In this episode of Micro Journeys Inside Access, host Daniel Marrujo sits down with Colonel Keagan McLeese, call sign “Waldo”, commander of the 9th Reconnaissance Wing and Beale Air Force Base, recorded just two days before McLeese hands over command and flies his final mission as an Air Force pilot. The conversation traces his path from a teenager earning his private pilot’s license to the cockpit of the F-15 Eagle and F-22 Raptor, the origin of his call sign, and his philosophy on leadership forged through two decades of fighter pilot debriefs. From there, the discussion widens to Beale’s role in America’s power projection mission and the technology now reshaping how the Air Force fights.
That technology is Collaborative Combat Aircraft — semi-autonomous drone wingmen designed to fly alongside manned fighters, expand the “magazine,” and feed real-time intelligence back to the pilot in command. As artificial intelligence takes on a larger role in life-and-death decisions in the air, the conversation turns to a pointed question: how much authority should a machine actually have, and who stays responsible for pulling the trigger?
McLeese’s answer is direct: CCA platforms are built to be semi-autonomous, not autonomous, meaning a human pilot must still issue the final “consent to kill” before any hostile aircraft is engaged, preserving human judgment at the center of an increasingly AI-driven battlespace.