A recent breakthrough in airborne drone control has offered a tangible glimpse into the future of US air combat, signaling the US Air Force’s accelerating push to integrate autonomous wingmen alongside frontline fighters. This month, The War Zone (TWZ) reported that a US Air Force F-22 Raptor pilot successfully controlled an uncrewed YFQ-44A Fury fighter […]
A pilot flying an F-22 Raptor fighter has issued commands to a YFQ-44A Fury Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drone in a first-of-its-kind test. This is an important development for the U.S. Air Force’s CCA program, as its F-22s are set to be the first aerial ‘quarterbacks’ for these uncrewed aircraft once they enter operational service.
The Air Force and Anduril, Fury’s prime contractor, announced the “airborne tactical-control demonstration” today, but it occurred sometime earlier this month. An Anduril spokesperson confirmed directly to TWZ that this was a first for an F-22 and a pre-production YFQ-44A. Last month, the company disclosed tests involving Fury flying in formation with F-35 fighters, but stressed that the latter were not yet issuing commands to the former in mid-air. A Fury drone also launched an AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) for the first time earlier this year.
A stock picture of a pre-production YFQ-44A Fury CCA drone. USAF
The Air Force has orders in now for production of FQ-44As, as well as General Atomics’ FQ-42A Vengeance drones, under the first phase, or Increment 1, of its CCA program. The service is still planning to acquire additional CCAs, which could be of entirely different types, through a follow-on Increment 2. The goal now is to have a fleet of at least 500 Increment 1 CCAs by 2032. The recent test is part of efforts to lay the groundwork for an initial tranche of CCAs to start entering operational service around the end of the decade.
“During the demonstration, an F-22 pilot served as an airborne ‘quarterback,’ issuing high-level tactical directives to a single YFQ-44A,” according to a press release from the Air Force. “The aircraft’s onboard autonomy software interpreted and executed those directives in real time, conducting dynamic flight maneuvers and simulated combat tasks.”
A stock picture of an F-22 Raptor test jet. USAF
“The event brought together personnel from the 412th Test Wing, 422nd Test and Evaluation Squadron, 309th Software Engineering Group, Experimental Operations Unit, F-22 System Program Office and the CCA Software Autonomy and Teaming Branch,” according to the Air Force release.
The Experimental Operations Unit (EOU) mentioned here is based at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada and has been leading efforts to pave the way for future Air Force CCA operations.
The “Fury and an F-22 both took off [from] Edwards AFB [Air Force Base in California] and joined up midair,” according to a separate release from Anduril. “While in flight, the Raptor pilot sent an updated mission plan to Fury using a tactical data link, commanding Fury through operationally-relevant maneuvers from the cockpit of the crewed quarterback.”
Neither the Air Force nor Anduril provided further details on how the F-22 was configured for this test. Past Air Force budget documents have mentioned the need to integrate “tablets, cables, and associated materials” onto the Raptor for this purpose. A single Raptor is also expected to be able to manage multiple CCA drones simultaneously.
A view of a “battle manager” in the back seat of an L-39 light jet using a tablet-like device during a past test of capabilities to control drones in mid-air conducted by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works. Lockheed Martin
A General Atomics Vengeance drone, at right, in flight together with an F-35A Joint Strike Fighter and an F-15E Strike Eagle. General Atomics
In addition, Fury and Vengeance are set to make their debut in a large-scale exercise before the end of the year. Bringing the CCAs to the next iteration of Exercise Emerald Flag will give the Air Force further opportunity to test them in a more operationally relevant context alongside crewed fighters.
“We have not yet done a LFE [large-force employment exercise] with these [CCAs], for real. The first one is going to be Emerald Flag. That’s in December,” Lt. Col. Lyndon “OTTO” Bartlett, the EOU’s Director of Operations, said during a panel at the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference in September, at which TWZ was in attendance. “That’ll be our first tip [sic] dip of the toe in an actual force integration.”
The EOU, working together with other Air Force elements and industry partners, still has to answer a host of other outstanding questions unrelated to tactical operations. CCAs will be deployed, launched, recovered, supported, and otherwise operated in ways that are distinct from their crewed counterparts, and for which new policies and procedures will need to be developed. Just making sure human pilots have trust in their uncrewed wingmen operating as expected will be critical, underscoring the specific importance of the demonstration disclosed today. All of this applies equally to the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Navy CCA programs, which are being run in very close coordination with the Air Force’s efforts.
When it comes to the recent test involving the F-22 and the YFQ-44A, “this achievement demonstrates what is possible when we are aligned with industry on a shared imperative: delivering capability to the warfighter at unprecedented speed,” Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink said in a statement today. “We are driving urgency into every part of acquisition from rapid integration and flight learning to disciplined assessment, so we can turn promising technology into combat capability at the pace the threat demands.”
A graphic showing the FQ-42 and FQ-44 designs together. USAF
“This flight shows the power of crewed-uncrewed teaming and the advantage it provides our warfighters,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach also said. “We must test often, learn fast, and give commanders what they need, when they need it.”
“The U.S. Air Force’s CCA program is the fastest moving, most mature CCA program anywhere in the world, and will be the first to field operational aircraft,” Mark Shushnar, Anduril’s Vice President of Autonomous Airpower, said as well. “Getting there demands that Anduril and the U.S. Air Force work together to prove out the capability, define the operational procedures, and build trust between operators and their semi-autonomous wingmen.”
With all this in mind, an F-22 issuing orders to a YFQ-44A in mid-air is an important new sign of what is on the horizon for the U.S. Air Force, though there is still work to be done.
Shield AI says it is on track to roll out the first prototypes of its X-BAT jet-powered stealth ‘fighter’ drone by the end of this month. Flight testing of this uncrewed aircraft, which is designed to take off and land vertically from a tail-sitting position, is still scheduled to kick off before the end of the year. X-BAT’s core concept was already highly ambitious, but an extremely aggressive timeline to reach some degree of operational capability through the U.S. Navy’s Runway Independent Maritime Expeditionary Strike (RIMES) program has now been disclosed.
TWZ got an update on X-BAT, which we were first to report on in-depth last year, in an interview yesterday with Shield AI’s Armor Harris, Senior Vice President and General Manager of the company’s aircraft division. This came ahead of today’s announcement that the company has received an additional $150 million in funding from the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment through its Defense Exportability Features program via the Navy. This is on top of the $50 million investment the Navy, in cooperation with the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit, made in X-BAT’s development earlier this year as part of the RIMES effort. Shield AI has committed an equivalent amount of internal funding, for a combined total of $400 million.
Jamie Hunter
“In broad strokes, the last year has been a bunch of collaborative risk reduction with the Navy. So, wind tunnel testing, engine testing, thermal testing, all kinds of stuff to basically take the major risks in the program, [and] burn them down, so we can move confidently into the production design,” Shield AI’s Harris told us. “The last culmination of the risk reduction is the flight testing of the two full-scale prototypes. The first one of those will be done at the end of October.”
“That’s a full-scale vehicle,” he continued. “It’s got the outer mold line, it’s got the F110 engine, the full propulsion path, everything in it.”
To date, Shield AI has only shown models of the X-BAT publicly. A new one displayed at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space 2026 exposition in April revealed major changes to the core design. This included a complete reworking of the planform from a ‘cranked kite’ type arrangement to one with a distinctly different arrowhead-shaped profile featuring a straight leading edge with a more dramatic sweep.
