Brits beat RAAF and US Air Force to the punch on collaborative aircraft
The Royal Air Force has beaten the RAAF and US Air Force to the punch. It has already declared operational its StormShroud autonomous Uncrewed Aerial System (UAS), which will fly alongside crewed aircraft to blind enemy air defences.
The StormShroud consists of the Anglo-Portuguese Tekever company's AR3 UAS carrying a Leonardo UK BriteStorm signal jammer to disrupt enemy radar at long ranges.
StormShroud acts as an Autonomous Collaborative Platform (ACP), or Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) to use US parlance, and will support crewed RAF combat aircraft such as the BAE Systems Typhoon and Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II by allowing them to attack targets without being seen on radar. This is similar to the RAAF and US Navy-manned EA-18G Growler, based on the Super Hornet, which also jams enemy air defence radars and communications and uses anti-radar missiles to destroy them.
This year, the RAAF and USAF plan to test their own autonomous CCAs with crewed combat aircraft and each could put a CCA into production soon afterwards.
Flight testing of Boeing's Australian-built MQ-28A Ghost Bat has progressed, says Glen Ferguson, the company's director of the MQ-28 Global Program.
'We have turned our focus to validating mission systems, payloads and operational requirements. This will culminate in a series of events with RAAF assets throughout 2025, collectively known as Capability Demonstration 2025.'
These events are already under way, Ferguson adds.
The big difference between Ghost Bat and StormShroud is size and speed. The Tekever AR3 is 1.9m long, weighs just 25kg, has a 4kg payload capacity and cruises at 75-90km/h. Boeing Defence Australia's Ghost Bat is 11.7m long, weighs about 3200kg, flies at 'fighter-like' high-subsonic speeds, is very manoeuvrable and has a range of about 2000nm. It won't carry weapons, at least initially, according to the RAAF, but has a nose section containing electronic payloads that can be removed and swapped quickly so it can fly multiple different Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) and other classified missions.
The Ghost Bat takes off and lands under ground control. In flight it comes under the command of a Mission Execution Custodian and could fly autonomously alongside an aircraft or a long way ahead, using sensors for reconnaissance or to spot and mark for destruction enemy aircraft, air defences and other targets.
The two USAF CCA prototypes, which are designed to carry air-to-air missiles such as the 161kg, 3.65m-long Raytheon AIM-120 AMRAAM, are the General Atomics YFQ-42A and Anduril Industries YFQ-44A, based on the company's 6.1m-long Fury UAS. Anduril showed a full-scale mock-up of this at the Avalon Airshow in March.
The Fury is capable of pulling 9G and flying at up to Mach .95 and the General Atomics aircraft is believed to be capable of similar performance.
They will fly this northern summer, says General David Allvin, the USAF Chief of Staff, and one of them could enter production in 2026 to operate with the new 6th generation USAF fighter, the F-47.
The unarmed, semi-stealthy MQ-28A Ghost Bat, which has achieved more than 100 test flights, is designed to support crewed RAAF aircraft such as the E-7A Wedgetail, F-35A Lightning II and F/A-18F Super Hornet.
Capability Demonstration 2025, says Ferguson, 'will be a demonstration of a complete CCA capability, where we will be using a number of MQ-28s … to validate the concept of operations. Teaming can be achieved with any datalink-enabled crewed platform without any modification.'
The Ghost Bat was announced in 2019 and is the world's first CCA, according to Boeing. It is Australia's first domestic combat aircraft design since the Pika and Jindivik programs, more than 70 years ago. The RAAF's total investment in this program is now around $900m and although it has said it just wants an ISR payload at present, Boeing intends to test the Ghost Bat with air-to-air missiles late this year, says Ferguson.
Nearly 200 Australian companies have participated in Ghost Bat's supply chain. Its Vehicle Management System (VMS) provides its trusted autonomy and is developed by BAE Systems Australia, which is a global leader in autonomous control systems.
The MQ-28A employs advanced manufacturing technology such as resin infusion, invented at Boeing's Fishermans Bend site in Melbourne for carbon fibre components used on the civilian Boeing 787. If selected by the RAAF, the aircraft will be built at a new, 9000sq m factory at Toowoomba's Wellcamp Airport, Boeing's first final assembly facility outside North America.
