The Air Force is purchasing more drones for its Collaborative Combat Aircraft Experiment Unit in Nevada to test how the service will use these robot wingmen in a potential fight.

“One thing I recently did was approve additional CCA purchases to equip the Experimental Operations Unit to allow this experimentation to take place using live assets,” Andrew Hunter said today , head of acquisitions for the department. Defense One State of Defense trade event.

The department will purchase additional prototypes from the two sellers build “increment one” CCAs – General Atomics and Anduril – for the experimental operations unit, Hunter said. The service installed the unit at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, to test how it could use CCAs in its operations and how the drones will pair with manned fighters.

Hunter did not say how many drones the service would purchase, or when those test assets would reach the Nevada unit.

This additional purchase will help “ensure that warfighters will have sufficient testing opportunities to support operational deployment before the end of the decade,” said Diem Salmon, Anduril vice president for air dominance and strikes, in a press release.

The experimental operations unit will help the Air Force build trust with autonomous fighters and formulate tactics, techniques and procedures, General Atomics spokesman C. Mark Brinkley said. “Providing them with real ACCs is an important step in this regard. We are happy to support them in any way,” Brinkley said.

Both companies’ CCA designs recently reached a key milestone, called critical design reviewCol. Timothy Helfrich, senior materiel manager for Air Force Materiel Command’s Advanced Aircraft Division, said today at the Mitchell Institute’s Airpower Futures Forum. The service has managed to keep the program on track by stopping when it’s “good enough,” Helfrich said, instead of tackling an extremely sophisticated system.

“If we want to continue to add capacity and improve things, we are going to miss our costs and, more importantly, our schedule goals. And so do some of these difficult jobs. Saying this is enough and moving forward has been a challenge, because we want a lot, but we make these decisions,” Helfrich said.

General Atomics and Anduril plan to fly their drone offerings over the next year, after which service officials will decide whether to build one or both of the companies’ offerings in increments of one. This decision depends on the first flight, but also on the production capacity of each company, Hunter said.

“That’s the approach to production, right? These are the people who demonstrate that they can adapt to the prices that we envision for this platform and which are necessary for it to be affordable for the masses. So I think both providers have an opportunity to be successful, and it’s entirely conceivable that we could move forward with both,” Hunter said.

The Air Force has stressed that CCAs must be cheap enough to be purchased en masse, and although service officials have not disclosed the exact price, Hunter reiterated that a CCA would be only a fraction of the cost of an F-35 fighter jet, and that he “feels good” about the figure they achieved.

Along with the CCAs, the Air Force is developing plans for two key modernization programs: a sixth-generation fighter jet, called Next Generation Air Dominance, and a next-generation air tanker. The designs of the three new programs are linked, both operationally and financially. But there isn’t enough money to continue all three programs as plans currently stand, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said. said recently.

Kendall’s comments were a signal to the acquisition community to focus on affordability from the start, Hunter said, which is why the service has incorporated affordability into its approach to CCAs.

“We need to do this with all of our programs. We must do this with the next generation air refueling system, the NGAS program. We must do this with our solution for our air dominance in the future. Affordability has to be a key consideration,” Hunter said.

All of these modernization plans will likely change under Trump’s presidency, but when asked how the service would fare under the new administration, Hunter didn’t say much.

“A lot depends on the strategy adopted by the new administration, and I will see to that as will all of you. I think if the strategy stays similar, I think you will see that the Air Force systems are well designed to meet the challenges of the strategy,” he said.