The video below includes clips showing the original X-BAT design and the current one.
The aforementioned “propulsion path,” testing of which has already been conducted on the ground, primarily consists of the General Electric F110 paired with an Axisymmetric Vectoring Exhaust Nozzle (AVEN). The nozzle was originally developed in the 1990s for an experimental thrust-vectoring F-16 fighter. Shield AI is using the original AVEN, which had been in storage for decades, to support development of X-BAT. The nozzle will provide pitch and yaw control, with roll control for the drone coming from bleed air routed through thrusters in the drone’s wings.
No runway, no problem.
Shield AI and @GE_Aerospace just cleared a critical path to vertical flight, completing engine light-off testing of the Axisymmetric Vectoring Exhaust Nozzle (AVEN) for X-BAT.
Shield AI has previously said that the roughly fighter-sized X-BAT will have a maximum range of 2,000 nautical miles and a service ceiling of around 50,000 feet. The company has also said in the past it is targeting an effective combat radius roughly twice that of the F-35, or around 1,340 nautical miles, but also that it could be closer to 1,000 nautical miles. Space has been made within the X-BAT design for a potential in-flight refueling capability, but there is no active work yet to integrate that feature.
In terms of payload, X-BAT’s design includes internal weapons bays roughly the same size as those on the F-35, as well as two external hardpoints under the wings. Those hardpoints are plumbed, meaning that range-extending drop tanks, or even buddy refueling stores to allow the drone to act as a tanker, could be carried. Baked-in modularity and open-architecture mission systems are intended to make it easier to fit various sensors, data links, and other capabilities down the line.
A rendering highlighting X-BAT’s stores carrying capabilities. Two AGM-154 Joint Stand-Off Weapon (JSOW) glide bombs are depicted here in the internal bays. The silhouette of an AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) cruise missile is shown under the wing. Shield AI
“X-BAT’s really designed to be a multi-role capability, and, if you look out at the 10-20 year time horizon, it’s hard to predict what the future fight is going to look like,” Shield AI’s Harris noted. “We fundamentally believe that multi-role capabilities are critically important. And, so, X-BAT, the reason why it’s sized to where it is is [sic] to be able to carry serious strike weapons internally and externally, in addition to being able to do air-to-air [combat], electronic warfare, and other mission sets.
“You could think of it as like X-35 versus F-35,” he also said yesterday when asked about any expectations now for further changes between the initial pair of prototypes and the final production design.
Lockheed Martin’s X-35 demonstrators are, in very broad strokes, similar to, but distinct from any of the resulting variants of the Joint Strike Fighter. Shield AI has notably already talked in the past about integrating more low-observable (stealthy) attributes to the exhaust end of the design down the line.
A side-by-side look at an X-35 demonstrator, at left, and a production F-35A, at right. USAF
“Then we’ll get into flight testing around the end of this year,” Harris added. “We’ll be doing vertical takeoff and landing testing with that [the initial prototypes] to actually prove out and develop the VTOL [vertical takeoff and landing] technology for X-BAT.”
Shield AI’s X-Forge 2 facility at the Newton City-County Airport in Kansas is set to be the main flight testing hub for X-BAT, as well as the focal point for sustainment of the drones. A production facility, X-Forge 3, is also being built in Des Moines, Washington. The company’s original site, X-Forge 1, is in Frisco, Texas.
A rendering of the X-Forge 2 facility. Shield AI
In terms of the actual flight test campaign, “you remember the X-BAT system has the air vehicle and the launch and recovery vehicle, which is the trailer that it launches and lands from,” Harris said. “Basically, the way the testing works is, we start with the vehicle horizontal, sitting on that launch and recovery vehicle, running the engine. Then we bring it up vertical, run the engine vertically, run the vehicle vertically.”
“Then we have one of the biggest cranes in the world that’s getting set up at our test site in Kansas right now, and we hang the vehicle suspended from that crane and do a bunch of testing while it’s hanging from the crane in free flight,” he continued. “Then we take the crane away, and then we do the actual untethered flights.”
Shield AI’s goal is to fly a fully missionized X-BAT in 2028 and start series production the following year.
A rendering of the X-Forge 3 production facility being built in Des Moines, Washington. Shield AI
On top of that, “the way that the [RIMES] program has been structured is getting to an early operational capability in 2029 is the end goal,” Shield AI’s Harris said.
When asked if this meant that RIMES is aiming “to eventually arrive at not just a demonstration of capability, but a real operationalized capability,” he said that was “correct.”
We will come back to this more later on, but suffice it to say up front, the prospect of X-BAT reaching an operational level of maturity within three years is extraordinarily ambitious, to say the least.
In the meantime, Shield AI has already been testing the mechanisms to “latch and unlatch” X-BAT to the launch and recovery system using an unpowered “battleship” test article, according to Harris. The design of the launch and recovery system has also evolved, and it is now self-propelled, at least to a degree, rather than just being a towed trailer.
“The launch and recovery vehicle is actually critical to the operation of the X-BAT weapon system because it enables survivability on the ground. So when you’re operating in a land-based environment, it enables basically shoot-and-scoot tactics,” Harris also noted. “Enemy transporter-erector-launchers [for missiles] are like pretty hard to find because they’re constantly moving around. Just like X-BAT, when it’s mated onto the launch and recovery vehicle, [it] is always moving around, makes it hard to track, hard to find, hard to destroy.”
A rendering of an X-BAT on a launch and recovery trailer in the fully erected position. Shield AI
The plan now is to “build the one-to-one launch and recovery vehicles to air vehicles. So the air vehicle is always on the trailer. It never comes off of it,” he continued. “Even maintenance to the air vehicle is done while it’s sitting on that launch and recovery vehicle.”
“In fact, we’re actually planning on building more than one-to-one of the launch and recovery vehicles, so that way you can preposition them around different islands, different places in the theater, and have multiple places the aircraft can lily pad from,” he added. “But you’re never putting multiple aircraft onto one launcher and launching them or something like that.”
“When you typically operate a jet, there’s a whole bunch of ground carts and stuff that you bring, like the ground power cart, the ground cooling cart, the air start cart, etc,” Harris further elaborated. “So we’ve moved a lot of those systems onto [the] launch and recovery vehicles, so you don’t have all these separate carts, which is pretty critical when you’re trying to do expeditionary operations.”
“The model for land-based operations is kind of a hub-and-spoke type model. So the squadrons are based at air bases. All the fuel and the weapons are generally based at the air bases, as well. But then you can distribute the aircraft all over the airfield,” he continued. “So, you think about what the enemy’s doing, they’re targeting the runways, they’re targeting the tarmacs, but you can disperse the aircraft around the perimeter of the airfield. You can launch them from the golf course. You can launch them from empty space in the taxiway, etc.”
A graphic highlighting various options for deploying X-BATs on land and at sea. Shield AI
Harris said that another “spoke” could be X-BATs operating from forward arming and refueling points (FARP). All of this is part of larger concepts of operations for the drone that Shield has been envisioning, and that are not at all limited to deployments at locations on land. Harris noted during the interview that the self-propelled nature of the current launch and recovery system would also help with moving the drones around on virtually any ship with sufficient deck space. This is where the RIMES program, which is separate and distinct from the U.S. Navy’s carrier-based Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drone ambitions, really comes in.
