at sea, quickly enough to matter?

The air wing's "mass" problem - and the CCA fix

We used to brute-force numbers. A typical Essex-class air group ended WWII with ~100+ aircraft. Today’s carrier air wing is ~74–78 aircraft—F/A-18E/F with growing F-35C, plus E-2D, EA-18G, CMV-22B, MH-60. CCAs are how you add mass and risk tolerance without expanding the deck.

This is the decisive decade. By the 2030s, the Navy envisions a carrier air wing of F/A-XX fighters, F-35Cs, MQ-25 tankers, and CCA drones.

Allies are moving too. Italy’s Cavour declared F-35B IOC in 2024. Japan is taking delivery of F-35Bs for Izumo/Kaga. The UK launched ACP Tranche 2. Australia’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat finished a major capability demo and is closing on a production decision with fresh funding. 

Autonomous drones are the lever. But history warns us:

 Auto-GCAS, a system that takes control of an aircraft in the event the pilot is G-locked and flies out of danger until the pilot regains controls, was proven to save lives, yet the Navy delayed adoption. Magic Carpet transformed carrier landing performance but faced cultural resistance. Both show the cost of waiting. With CCAs, hesitation would be fatal.

The ocean is an adversary too

Survivability is broader than missiles. Weather is a pacing threat too. Icing causes ~10% of aviation mishaps. In the Pacific, ~5% of climbs and descents face icing — exactly where carrier aircraft live. For unmanned systems, without a pilot to sense subtle cues, the risk is amplified.

credit: NASA

The ocean is an adversary too

Survivability is broader than missiles. Weather is a pacing threat too. Icing causes ~10% of aviation mishaps. In the Pacific, ~5% of climbs and descents face icing — exactly where carrier aircraft live. For unmanned systems, without a pilot to sense subtle cues, the risk is amplified.

Ice and sea spray quietly eat margins: more drag, less lift, higher stall speed, degraded sensors. NASA flight-test data shows minutes of clear-ice accretion can double drag and cut max lift by 25–30%—exactly when you’re launching, recovering, or flying through weather.

Pegasus’s MIDAS system closes that gap. MIDAS (Moisture/Icing Detection Alert System) turns the airframe into a real-time weather sensor—a “second skin” that tells pilots and autonomy engines what their aircraft skin is actually experiencing. The result: increase mission launches where otherwise they’d be aborted, and networked, in-flight weather to improve flight performance and survivability. 

Bottom line: CCA is the right move. But mass only matters if it can launch and recover when the mission calls. Build environmental intelligence into the modern air wing and you get safer launches and recoveries, smarter autonomy, and higher sortie rates. 

That’s what MIDAS is for.