The US Department of the Air Force (DAF) and the Netherlands Ministry of Defence have finalised an agreement to work together on the acquisition and development of prototype Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA).
This agreement follows a letter of intent signed by the Netherlands in October 2025, demonstrating its willingness to join the programme.
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In a statement released on 23 April 2026, US Air Force said that the Netherlands is a “key interational partner” in the CCA programme.
Under the partnership, the Netherlands will contribute prototype CCA aircraft to the programme and participate in joint learning and experimentation at the Experimental Operations Unit (EOU) located at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada.
The EOU is responsible for testing concepts of operation and ensuring human-machine teaming processes are continuously evaluated and refined under realistic operational scenarios.
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said: “The future fight will be fought with allies and partners. By aligning our approaches early, we ensure interoperability and shared advantage in the era of human-machine teaming.”
The collaboration includes shared work on platform-agnostic, open-architecture autonomous systems to permit data sharing and improve operational compatibility in joint missions.
The DAF has prioritised rapid cooperation with international partners to further advance multiple aspects of CCA development.
The CCA programme forms part of the wider US Air Force Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) programme, which seeks to employ a system-of-systems approach encompassing new fighter jets, weapons, sensors, networks and command tools.
The service expects to use advanced technologies such as AI, machine learning and autonomy to support both current and future combat aircraft.
In March 2023, the US Secretary of the Air Force outlined plans to pair at least 1,000 uncrewed CCAs with manned fighter jets in coming years.
This proposal considers teaming two CCAs with each of the 200 planned NGAD platforms and 300 F-35 aircraft.
The DAF has allocated $1.1bn for the CCA programme in its fiscal year 2027 budget request.
