What the Air Force Got Right, and the Ground Force Needs: The Case for a Collaborative Combat Vehicle (CCV)

In June, the Air Force signed its first contracts for a new kind of fighter jet—one with no pilot inside. These Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) are designed to fly alongside crewed fighters like the F-35, acting as robotic wingmen.

The Air Force plans to field more than 150 of these CCAs by the end of the decade. Each costs roughly one third of the price of an F-35 (under $30 million), and the first prototype went from drawing board to flight in under two years.

But the aircrafts themselves are only part of the story. What is most pertinent is the idea behind them: uncrewed partners that fly into danger alongside human pilots, increasing combat power and mission effectiveness.

The ground force needs to think about autonomous capabilities similarly.

Envision a manned, high-value platform (an Abrams, a Bradley, an ACV) at the center of a constellation of autonomous Collaborative Combat Vehicles (CCVs). The CCVs would extend the range of the center platform’s weapons and sensors, move where the larger vehicle couldn’t, and absorb risks that a crew otherwise would. The result would be a formation that sees farther, hits harder, and protects and enhances the warfighter at its center.

The defining factors of a CCA are not unique to the air. Each applies to the ground, too.

Five Pillars of a CCA

1. MUM-T (Manned-Unmanned Teaming): The aircraft flies itself and carries out mission tasks on its own, but a pilot still commands the mission and makes every decision about using weapons.

‍2. Cost discipline: The Air Force set the price of a CCA at a fraction of what a fighter jet costs, and the aircraft was built to hit that number. Every design choice had to fit within that budget. So far, the program is coming in under the target.

3. Replaceability: Rather than litigate the meaning of attritable, it’s more effective to focus on replaceability. Replaceable platforms allow a commander to send a machine into a dangerous area, potentially lose it, and still win the fight. Some risk is transferred away from the crew in the process.

4. Modularity: The aircraft is built on an open architecture, so its equipment can be swapped out mission to mission—sensors one day, jammers or weapons the next. One airframe, many roles.

5. Mass: The first order is 150 aircraft. The long-termgoal is closer to a thousand. Having enough of them, not just having capableones, is part of the strategy.

The most important consideration in applying the CCA model to the ground is platform autonomy, at speed, in unstructured terrain. Overland AI®’s autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs) have this capability today.

CCV Mission Set

‍The Army's exquisite, manned platforms include the M1E3 Abrams, XM30, Bradleys, and Strykers. The Marines field ACVs, MADIS, and ARVs. All of these platforms carry crews onto a battlefield that has changed significantly. On today’s battlefield, first-person-view drones and top-attack missiles can locate an undefended vehicle in many environments.

There has been speculation that tanks and other such platforms are becoming obsolete, but they’re not. What's obsolete is an unprotected tank or combat vehicle.

To win a land war, we still need humans to seize and hold terrain. The question is how to protect them while they do it.

Enter the CCV.

The CCV should be the uncrewed teammate that keeps crews in the fight. Previously, I made the case that the biggest advantage AGVs can bring to ground forces is the enabling of maneuver on a changed battlefield.

The CCV could do this in four ways.

1. Screen: CCVs move ahead of the formation and make first contact. They cross the danger area first, draw fire, and send back reports. So the cost of obtaining knowledge falls on a robot, not a scout section. Screening has been the costliest mission in mounted warfare since cavalry rode horses.

‍2. Defend: CCVs ride the flanks and carry the counter-drone fight—sensors, jammers, guns, decoys. Most armored columns today have little to no organic counter-UAS capability. The CCV puts an interceptor between the FPV drone and the crewed platform, so when something takes the hit, the crew behind it has a greater chance of surviving.

3. Support: CCVs deepen the magazine. They carry mortars, loitering munitions, and direct-fire weapons. They push sensing past the line of sight. They can also carry, extend, and power communications payloads.

4. Supply: The last miles to a position under fire are the most contested miles in the theater. CCVs haul fuel, ammunition, water, and batteries forward, and carry casualties back. Though teleoperated, Ukrainian units already run uncrewed resupply and casualty evacuation under jamming and observation.

Maintain constraints & scale

‍The cost ratio between exquisite platforms and CCAs was fixed from the outset, with CCAs produced at roughly a third of the cost. The ground force should set a similar standard.

The manned platforms of the Army and Marine Corps listed above can cost millions of dollars, even $10M+ apiece. CCVs should run one or two orders of magnitude less than that, and price should keep falling as production scales.

The ground force would get an even better deal at that ratio than the Air Force. A third of a fighter jet is still $30 million. A CCV priced at 5-10% of a tank lets a brigade field them by the dozen, replace them easily, and ship them wherever the formation goes. That ratio and replaceability is what gives commanders real scale and tactical flexibility.

Size follows the same logic. A 70-ton tank doesn't need a 70-ton escort. It needs a machine with a lower profile than anything crewed, light enough for the bridges and trailers the formation already uses, and small enough to buy and move in numbers. Two CCVs per crewed platform should be the floor. An armor company with 14 tanks should field a constellation of CCVs it can afford to replace.

Autonomous ground vehicles have too often been treated one of two ways: as a new vehicle class sitting at the same echelon as exquisite platforms, or as an expendable asset thrown into any engagement with little thought given to tactics or employment.

The CCV model doesn’t fall into either trap. It pairs crewed platforms with a protective bubble of AGVs performing the functions above—priced to be scalable and replaceable, but capable enough to matter.

There's also a logistics case for consistency: choosing one CCV platform that can serve across formations (for example, across all the service platforms listed above) pays off in sustainment. Ideally, that platform shares parts with existing systems, runs on JP-8, and is already familiar to maintainers. A platform based on an MRZR, for example, would fit these requirements.

Autonomy is the gate

‍In the ground domain, autonomy is the hard part. A CCA crosses empty air. A CCV fights terrain the entire route: mud, slopes, vegetation, darkness, and an enemy jamming GPS and radio links. A teleoperated truck doesn't scale, and it can't provide the effects a war of maneuver will demand at scale.

The source selection criterion for a CCV is off-road autonomy that keeps operating when denied and disconnected and doesn’t resort to teleoperation in contested environments.

Overland AI builds this autonomytoday: a full stack that navigates unmapped terrain without GPS, without roads, and without a hand on a joystick.

Overland's production contract with the USMC already delivers a CCV for the MADIS program of record. This approach should be expanded force-wide. It's not the only application of ground autonomy, but it may be the most immediate.

The CCA is a great program for the ground force to emulate, and the upside for the ground force could be more substantial. Vehicles cost less than jets, the industrial base already builds them, and the autonomy exists, so the ground force can move faster.

If leaders in the Armyand Marine Corps clarify the intent, set the parameters, and allocate funding, CCVs can be fielded to an Army division and a Marine Expeditionary Force. Commanders on the ground will master the employment.

Crews are the force's scarcest resource, and the ground fight puts them at the highest risk. Give our ground warfighters CCVs, out maneuver the enemy, and win.