“I’ll say the fundamental value proposition of RIMES is that if you have a carrier-based CCA, you’re fundamentally constrained by the square footage of the deck of the aircraft carrier,” Harris explained. “So if you are taking an F-18 or an F-35 off, you better be replacing it with better capability per square foot of deck space than the thing that you’re taking off.”
“So, F/A-XX [the Navy’s sixth-generation carrier-based fighter, now to be built by Boeing] is a huge leap in capability, right? Which is why that program makes a lot of sense,” he continued. “The challenge with CCA is: Does it really make sense to take a manned aircraft off of an aircraft carrier and replace it with an unmanned aircraft?”
Shield AI’s argument here is that X-BAT disrupts this core equation by opening the door to a CCA-like capability, or even something more capable, that can be employed in a ship-based mode without sacrificing any crewed aircraft capacity on an aircraft carrier. Shield AI envisions dozens of X-BATs being employed from amphibious assault ships, as well as other kinds of amphibious warfare ships, including expeditionary sea base type vessels, as seen at the top of this story.
A rendering depicting X-BAT drones on the deck of the US Navy’s future America class amphibious assault ship USS Bougainville. Shield AI
“So when you think about the number of carrier air wings that the Navy has to deploy, deploying X-BAT across all these other ships basically significantly increases the number of carrier air wings,” Harris said.
As already mentioned, the current structure of the RIMES includes a target for an early operational capability in 2029, according to Harris. “We have a program defined to get there, and there’s basically milestone-based payments along the way, so as Shield performs and hits milestones, then the Navy kicks in additional funding,” he added.
“I don’t want to get ahead of the Navy, and give you a specific number, but like hundreds to low thousands,” he also said when asked if there was even a very rough planning figure for the eventual size of the RIMES drone fleet.
Many questions remain about X-BAT, which still has to demonstrate the viability of its vertical takeoff and landing capability, which underpins everything else. As we noted in our original in-depth report on this design, the core concept here is not new, and there have been many unsuccessful attempts to operationalize it in the past. There has been skepticism that Shield AI’s effort will succeed where others have failed. The company is of the view that groundwork has now been more firmly laid, including through its own work with its much smaller internal combustion-engine-powered V-BAT tail-sitting VTOL drone, to truly realize a design of this kind.
The performance and capabilities that Shield AI expects from X-BAT once it is flying at all are also ambitious. A high degree of autonomy is also part of the full planned package, which will leverage the company’s already extensive work in this domain with its Hivemind software.
There are also questions about the Navy’s exact plans for RIMES, as well as its broader future drone fleets. Just this year, the service has issued several contracting notices pointing to rapidly evolving views about future carrier-based strike drones and other uncrewed aircraft. New requirements that Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) released in August ostensibly for future CCA-type drones notably pointed more toward something that sounded very much like an advanced uncrewed combat air vehicle (UCAV), as you can read more about here.
Whether the 2029 operational timeframe the Navy is said to be aiming for under RIMES is firm, or even realistic in any way, remains to be seen. The actual definition of what constitutes an “early operational capability” could be very flexible, as well. It is also worth noting here that Shield AI is not the only company currently conducting work under RIMES. Whether the Navy might be planning to acquire more than one design through this program is unclear. We have reached out to the service for more information.
Other services could be interested in any operational capability produced through the RIMES effort, too. TWZ regularly highlights how runway-independent drones would be particularly well-suited to the U.S. Marine Corps’ new expeditionary and distributed concepts of operations. That service is already in the process of acquiring MQ-58B Valkyrie drones from Kratos that will be able to operate from conventional runways. They will also be capable of runway-independent launches, though they will still have to land conventionally. The baseline Valkyrie design lands via parachute.
A rendering of a landing gear-equipped version of the Valkyrie in line with what the Marines are now acquiring. Kratos
In general, runway independence is of growing interest elsewhere across the U.S. military as threats to large, established bases continue to expand in scale and scope. The proliferation of various tiers of weaponized drones is a particularly significant factor in this, asTWZ just examined in detail this week in the context of the recent withdrawal of B-1 bombers from RAF Fairford in the United Kingdom. Ever more capable cruise, ballistic, and hypersonic missiles are also part of the full threat picture.
The conflict with Iran has also underscored the limits of what can be gained survivability-wise by dispersing traditional fixed-wing aircraft, especially within an existing airbase. As highlighted earlier, X-BAT could be dispersed very differently to nearly anywhere within a facility that can handle the thrust from the F110 engine in hover.
As it stands now, we are set to get our first view of a full-sized X-BAT prototype within the next few weeks as Shield AI continues to gear up for the start of actual flight testing before the end of the year.
We have a significant update on the fast-moving world of Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) out of Mojave, California, today. Northrop Grumman’s Talon Blue, which now has the official designation YFQ-48A, has taken to the skies for the first time. The existence of Talon Blue was first officially disclosed in December of 2025 at a media event in Mojave that we attended.
Talon Blue flying out of Mojave Air and Space Port for the first time. (@Task_Force23) TASK_FORCE23
The uncrewed aircraft took to the skies over Mojave Air and Space Port, home of famed ‘bleeding-edge’ airframer and Northrop Grumman subsidiary Scaled Composites, which built the aircraft. A release from Northrop Grumman reads:
“MOJAVE, Calif. – Oct. 3, 2026 – Northrop Grumman’s (NYSE: NOC) YFQ-48A Talon Blue completed its first fully autonomous flight, including taxi, takeoff, in-flight maneuvers, and landing. Developed through company investment, Talon Blue combines modular design and advanced manufacturing to lower cost and support faster production without compromising mission capability. The flight builds on Northrop Grumman’s seven decades of autonomy experience and more than 500,000 autonomous flight hours, with lessons from Talon Blue informing future autonomous systems.
Details on YFQ-48A Talon Blue:
Talon Blue is part of Northrop Grumman’s internally-funded Project Talon portfolio focused on accelerating the development of mission-ready autonomous airpower capabilities.
Manufacturing and design innovations cut part count and overall weight, lowering cost and enabling faster production to meet growing demand for autonomous systems.
Designed with flexible operational concepts in mind, Talon Blue’s high air intake, wide wheelbase and integrated weapons bay support a wide variety of mission needs for U.S. and allied partners.
Craig Woolston, vice president and general manager, research and advanced design, Northrop Grumman: “Our customers made it clear they need autonomous systems that can be fielded faster and more affordably without sacrificing mission effectiveness. We listened. Talon Blue’s first flight is one step toward a new generation of autonomous capabilities. Every flight and lesson strengthens our broader autonomy work and sharpens what comes next.”
Talon Blue flying above the Mojave Desert in California. (Northrop Grumman)
While the Talon Blue aircraft draws most of the attention, Northrop Grumman has put great emphasis on its back-end autonomy development ecosystem, which includes its purpose-built Model 437 demonstrator aircraft, now under the Talon IQ badge (formerly Beacon).
