On Thursday's paid stream, Ayi, Shilao and Yankee were using the context of Iran successfully hitting a F-35 to do a broader discussion on air defence against 5th generation fighter. Towards the end of the stream the conversation drifted towards 5th gen on 5th gen combat. Here Yankee revealed something new about the CCAs:
Although the engineers and researchers involved still think the CCAs are not yet mature, multiple Golden Helmet pilots have already been taken out by them in mock combat.
Immediately before Yankee dropped that bit of knowledge about CCAs getting golden helmet kills, they mentioned that with the rest of of a 5th gen fighter receiving the stealth treatment, cockpit is now a major source of residual RCS that you can only do so much about. Then immediately after Yankee's statement about CCAs they talked about how the CCAs , thanks to their small size, their lack of cockpit and their VLO treatment has a uncanny ability to sneak up to you into WVR for a dogfight. Ayi describes it as like going up against a surface-to-air missile in terms of RCS and this missile doesn't run out of thrust and has dogfighting mastery.
Because of this capability they list weapon bay as critically important for a successful CCA and derided Anduril YFQ-44 Fury for not having one.
