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Lockheed Martin now plans to build five prototypes of its Skunk Works-designed Vectis Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) as the company is increasing its pitch to the U.S. military and potential international buyers.
At the same time, the company is also providing new details on the design of the high-end uncrewed aircraft as competition heats up.
Skunk Works first unveiled the Vectis concept in September 2025, saying it could be a contender for the next increment of the U.S. Air Force’s CCA program. Ron Fehlen, Skunk Works vice president and general manager, says Vectis is targeting a CCA competitive price and has made trade-offs in the design to meet that target. The Air Force has said it hopes CCAs come in at about $20 million each.
Vectis is a multirole, subsonic aircraft with an internal carriage of weapons. New imagery released by Lockheed Martin show the aircraft firing an AIM-120, but that is not its only potential weapon.
“We’re looking from a multimission perspective, so you can imagine the different mission sets from potentially ... air-to-air, air-to-ground, things of this nature,” he says. “But specifics on those are really not in the discussion yet, but [we] may be able to reveal as we go through development.”
New imagery and details from Fehlen show more about the design. The aircraft is 34 ft. long with a 38-ft. wingspan, about the length of an MQ-9 Reaper and less wide than the company’s F-35A.
Skunk Works showed that the Vectis has a submerged dorsal inlet for its engine—“a design that has a long heritage for us,” he says.
The design will decrease frontal drag for better performance. As the Air Force looks to operate CCAs from potentially austere locations, the placement of the inlet reduces the danger of debris from the ground. The aircraft is tailless to reduce drag, he says.
Vectis will initially fly with a Williams FJ44 engine, like many other CCAs, though the company has said it is looking for a potential higher thrust replacement.
Fehlen announced that Lockheed will build five prototypes, having previously said only one was in the works. New images show components of the aircraft in production, including an upper surface skin, lower fuselage skin and a lower wing skin.
“We looked at it and said this enables us to have four more to go to do other types of testing, as well as [to] validate our production and accelerate that out to the field,” Fehlen says. “So that’s the reason we chose, and we are very excited to work with customers as we build out those four.”
Lockheed Martin has aggressively pitched Vectis abroad, showcasing it at the Farnborough International Airshow in England in July along with discussions at events in Dubai and among potential partner companies in South Korea and Germany.
“We’re looking at all the customers,” he says. “It also speaks to what a platform like Vectis is going to enable for all of our customers. So really that’s the exciting part to me. There’s no reason to say, well, it’s one customer or another.”
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