With the loss of the F/A-XX next-generation naval fighter program to Boeing, Northrop Grumman winning a contract from the U.S. services for Talon Blue has become more important. Doing so would get the company back into the Pentagon’s tactical air combat portfolio. As we have discussed for years, advanced uncrewed tactical systems are set to be less risky and potentially more lucrative than traditional fighter programs as air combat rotates to predominantly uncrewed capabilities and mass production of them. Beyond U.S. needs, the demand for CCAs is likely to explode internationally in the coming years, so programs like Talon Blue could find success elsewhere if the Pentagon goes another direction, but getting the U.S. armed services’ stamp of approval and the scale of production that comes with it would surely help there too.
Author’s note: A big thanks to our friend @Task_Force23 for providing us with great photos for this story.
The newly released picture from General Atomics’ Aeronautical Systems, Inc. division (GA-ASI), seen at the top of this story, shows an FQ-42 in flight together with an F-35A Joint Strike Fighter and an F-15E Strike Eagle. The company has also disclosed the delivery of another Vengeance drone to the Air Force, this time to the service’s main drone operations hub at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.
“The FQ-42 that arrived at Creech will continue regular test and evaluation operations with the Air Force aimed at experimentation with the new aircraft,” according to a press release GA-ASI put out today. “Previous efforts with Vengeance and other GA-ASI jets, including [the] XQ-67A Off-Board Sensing Station and MQ-20 Avenger – have found the trio of combat jets flying in various scenarios that push the boundaries of combat aviation. GA-ASI’s jets have flown semi-autonomously and autonomously with various AI pilots and under collaborative control of human fighter pilots operating F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II jets.”
From top to bottom, General Atomics MQ-20 Avenger, XQ-67 OBSS, and YFQ-42 drones. GA-ASI
As mentioned, the Air Force is steadily working to broaden the scale and scope of testing involving the FQ-42 and FQ-44 to include more and more operationally relevant scenarios. Both types are set to make their first appearance at a large-force employment (LFE) exercise in December, offering a valuable new opportunity for deeper and more realistic integration with crewed fighters.
The Air Force otherwise continues to lay the groundwork for future CCA operations, including through a major round of testing at Creech in July, which TWZ was first to report on. The service is heavily focused now just on figuring out how the drones will be deployed, launched, recovered, supported, and otherwise operated on a day-to-day basis. A dedicated test squadron called the Experimental Operations Unit (EOU), established at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, has been leading those efforts.
Work is also underway to demonstrate tactical capabilities, such as the FQ-44 launching an AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) for the first time earlier this year.
New test footage: first missile shot from YFQ-44A.
YFQ-44A executed an end-to-end, beyond-line-of-sight strike against a simulated target.
“We’re on path right now to do our air-to-air shot coming up here in the near future,” Mike Shortsleeve, Vice President for Strategy Business Development at GA-ASI, told TWZ‘s Jamie Hunter on the floor of the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference last week.
Last week, GA-ASI separately announced a new demonstration of semi-autonomous air-to-air combat capability involving crewed F-5AT Advanced Tiger jets belonging to private adversary air contractor Tactical Air Support, Inc. and an unspecified “CCA test aircraft.” The company did use a picture of an Avenger drone to illustrate the press release. The F-5s and the CCA surrogate were equipped with infrared search-and-track sensors (IRST) during the testing.
The stock picture of an Avenger drone that General Atomics used to illustrate its press release last week. General Atomics
“The live exercise proved that a CCA and a manned fighter can collaborate to fuse sensor data from AMS-GRA-compliant sensors to track, engage, and eliminate an airborne target while using a Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS) data link to accomplish seamless coordination between the two aircraft,” according to the GA-ASI release.
“The demonstration utilized BLOS communication between the CCA and the airborne F-5, enabling the Advanced Tiger to send data about targets from an AMS-GRA-compatible system. These commands were relayed to the CCA’s TacACE [Tactical Autonomy Ecosystem software] system,” the release added. “This flight showed that many companies’ platforms can interoperate using the plug-and-play government reference architectures ecosystem. The U.S. Air Force isn’t locked into using a single vendor or system.”
IRSTs are especially valuable for helping spot stealthy targets with features designed to reduce their radar cross-sections since they detect and track infrared emissions. By extension, IRSTs are also immune to radio frequency electronic warfare jamming. As passive sensors, they do not emit their own signals that could alert a target to the fact they are being tracked, either. IRSTs can still be used to cue or otherwise be linked to other sensors, including active electronically-scanned array radars. Fusing data from multiple sources can provide higher fidelity tracks of multiple targets, as well as improved situational awareness overall.
An Avenger drone with a podded IRST sensor under its wing. General Atomics
Air-to-air combat is expected to be the primary mission set, at least initially, for Air Force CCAs. At the same time, an air-to-ground role for the FQ-42 and FQ-44, and/or other future CCA-type drones the Air Force might acquire, is emerging on the horizon. Anduril has already fit-checked a variety of air-to-ground ordnance on Fury.
As it stands now, the Air Force is looking to have its first operational CCAs in service toward the end of the decade. The service is also presently aiming to have a total fleet of at least 500 CCAs of all types by 2032.
“If we can’t be ready, then certainly you’re not going to have the forces that you need and the numbers that you need going forward. This signifies that mass is certainly important again, but also autonomy is just as important,” General Atomics’ Shortsleeve told us last week in talking about the Air Force’s CCA fleet size target. “So the ability to have these autonomous systems, whether they’re bringing in additional weapons, sensing capability, whatever it is, all of those working in a collaborative environment, whether it’s manned, unmanned teaming, or unmanned and unmanned capabilities, that right there is what’s going to help the warfighter in the future.”
“And when we say autonomy, it’s not just strictly this is going to go off and do its own thing. It’s going to be directed,” he added. “Whether it’s on the ground, in the air, [it] makes no difference to the system itself. It’s going to work hand-in-hand [with humans]. So that human-machine teaming, that’s what they’re really focusing on. There is figuring out how to best use this capability in the advancement of actually having to employ it in [the] real world.”
Though just flying in formation is very different from collaboration with a high degree of autonomy, the new picture of the FQ-42 together with the F-35A and the F-15E is a window into the future teamed operations the Air Force is hoping to build.
Senior U.S. Air Force leaders in Europe say NATO allies are increasingly looking to participate in the development and employment of collaborative combat aircraft (CCAs), even as several of those same countries pursue their own indigenous fighter and drone programs. American commanders say they are looking forward to CCAs expanding the alliance’s overall capacity, and are already pushing for such systems to work together from the outset.
Speaking yesterday at the Air & Space Forces Air, Space and Cyber Symposium that TWZ is attending, Lt. Gen. Jason T. Hinds, commander of U.S. Air Forces in Europe, U.S. Air Forces Africa, and NATO’s Allied Air Command, and Chief Master Sgt. Joshua J. Wiener, USAFE-AFAFRICA’s command chief, discussed how the command is preparing for an eventual European role in the U.S. Air Force’s planned fleet of hundreds of CCAs.
U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Jason T. Hinds, U.S. Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa commander (far left), and U.S. Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Joshua J. Wiener, USAFE-AFAFRICA command chief (second from left), pose for a group photo with the Association of African Air Forces representatives from Kenya, Nigeria, and Tunisia at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, earlier this month.
The issue is particularly significant for USAFE, which operates a fraction of the fighter force it maintained in Europe during the Cold War, even as many of its NATO allies contend with shrinking fleets of crewed combat aircraft. This comes against a backdrop of deepening tensions with Russia and the emergence of new kinds of threats. Autonomous aircraft that can augment crewed fighters could provide the alliance with additional combat mass without requiring a corresponding increase in the number of crewed aircraft and personnel permanently based in Europe.
