Air Force explores option for crewing advanced fighters

The Anglo-Italian-Japanese Tempest or GCAP sixth-generation fighter is also planned to be optionally manned. The Royal Air Force describes Tempest as providing "several modes of operation, combining manned, unmanned and optionally-manned platforms." This approach involves "scalable autonomy," which is expected to be essential as operating environments grow more complex.

Breaking Defense has reported that the US Air Force may consider making NGAD optionally manned. There has been speculation about whether NGAD might itself be unmanned or optionally manned due to a pause in development.

A core part of future aerial firepower appears set to include unmanned Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), known as loyal wingman drones. These are under development globally by companies like Airbus and Boeing, among others.

In Russia, the Sukhoi S-70 Okhotnik-B drone was deployed over Ukraine but malfunctioned during its first mission. In the US, General Atomics XQ-67 and Anduril Fury have been selected for further CCA program development.

Northrop Grumman's Vanguard Model 437 stands out in this class with its cockpit feature as part of Skyborg project developments. Alex Hollings from Sandboxx News suggests a future for both crewed and uncrewed iterations of this fighter: "In the long run, this points to what is likely to become increasingly common in military aviation - aircraft that are optionally crewed or optionally manned."

Northrop Grumman stated they could produce these low-observable platforms at $5-6 million each if ordered at scale—a fraction of costs for similar aircraft like MQ-9 Reaper.

Project VENOM involves modifying F-16 Fighting Falcons into test platforms for evaluating autonomous capabilities: "VENOM-AFT is designed and funded to accelerate testing of autonomy software on crewed and uncrewed aircraft... The next step for the VENOM program is to modify F-16 aircraft into test platforms," according to the US Air Force.

Optionally crewed platforms offer flexibility by allowing either uncrewed operations or piloted missions depending on complexity requirements.