USAF and the Netherlands formalize partnership on collaborative combat aircraft development

The Department of the Air Force and the Netherlands Ministry of Defence have formalized a partnership to acquire prototype Collaborative Combat Aircraft, deepening allied development of autonomous, uncrewed systems designed to operate alongside manned fighters and expand affordable combat capacity.

“The future fight will be fought with allies and partners,” said Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink. “By aligning our approaches early, we ensure interoperability and shared advantage in the era of human-machine teaming.”

Under the agreement, the Netherlands will contribute prototype CCA aircraft and work with the U.S. at the Experimental Operations Unit at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada. The EOU is intended to accelerate concept development by pairing operators and developers in realistic scenarios and rapidly iterating autonomy and tactics to support safe, effective human-machine teaming.

“CCA will fundamentally change how we project airpower. Working with trusted allies allows us to field these capabilities more effectively,” said Col. Timothy Helfrich, portfolio acquisition executive for fighters and advanced aircraft. “The collaboration on open architecture based autonomous platforms is critical to ensuring our forces are interoperable and ready for combined operations.”

Both governments are prioritizing platform-agnostic, open-architecture autonomy and seamless data sharing so that future uncrewed systems can integrate across allied fleets in combined operations. The Netherlands, already a close U.S. airpower partner and F-35 operator, becomes a key international participant in a program the Air Force views as central to deterring high-end adversaries.

The CCA effort envisions fielding affordable, mission-tailored autonomous aircraft at scale to augment crewed fighters and bombers. The Air Force has been moving forward with an “Increment 1” acquisition path while standing up experimentation units to refine concepts of operation, command-and-control, and safety cases for teaming.

The announcement did not disclose the number of prototype aircraft, timelines for delivery, or funding shares. Officials said the collaboration is part of a broader push to accelerate international work on multiple CCA capability areas and ensure interoperability from the outset.