“I’m excited about what CCAs have in store for the Air Force,” Hinds said, pointing to recent comments from the Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink, including the aim of having at least 500 CCAs in service by 2032.
He added that European interest in these kinds of platforms is already growing.
“I think you’re going to see a lot more interest from other nations inside Europe about what is America doing with CCAs and how they can join this party, if you will,” Hinds said.
Germany is “heavily involved,” he said, while Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands are also showing interest.
In the case of Germany, we have previously explored how that country is looking to procure CCAs by 2029. Sweden, too, recently unveiled a concept for a high-end, stealthy CCA-type drone, while the Dutch are looking to become more closely alligned with U.S. Air Force CCA efforts.
Saab has produced a full-scale concept model of a future uncrewed combat air system, known as aircraft A3. Saab
USAFE is currently using two broad operational scenarios to explain to allies how CCAs could fit into NATO’s force structure.
The first is defensive. A CCA could operate as part of an integrated air and missile defense network, potentially engaging one-way attack drones or cruise missiles without the need for expensive crewed fighters.
The second is offensive. In that scenario, autonomous aircraft could help suppress or destroy integrated air defense systems and potentially attack fielded forces during an effort to repel a hostile incursion into NATO territory.
Allies are interested in both missions, Hinds said, and want the ability to incorporate CCAs into their own force designs. Interestingly, only yesterday, Anduril shared photos of its YFQ-44A Fury configured with air-to-ground weapons, underscoring the fact that the CCA could take on an air-to-ground role in the future in addition to its current air-to-air focus.
A YFQ-44A carrying pods for 2.75-inch rockets and 500-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) under the wings. Anduril
That kind of interest has already prompted work at the NATO level. Hinds pointed to a study by the Joint Air Power Competence Center, the alliance’s airpower think tank based in Kalkar, Germany, examining how NATO members could employ CCAs in a modular fashion, including issues such as sustainment, training, and exercises.
“It was a pretty long paper, but the nations wanted it,” Hinds said.
Initial experimentation is expected to take place in the United States, but European experimentation could follow, including by Sweden and potentially other NATO members.
At the same time, European countries are not simply waiting for an American CCA to arrive.
The United Kingdom has launched its own Storm Fighter CCA program. Germany is pursuing a separate loyal-wingman effort, while the United Kingdom, Italy, and Japan are meanwhile jointly embarked on the Global Combat Air Program, or GCAP, which is intended to produce the Tempest next-generation crewed fighter and associated uncrewed systems.
A rendering of a CCA concept released at the launch of the U.K. Royal Air Force Storm Fighter program, earlier this year. BAE Systems
The proliferation of national programs raises an obvious question: How does NATO prevent a growing fleet of autonomous aircraft from becoming a collection of incompatible national systems?
Hinds said the answer starts with commonality.
“The first and foremost thing is we want to strive for commonality,” he said. “Commonality means we don’t even have to worry about interoperability.”
Where common equipment is not possible, however, USAFE wants interoperability built into national systems from the beginning.
“Interoperability by design” is the preferred approach, Hinds said, with NATO data standards and other requirements incorporated before a system enters service rather than retrofitted later.
The good news for USAFE is that NATO already has extensive experience establishing common standards for interoperability, covering everything from tactics and procedures to communications, datalinks, weapons employment, and other technologies. That existing framework gives the alliance a foundation for integrating increasingly diverse national systems without requiring every member to field identical equipment.
F-35A from the U.S. Air Force’s 48th Fighter Wing and the Royal Norwegian Air Force fly tandem after a formation flight near Lofoten, Norway, March 10, 2026. The formation flight was intended to symbolize the partnership and degree of interoperability displayed between participating NATO militaries during Exercise Cold Response 26. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Mya Seymour Cpl. Mya Seymour
Hinds did warn that some countries have previously acquired equipment that was not compatible with NATO systems, leaving them with the choice of paying to modify their own equipment or forcing the alliance to adapt its systems around it.
That problem becomes particularly important as autonomous aircraft are connected to increasingly complex sensor and weapons networks. Even more important is the requirement for a baseline command-and-control network for CCAs themselves, allowing different platforms to manage them seamlessly.
The ability to share and control CCAs across a complex battlespace is already emerging as both a major opportunity and a significant integration challenge. The U.S. Air Force and Navy, for example, have made clear that their respective CCAs are being developed with the ability to be controlled seamlessly across services, pointing toward a future in which autonomous aircraft need not remain tied to the service or platform that launched them.
In such an architecture, the aircraft, sensor, command-and-control network, and weapon do not necessarily have to belong to the same country.
As an example, Dutch F-35s, operating in Europe, have used a data-exchange system to transmit targeting coordinates to Israeli-made PULS (Precise and Universal Launch System) rocket artillery. The system, developed by Lockheed Martin is known as Keystone, and you can read more about it here.
A Dutch F-35A brandishing its AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles during a NATO air policing drill. Bartek Bera
USAFE is making “significant advances” in areas including cross-servicing, cross-loading, and cross-flying allied aircraft, Hinds said, all of which are intended to make multinational operations more seamless.
A U.S. Air Force F-35 crew chief conducts post-flight checks at Pirkkala Air Base, Finland, during the tactical exercise, Ramstein Flag 26. U.S. Air Force photo by 2nd Lt. Sarah Hedgman
The same philosophy applies to weapons.
“We want to have all the fires, right? Whether it’s U.S. built or built inside European nations,” Hinds said.
That could prove increasingly important as European countries expand domestic production of missiles, drones, and other weapons alongside their aircraft programs.
The growth of GCAP and other European defense programs comes amid broader debate over how much Europe should depend on U.S. military equipment.
But Hinds rejected the idea that allies developing indigenous aircraft and autonomous systems necessarily signals a move away from American equipment.
“No, I don’t,” he said when asked whether allies were moving away from U.S. systems.
Instead, Hinds characterized the trend as an expansion of the transatlantic defense-industrial base.
Sweden was one example he cited. The country, which recently joined NATO, continues to produce new military equipment, including Gripen fighters, while those aircraft are already being operated by NATO members.
Swedish Gripens are currently leased to Hungary, and other countries are considering the aircraft, Hinds said.
A Hungarian Air Force JAS 39C Gripen participating in NATO Exercise Ramstein Flag 24 flies over the west coast of Greece, in 2024. U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. Emili Koonce
The broader trend toward co-manufacturing and co-production is also something he welcomed.
“I’m seeing a lot of discussions about co-manufacturing and co-production, and I welcome those discussions as well,” Hinds said.
That approach could become increasingly important as NATO tries to expand its available combat power without relying exclusively on additional U.S.-built platforms.
For USAFE, the objective is to ensure that whatever aircraft NATO countries develop or purchase can plug into a common architecture, sharing data, receiving targeting information, drawing on common logistics networks, and contributing weapons effects across national boundaries.
For a U.S. Air Force command that has spent decades trying to cover Europe with far fewer fighters than it once had, hundreds of autonomous wingmen, whether American-built or allied, could provide a significant way to generate additional combat mass.
Senior U.S. Air Force officials are now working to ensure that the networking, weapons integration, logistics, and command-and-control architecture will be in place once those aircraft start to come online.