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Despite their popularity, online influencers and personalities are seen as the biggest sources of false or misleading information worldwide, along with politicians, the report found. Over 70 per cent of Americans say they remain concerned about their ability to tell what is true from what is false when it comes to news online, a similar proportion to last year. AI is another emerging theme in news consumption, particularly for young people. Of respondents under age 25, 15 per cent rely on AI chatbots and interfaces for news each week, compared to seven per cent of respondents overall, the report found. ChatGPT was the most mentioned AI service for news, followed by Google's Gemini and Meta AI. The trend is raising concerns about a potential loss of search referral traffic to publisher websites and apps, the report found, as chatbots eliminate the need for users to click on a story link. 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In the week following the January 2025 US presidential inauguration, more Americans said they got their news from social and video networks than from TV and news websites and apps - the first time that shift has occurred, the report said. Traditional US news media increasingly risks being eclipsed by online personalities and creators, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism said in its annual Digital News Report, which is based on an online survey of almost 100,000 people in 48 markets, including the United States. The trend is particularly acute among young Americans. Over half of people under age 35 in the US are relying on social media and video networks as their main source for news, the report found. Across the countries the report surveyed, 44 per cent of people aged 18 to 24 said these networks are their main source of news. One-fifth of a sampled group of Americans came across news or commentary from podcaster Rogan in the week following the presidential inauguration, the report found, while 14 per cent of respondents said they had come across former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson discussing or commenting on news during that period. Carlson now generates content across multiple social media and video networks. The vast majority of the most followed commentators who discuss politics are men, the report found. "These are not just big numbers in themselves," wrote Nic Newman, Senior Research Associate at the Oxford, UK-based Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. "These creators are also attracting audiences that traditional media struggle to reach. Some of the most popular personalities over-index with young men, with right-leaning audiences, and with those that have low levels of trust in mainstream media outlets, seeing them as biased or part of a liberal elite." Despite their popularity, online influencers and personalities are seen as the biggest sources of false or misleading information worldwide, along with politicians, the report found. Over 70 per cent of Americans say they remain concerned about their ability to tell what is true from what is false when it comes to news online, a similar proportion to last year. AI is another emerging theme in news consumption, particularly for young people. Of respondents under age 25, 15 per cent rely on AI chatbots and interfaces for news each week, compared to seven per cent of respondents overall, the report found. ChatGPT was the most mentioned AI service for news, followed by Google's Gemini and Meta AI. The trend is raising concerns about a potential loss of search referral traffic to publisher websites and apps, the report found, as chatbots eliminate the need for users to click on a story link. Text remains the most preferred way for people worldwide to consume news, although around a third say they prefer to watch the news online and 15 per cent say they prefer to listen. Social media platform X, formerly Twitter, is also becoming a more popular source of news in the United States, particularly among right-leaning users and young men, with 23 per cent of sampled Americans consuming news there - up eight percentage points from last year. Levels of trust in news across markets are currently stable at 40 per cent, and unchanged for the last three years, the report found. Prominent podcasters like Joe Rogan are playing a bigger role in news dissemination in the United States, as are AI chatbots, contributing to the further erosion of traditional media, according to a report. In the week following the January 2025 US presidential inauguration, more Americans said they got their news from social and video networks than from TV and news websites and apps - the first time that shift has occurred, the report said. Traditional US news media increasingly risks being eclipsed by online personalities and creators, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism said in its annual Digital News Report, which is based on an online survey of almost 100,000 people in 48 markets, including the United States. The trend is particularly acute among young Americans. Over half of people under age 35 in the US are relying on social media and video networks as their main source for news, the report found. Across the countries the report surveyed, 44 per cent of people aged 18 to 24 said these networks are their main source of news. One-fifth of a sampled group of Americans came across news or commentary from podcaster Rogan in the week following the presidential inauguration, the report found, while 14 per cent of respondents said they had come across former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson discussing or commenting on news during that period. Carlson now generates content across multiple social media and video networks. The vast majority of the most followed commentators who discuss politics are men, the report found. "These are not just big numbers in themselves," wrote Nic Newman, Senior Research Associate at the Oxford, UK-based Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. "These creators are also attracting audiences that traditional media struggle to reach. Some of the most popular personalities over-index with young men, with right-leaning audiences, and with those that have low levels of trust in mainstream media outlets, seeing them as biased or part of a liberal elite." Despite their popularity, online influencers and personalities are seen as the biggest sources of false or misleading information worldwide, along with politicians, the report found. Over 70 per cent of Americans say they remain concerned about their ability to tell what is true from what is false when it comes to news online, a similar proportion to last year. AI is another emerging theme in news consumption, particularly for young people. Of respondents under age 25, 15 per cent rely on AI chatbots and interfaces for news each week, compared to seven per cent of respondents overall, the report found. ChatGPT was the most mentioned AI service for news, followed by Google's Gemini and Meta AI. The trend is raising concerns about a potential loss of search referral traffic to publisher websites and apps, the report found, as chatbots eliminate the need for users to click on a story link. Text remains the most preferred way for people worldwide to consume news, although around a third say they prefer to watch the news online and 15 per cent say they prefer to listen. Social media platform X, formerly Twitter, is also becoming a more popular source of news in the United States, particularly among right-leaning users and young men, with 23 per cent of sampled Americans consuming news there - up eight percentage points from last year. Levels of trust in news across markets are currently stable at 40 per cent, and unchanged for the last three years, the report found.
