The defense establishment is congratulating itself again. Walk through the corridors of the Pentagon or scan the headlines of mainstream defense media, and you will find a comforting narrative: the United States has finally learned its lesson from the F-35 procurement disaster.
The new gospel claims that Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD)—frequently whispered about as the F-47 program—will fix everything. How? Through the magic words of modern defense acquisition: Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) split awards and open architecture. The consensus insists that by dividing drone contracts between multiple vendors and forcing software to be modular, the Air Force will build a cheaper, faster, and more adaptable fleet.
It is a beautiful theory. It is also completely detached from the reality of software engineering and military industrial hardware.
The industry is cheering for a fix that is actually a deeper, more complex trap. The F-35’s true failure was not a lack of open architecture; it was an inability to manage systemic complexity. By multiplying the number of vendors and decoupling hardware from software, the Pentagon is not solving complexity. It is compounding it.
The Vendor Lock Myth: Why Open Architecture Fails at Scale
The primary argument for open architecture is that it breaks vendor lock. The theory states that if the government owns the data rights and uses standardized interfaces, it can swap out a Lockheed Martin radar for a Raytheon sensor or a bespoke startup's software package overnight.
I have spent years watching defense primes nod politely at these requirements during bidding phases, only to weaponize compliance later. Open architecture does not eliminate proprietary control; it merely shifts the battlefield to the verification and validation layer.
When a software update on a CCA drone fails to communicate with the crewed F-47 platform during a test flight, who bears the blame?
- The airframe manufacturer?
- The software sub-contractor who wrote the middleware?
- The government team that designed the "open" interface standard?
Every single entity will point their fingers at each other. In a closed architecture ecosystem like the F-35, Lockheed Martin is the single throat to choke. It makes them an expensive monopoly, yes, but it also creates clear accountability. When you split the F-47 ecosystem into dozens of modular components managed by different vendors, the government becomes the prime integrator by default.
Let’s be brutally honest: the Department of Defense is completely unequipped to act as a world-class software integration house.
When the Air Force splits CCA awards between companies like Anduril and General Atomics, it isn't fostering cheap competition. It is creating parallel development pipelines that must eventually merge into a single, cohesive combat cloud. If you think upgrading the F-35’s Tech Refresh 3 (TR-3) software package was a nightmare, wait until you see the F-47 trying to manage real-time, microsecond-latency data links between an uncrewed autonomous loyal wingman built by Vendor A, carrying a payload from Vendor B, running an AI pilot from Vendor C, communicating with a stealth fighter built by Vendor D.
The Hidden Cost of Modular Airframes
The secondary pillar of this flawed consensus is the split contract model for CCAs. The idea is to buy cheap, attritable airframes in high volumes from various sources to avoid the cost overruns of a single-vendor monopoly.
This ignores the fundamental laws of aerospace manufacturing.
[Traditional Monolithic Program] -> Single Prime -> Closed Supply Chain -> High Cost, High Control
[Split CCA Architecture] -> Multiple Primes -> Fragmented Supply Chain -> Unknown Software Friction
True affordability in manufacturing comes from economies of scale. When you split production across multiple vendors to maintain a competitive industrial base, you artificially suppress the production volume of each individual supplier. You lose the learning curve efficiencies. You duplicate tooling costs. You create separate supply chains, each with its own vulnerabilities, specialized fasteners, and unique maintenance requirements.
Imagine a scenario where a deployment to a forward operating base in the Pacific requires maintaining three different variants of CCA drones alongside the F-47. Instead of a unified parts catalog, logistics units must manage discrete inventories for entirely different airframe designs. The savings promised by "cheap" drones vanish the moment they hit the operational logistics tail.