It is stunning to see the impact the USAF’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program has made on discourse surrounding the future of the Air Force since it was officially announced. There is still much to prove regarding the concept, but testing is accelerating and the USAF now plans on buying 500 CCAs by 2032. At the same time, the USAF is now hunting for a successor to the MQ-9 Reaper, with plans on procuring hundreds of those drones, as well, by early in the next decade.
With all this in mind, TWZ’s Jamie Hunter talked to Mike Shortsleeve from General Atomics on the show floor at Air, Space & Cyber 2026. The two discussed the latest progress for the company’s newly-named FQ-42 Vengeance Collaborative Combat Aircraft, as well as General Atomics’ new Wildfire platform designed to address the lower-cost Massed Modular Aircraft program that could replace the company’s iconic MQ-9 Reaper.
Check out the interview below or at the top of this post.
U.S. Air Force Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) are set to take part in a large-force employment (LFE) exercise for the first time later this year. Sending CCAs to the next iteration of the Emerald Flag test exercise is another important new stepping stone toward fielding the drones operationally.
“We have not yet done a LFE with these [CCAs], for real. The first one is going to be Emerald Flag. That’s in December,” Lt. Col. Lyndon “OTTO” Bartlett, Director of Operations for the Experimental Operations Unit (EOU) at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, said earlier today. “That’ll be our first tip dip of the toe in an actual force integration.”
One of the Air Force’s YFQ-44A Fury CCA drones flies together with an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. Anduril
It is worth noting here that Boeing’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat, a CCA-type design, did take part in Valiant Shield 26, another LFE exercise, earlier this year. The EOU was also involved. However, the MQ-28, originally developed for the Royal Australian Air Force, is not officially part of the Air Force’s CCA program at present.
Emerald Flag in December “will, in OTTO’s mind, be the first time that we will ever do some CCA end-to-end chain [demonstration] live. That’s the first time we’ll ever be integrated in a fourth- and fifth-gen combined OCA [offensive counter air] push,” Lt. Col. Bartlett added. “It’ll be small, but those type [sic] of building blocks are where I think you get the intangibles like trust in the CCA.”
“Those learnings are going to be just as valuable as the technical, [like] does the radio work properly? Does the button I push to say ‘target’ work properly?” he continued.
A General Atomics YFQ-42A CCA drone during an earlier test flight. General Atomics
“If it’s in a simulated environment, it’s immediate,” Lt. Col. Bartlett said during the panel when asked about the “feedback loop” in testing the EOU is already taking part in. In that environment, “when the mission autonomy iterations are happening, our guys are literally with the programmers … They give the feedback, and if it’s possible to do immediately, they take that feedback. If not, then they work on it on the next turn of the software.”
Real-world testing, of course, offers opportunities to explore additional aspects of future CCA operations, including when it comes to loading weapons and maintenance. A key component of the Air Force’s vision for CCA employment is being able to forward deploy the drones to far-flung locations, including airstrips with limited infrastructure and access to logistics chains. Rapid, distributed deployments like this are central to still-evolving concepts of operations currently referred to collectively as Agile Combat Employment (ACE). The EOU has been involved in at least two rounds of ACE-focused testing this year, one at Edwards Air Force Base in California in April and another at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada in July. TWZ was the first to report on the latter event.
During the panel today, Lt. Col. Bartlett also talked more generally about work EOU has done to date. This has included exploring “sortie generation, how easy they are to maintain, [and] how small a footprint could be.”
“We’ve been pleasantly surprised. The jets are extremely easy to maintain,” he continued. “We’re at a one-to-one maintainer-to-airplane ratio, which is crazy small.”
With “CCAs, [it] seems like because they’re a little bit simpler, because their role is so focused, what we found is that just about any – not just about, but we found that any AFSC [Air Force Specialty Code; alphanumeric codes used to identify specific jobs within this service] can be trained to generate sorties to load weapons, and we’ve done some of those things already,” he further explained. “It’s our job to bring them [CCAs] out and make sure that, beyond the technical specifications of it, that we’re kind of experimenting with the more complex things like logistics, and C2 [command and control], and how do we battle manage these things.”
Airmen prepare to load an inert AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missile onto a YFQ-44A CCA drone. USAF/Senior Airman Renee Blundon
The head of the EOU did acknowledge challenges that still have to be surmounted. This notably includes hurdles currently imposed by Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations on the operation of fully uncrewed aircraft, even by the U.S. military, within U.S. airspace. This is further compounded by the explicit intention to operate CCAs with far more minimal human engagement compared to most existing drones.
“Mission autonomy is going to be the secret sauce that lets these things become decisive or not, and we’ll know that over the next couple years as that develops,” according to Bartlett. “If I were to identify the two biggest problems from the trenches of the EOU, [one] is FAA integration or policy implications to an autonomous airplane.”
“So these things don’t have pilots. They’re not RPAs [remotely-piloted aircraft]. They’re not manned fighters. They have no pilots,” he continued. “Our system is not set up for that, and that is a challenge that we are finding extremely hard to navigate through, and to not go around, but to make a policy.”
“We need to make sure the Air Force is ready for these things, to set policies that make sure the enterprise and the country is [sic] ready to receive these, and internalize an autonomous fighter that does not have a pilot that is running on a mission autonomy agent that doesn’t listen to ATC [air traffic control],” he added.
Another look at a YFQ-44A prototype during at test in 2026. USAF
The second problem, per Bartlett, is making sure the Air Force develops new internal policies and doctrine that are not “copy and pastes from old regulations” that do not take into account the specific nuances that CCAs will bring. What the service needs is “something that enables us to move quickly with these things, to weigh what we need, and to experiment with novel types of air superiority.”
All of this circles back to the discussion of trust in autonomous capabilities. It also speaks to the potential for future operations where CCAs could operate far more independently.
“It’s in the name that they’re collaborative,” Bartlett said. “Taking them out of that could technically be effective, but would not enhance the joint force the way that we see a collaborative, integrated force package to be.”
“What we need autonomously to do is written down. I won’t discuss the particulars in this forum, but we know what we need it to do, or we know what we think it really needs to do,” he noted. “We’ve structured our experimentation game plan to analyze ‘can it do those things?,’ and if not, then how do they need to be different? And then as they iterate on it, which we’ve already seen a couple times, we get that at the EOU, we get the new version down, we fly it again. Is it fixed? Yes or no.”
A General Atomics YFQ-42A seen from another angle during earlier testing. General Atomics
Some members of industry are clearly envisioning futures with different definitions of ‘collaborative’ that could lean more toward independent operations involving highly autonomous drones.
What “the whole entire program is trying to do is [figure out] what is the requirement to put out into the field to get to the warfighter and to start operating this thing this [sic; in] real time?” Robert “Otis” Winkler, Vice President of Corporate Development & National Security Programs at dronemaker Kratos, another one of the panelists, said. “The collaborative part of this makes it a much easier, I think, technical problem to be able to limit and grow the autonomy as you field this.”
“I think eventually we may see these aircraft utilized as collaborative aircraft, but not in conjunction with your traditional pulsed operation, but in support of that pulsed operation when the pulse isn’t there yet. But I do think that that is a bit of a stretch goal that’s going to be down the road.”
