Multi-Systems Aircraft Combat Survivability Workshop

The NDIA Air Combat Survivability Division will host a 2-day workshop on Multi-Systems Aircraft Combat Survivability at the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, May 5-6, 2026. While historically, the fundamentals of aircraft combat survivability focused on evaluating a single aircraft’s survivability versus a single threat, the discipline must now expand. The United States is developing new aircraft which bring the ability to cooperate with other air assets, including Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), to fight in the expected threat environment in 2030 and beyond. CCA are uncrewed, autonomous, drones that are designed to fly alongside crewed aircraft costing significantly less and providing greater sensor reach, delivery of weapons at increased ranges, and enhanced protection of the crew controlling the CCA. Thus, survivability analyses must also evolve to include the contribution of these off-board systems both to the survivability of the crewed aircraft-CCA systems and collectively to the entire air battleforce. 

The goal of this workshop is to review the current state of the U.S. Defense Industrial Base to assess multi-systems aircraft survivability, and identify pathways needed to further develop improved analytical methods. This event welcomes researchers and testers from the Department of War, Services, academia, and industry to collectively build a multi-faceted perspective on multi-systems survivability. The workshop will establish what analytical methods are currently available, consider how existing analytical methods might be limited for the upcoming needs, and highlight investments which need to be made in the near term, in order to include the effects of nascent collaborative combat tactics in the analysis of multi-system survivability. 

The workshop will be held at the SECRET//NOFORN level to allow discussion of details relevant to current acquisition programs.