Furthermore, true modularity always introduces weight, power, and aerodynamic penalties. To make an aircraft component modular, you need standardized physical interfaces, extra wiring harnesses, heavier structural bulkheads to accommodate various payloads, and generalized software translation layers. In the world of low-observable (stealth) aviation, where every millimeter of skin flushness and every milliwatt of thermal signature matters, modularity is a tax on performance. The F-35 tried to be modular across three services (Army, Navy, Marines) and became a bloated compromise. The F-47 is trying to be modular across an infinite matrix of shifting software and hardware vendors. The result will be the same.
Dismantling the Public Conception of "Cheap Drones"
People frequently ask: Can't we just build thousands of cheap autonomous drones to overwhelm near-peer adversaries?
The short answer is no. The premise is flawed because it confuses a consumer drone with a survivable military asset.
A drone operating in a highly contested, electronic warfare-heavy environment cannot be cheap. If it relies on commercial GPS, it will be jammed instantly. If it uses unencrypted communication links, it will be hijacked or spoofed. If it lacks advanced low-observable characteristics, it will be shot down hundreds of miles before it reaches its target area.
To make a CCA relevant to the F-47 mission set, it must possess:
- Low-observable airframe geometry and radar-absorbent coatings.
- Advanced electronic counter-countermeasures (ECCM).
- Highly sophisticated edge-computing arrays to run autonomous algorithms when completely disconnected from the cloud.
Once you spec out a drone with these capabilities, it is no longer a $2 million attritable asset. It is a $20 million to $30 million uncrewed aircraft. At that price point, losing one hurts. The narrative of cheap mass is a marketing myth used to sell the concept to Congress.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Software Decoupling
The F-47 program intends to separate hardware acquisition from software acquisition. The belief is that software can be iterated on a Silicon Valley-style two-week sprint cycle, while the hardware remains a stable, long-term platform.
This works for a smartphone app. It does not work when software commands control surfaces traveling at Mach 1.8 at the edge of the envelope.
In high-performance aerospace engineering, software and hardware are deeply coupled. Flight control laws depend entirely on the specific structural resonance, aeroelastic flexing, and mass distribution of the physical wings. If a software update modifies the behavior of an autonomous CCA to optimize its sensor tracking, it can inadvertently introduce destructive oscillations into the airframe under certain atmospheric conditions.
By decoupling the development teams, you increase the surface area for catastrophic integration errors. The F-35's software delays did not happen because lock-in existed; they happened because verifying that millions of lines of code won't accidentally cause a system-wide power failure when the pilot fires a missile is an extraordinarily difficult task. Open architecture doesn't make code verification faster; it makes it infinitely more complex because the test matrix expands exponentially with every new vendor introduced to the ecosystem.
The Actionable Pivot for Next-Gen Procurement
We cannot turn back the clock on the F-47 or the NGAD framework, but we can stop sprinting in the wrong direction. If the defense industrial complex wants to avoid a trillion-dollar software lockup, it must abandon the fantasy of total modularity and implement a strict, bound strategy.
- Anchor Integration to a Single Entity: Stop trying to make the Air Force an agile software development house. Select a single system integrator for the entire F-47 and CCA digital ecosystem, and hold them contractually accountable for system failures. If a sub-contractor's software fails, it must be the prime’s financial disaster, not the taxpayer's.
- Standardize on Hardened Subsystems, Not Varied Airframes: Instead of splitting drone awards to build different looking aircraft, force vendors to build identical airframes while competing strictly on internal sensor payloads. Mass production must be preserved at all costs.
- Accept the High-Cost Reality: Acknowledge that survivable autonomy is expensive. Stop budgeting for the F-47 under the assumption that companion drones will be cheap, disposable commodities. Plan for high-value, semi-expendable platforms and build the logistics tail to support them.
The open architecture movement promised to democratize defense technology and lower costs. Instead, it is shifting profit margins from hardware manufacturing to endless software integration consultancies, all while multiplying the points of failure on the battlefield. The F-35 was a lesson in the dangers of over-ambition; the F-47 is shaping up to be a masterclass in the dangers of fragmented execution.