CCAs “have been designed really around increasing both survivability and lethality of current force packages. So there are many manned platforms that you would describe in the exact same fashion,” Jason Levin, Senior Vice President for Air Dominance and Strike at Anduril, who was also on the panel, said. He was responding here to a specific question about whether his use of the term “fighter” to describe these drones implied more emphasis on independent operations.
All of this underscores the importance of bringing CCAs to Emerald Flag in December, as well as other events in the future offering opportunities to see how the drones really fit in with other crewed platforms. The Air Force is hoping to start seeing CCAs enter operational service around the end of the decade, and have 500 of them, at least, in inventory by 2032.
During the panel today, the EOU’s Lt. Col. Bartlett made clear that “we’re going to learn a lot over the next couple years.”
New imagery shared with TWZ by Anduril shows its YFQ-44A Fury Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) configured with air-to-ground weapons, underscoring the fact that the CCA could take on an air-to-ground role in the future in addition to its current air-to-air focus. Yesterday, Anduril executives revealed that the company had begun integration and fit checks for a range of air-to-ground weapons, although they confirmed to us that those weapons had not yet been flight-tested aboard Fury.
The YFQ-44A is one of two aircraft selected by the Air Force for its CCA Increment 1 program, alongside General Atomics’ YFQ-42A Vengeance. The service’s stated priority for the initial aircraft is air dominance, and Anduril says the production FQ-44 will have four external hardpoints capable of carrying four AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles. The YFQ-44A, which currently has two underwing pylons for two AMRAAMs, has already conducted a live AIM-120 firing as part of testing with the Air Force’s Experimental Operations Unit.
A YFQ-44A fires an AIM-120 weapon in secluded airspace over the Mojave Desert. U.S. Air Force photo by Jennifer Healy Tech. Sgt. Jennifer Healy
The new imagery, however, points toward a substantially broader weapons envelope, with the aircraft shown carrying different air-to-ground stores on its two external stations. The weapons are shown fitted to the aircraft during a ground-based fit check, an important step in the integration process before captive-carry and, ultimately, live-release testing, if Anduril and the USAF choose to go down that route.
During a recent roundtable with reporters yesterday at the Air & Space Forces Air, Space and Cyber Symposium that TWZ is attending, Anduril’s Jason Levin, senior vice president for Air Dominance and Strike, and Erin Simpson, vice president for Strategy for Air Dominance and Strike, said the company had already begun integration and fit checks of 500-pound Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM), 250-pound Small Diameter Bombs (SDB), and low-cost cruise missiles. Pods for 2.75-inch guided or unguided rockets are also seen fitted to the aircraft. In each case, the stores are mounted on a twin adaptor rack.
Furthermore, Anduril’s plans extend to testing the Fury with other air-to-air weapons and targeting pods.
Importantly, the diversity of weapons will give Fury a range of potential missions beyond high-end air-to-air combat, including counter-UAS, counter-cruise-missile, and air-to-ground or air-to-surface strike missions.
“We’ve begun integration and fit checks of a lot of other munitions,” an Anduril executive said. “We’ve done 500-pound guided bombs. We’ve done Small Diameter Bombs.”
It should be noted that giving the YFQ-44— or YFQ-42A — the ability to deliver a JDAM or SDB against a predetermined fixed target is not particularly complex. This type of austere air-to-ground capability should be relatively straightforward to add, providing a useful secondary strike function without requiring the aircraft to take on the far more demanding requirements associated with dynamic targeting or more sophisticated air-to-ground missions. This could also allow for these increment one CCAs to be used independently as air-to-ground ‘weapons trucks’ if their air-to-air assistance isn’t needed.
When the production FQ-44 arrives, it will have four hardpoints, compared with the two currently fitted to the YFQ-44A. Anduril says loading all four stations with AIM-120s for the Air Force’s air-dominance mission would reduce the range of the aircraft but would not require a larger engine or otherwise push the aircraft outside its basic takeoff, landing, climb, and flight-envelope requirements.
Anduril
While the Air Force’s initial CCA requirement is heavily focused on air dominance, the same aircraft could potentially be configured for different missions by changing its external stores and sensors. Anduril is already positioning Fury as something more than a single-purpose “missile truck.”
That flexibility could become increasingly important as the Air Force considers how CCAs will be employed alongside crewed fighters. During a July Experimental Operations Unit (EOU) exercise at Creech Air Force Base, Fury flew in the same airspace as crewed fighters and other CCAs while Air Force personnel operated its Mission Autonomy system. Anduril says the aircraft has also flown in formation alongside F-35s, although the fighters were not yet controlling Fury.
The company is now working toward what it calls “quarterback integration,” in which a crewed aircraft will direct autonomous aircraft as part of a larger combat formation. Anduril says that work has already progressed through hardware- and software-in-the-loop environments and onto the aircraft itself, with live testing expected in the near term.
Another view of the twin rack loaded with two GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bombs (SDB) under the wing of the YFQ-44A. Anduril
A Fury operating under the direction of an F-35 could potentially carry air-to-air missiles for counter-air missions, while other aircraft in the formation could be configured for strike or other effects. Alternatively, the same autonomous aircraft could be reconfigured for a different mission before being dispersed to another operating location. Having four pylons would also give the production Fury greater scope to undertake “swing-role” missions, flexing between prosecuting air and surface targets as required.
The July EOU exercise also demonstrated a rapid “hot reload” capability, with two Air Force personnel replacing an AIM-120 on a running Fury and reducing the turnaround between sorties to single-digit minutes. The demonstration was intended to show how CCAs could be rearmed and returned to the fight without the large maintenance and ground-support footprint associated with traditional combat aircraft. This will be vital as the Air Force integrates CCAs into its Agile Combat Employment concept, in which the drones can be dispersed across multiple operating locations rather than relying on a single large ground footprint.
Carrying inert AMRAAMs, a YFQ-44A flies together with an F-35A from an Air Force test unit. via Anduril
Also speaking yesterday at the Air & Space Forces’ Air, Space and Cyber Symposium was Air Force Chief of Staff Kenneth Wilsbach, who confirmed that the service hasn’t necessarily made any decisions on Increment 2 of the CCA program yet, but it could include air-to-ground capabilities.
“We’re going through some thought processes about what Increment 2 should be able to do. Increment 1 is air-to-air, so do we want air-to-ground? Maybe, maybe not. Do we want it to have more sensors? Do we want it to be a lot cheaper? Do we want it to be more attritable or expendable, or do we want it to be more exquisite? Do we want shorter range or longer range? Do we want something that can be dropped from another platform, or does it take off and land by itself?”
“These are all considerations,” Wilsbach continued. “It’s still a bit early to make any definitive decisions on that, especially before we really get our hands on the current Increment 1 aircraft and learn from them.”
It’s also important to note that export customers for Fury may demand an air-to-ground capability set, especially if they will only be buying a limited number of CCA types. Having this option ready to go is relevant to prospects beyond the U.S., which are certainly growing.
Fury’s air-to-ground weapons work is part of a broader effort to make the aircraft a flexible combat system rather than simply an uncrewed air-defense adjunct for crewed fighters. The Air Force’s immediate priority may be air dominance, but the weapons integration underway suggests that the same four hardpoints could eventually support a much wider range of missions. This weapons flexibility could ultimately be central to the broader CCA concept, especially as the Air Force works out what it wants Increment 2 to deliver.
Anduril’s YFQ-44A Fury Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) has already flown in formation alongside F-35 fighters during U.S. Air Force testing, company executives have revealed, offering the clearest indication yet that live manned-unmanned teaming work with the fifth-generation fighter is underway.
The disclosure came during a briefing by Anduril executives Jason Levin, senior vice president for Air Dominance and Strike, and Erin Simpson, vice president for Strategy for Air Dominance and Strike, at the Air & Space Forces Air, Space and Cyber Symposium that TWZ is attending. The executives said the Fury flew alongside F-35s during a July exercise conducted with the Air Force’s Experimental Operations Unit (EOU) at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada. You can read more about that event in our past reporting here.
A YFQ-44A Fury assigned to the Collaborative Combat Aircraft Experimental Operations Unit taxis toward a sunshade at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, July 20, 2026. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Renee Blundon Senior Airman Renee Blundon
“We’ve already started flying in formation alongside crewed. I can even say fifth-gen fighters. F-35,” Levin said.
The testing is an important step toward the Air Force’s broader vision for its Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, in which relatively inexpensive autonomous aircraft are intended to operate alongside and support crewed fighters in contested airspace.
The executives stressed, however, that the F-35 was not yet controlling the Fury during those flights.
“But they’re not controlling it from the crewed fighter yet,” Levin said. “Not yet.”
Instead, the July testing involved Fury operating under its Mission Autonomy system while sharing airspace with crewed fighters, other CCAs, and other aircraft. Anduril says Air Force personnel were able to operate the autonomy system without Anduril personnel directly running the aircraft, although company personnel remained on site in a supporting role.
The company described the progression toward direct manned-unmanned teaming as a “crawl, run, build-up” process.
Anduril says it has already begun work on what it calls “quarterback integration,” referring to the ability for a crewed aircraft to direct or task autonomous aircraft. That work has been conducted in hardware-in-the-loop and software-in-the-loop environments as well as on the Fury itself.
“Most of those events will be coming up here in a matter of weeks or months,” Levin said when asked about the timeline for the first quarterback integration with Fury.
Asked whether those events would involve live flying, the answer was unequivocal: “Yes.”
A YFQ-44A undergoes an undated captive carry test at a California test location. This test phase uses inert munitions to methodically validate weapons integration, structural performance and safety, ensuring the platform can safely carry external stores. Courtesy photo via U.S. Air Force Secretary of the Air Force Publi
Exactly how an F-35 would control Fury remains part of that ongoing development effort. The executives pointed to work involving integration of the appropriate human-machine interfaces, primarily including tablet-based control from the crewed fighter, at least at first.
The distinction between flying alongside an F-35 and being controlled by an F-35 is important. The former demonstrates that Fury’s aircraft and autonomy systems can operate safely in the same battlespace as a fifth-generation fighter. The latter would represent a much more significant demonstration of the operational concept behind CCAs: allowing a single crewed fighter to employ and manage additional autonomous aircraft as part of a larger force.
Anduril’s July testing went beyond simple formation flying. The company said Fury was conducting Mission Autonomy flights using live sensor data and was operating in airspace shared with crewed fighters and other CCAs. Air Force operators reportedly conducted both relatively basic route and pattern work and more representative tactical scenarios.
The Fury’s work with the Air Force’s Experimental Operations Unit has progressed through two increasingly ambitious phases. During the first exercise in April at Edwards Air Force Base, Air Force personnel were trained to operate the aircraft and were able to launch and recover it using Anduril’s compact Menace-T setup, essentially a pair of ruggedized cases and a laptop rather than a conventional ground-control station.
By the second exercise, conducted at Creech in July, the Air Force had reduced the manpower and infrastructure required further. A single EOU operator could launch and recover the aircraft after only hours of training, while Air Force personnel independently operated Fury’s Mission Autonomy. The aircraft also flew in airspace shared with other CCAs, while the exercise demonstrated disaggregated operations and a rapid “hot reload” in which two operators replaced an AIM-120 AMRAAM with the engine running, reducing the turnaround between sorties to single-digit minutes.
A U.S. airman assigned to the Collaborative Combat Aircraft Experimental Operations Unit loads an inert missile onto a YFQ-44A Fury aircraft at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, July 20, 2026. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Renee Blundon Senior Airman Renee Blundon
The July exercise also included a live weapons demonstration that Anduril characterized as a complete end-to-end kill chain rather than simply a captive-carry or basic weapons-release test. The Fury launched from Edwards with a single operator and received a track generated by an external source over a beyond-line-of-sight connection. That track was ingested by Anduril’s Lattice AI-infused autonomy software system, after which the operator tasked the aircraft to engage. Fury then launched an AIM-120 AMRAAM and guided the weapon to the target. Anduril described the test as demonstrating the complete kill chain from offboard targeting information, through the aircraft’s mission systems and operator tasking, to an actual air-to-air weapons engagement.
New test footage: first missile shot from YFQ-44A.
YFQ-44A executed an end-to-end, beyond-line-of-sight strike against a simulated target.
On the weapons side, the production FQ-44 is being designed around four external hardpoints, allowing it to carry four AIM-120 AMRAAMs for the Air Force’s primary air-to-air mission set. Currently, the demonstration aircraft can carry two. Regardless, the company is also pursuing a much broader weapons portfolio for Fury. Executives said they have already begun integration and fit checks for 500-pound guided bombs, Small Diameter Bombs, low-cost cruise missiles — including Anduril’s Barracuda 500 offering — other air-to-air weapons, rocket pods and targeting pods. Those integrations are intended to give Fury options beyond air-to-air combat, including counter-drone, counter-cruise-missile and air-to-ground/air-surface strike missions. Anduril stressed that these are currently integration and engineering efforts rather than claims that all of those weapons have been flight-tested from Fury. The company also said additional sensors, such as a targeting pod, could be added for some of those missions.
The executives acknowledged that some of the more advanced tactical capabilities remain under development and are being explored extensively in simulation. Those efforts include areas such as sensor fusion, track discrimination and tactical engagements.
A U.S. Air Force YFQ-44A Fury takes off for a mission flight during an Agile Combat Employment exercise at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, July 21, 2026. U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Kristal Munguia Staff Sgt. Kristal Munguia
The ultimate objective is an aircraft that does not require a large ground-control infrastructure or a dedicated operator for every individual sortie. As previously noted, during the July exercise, Anduril says a single Air Force operator was able to launch and recover a Fury after only hours of training, while other Air Force personnel operated the aircraft’s Mission Autonomy functions.
That same exercise also demonstrated what Anduril described as “disaggregated operations,” with personnel at multiple locations able to operate the same aircraft. The concept is intended to support an Agile Combat Employment-style approach in which CCAs can be dispersed across multiple operating locations rather than relying on a single large ground footprint.
The company has since delivered a Fury aircraft to the Air Force’s EOU at Creech, making it the first CCA to be permanently delivered to the unit, according to Anduril. The service is now flying the aircraft multiple times a day with what the company said is a very limited Anduril presence.
A YFQ-44A production-representative test vehicle is staged in a testing chamber at Costa Mesa, California. Courtesy photo via U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Gustavo Castillo
Meanwhile, Anduril says assembly of Fury airframes has already begun at its Arsenal facility, with production aircraft expected to begin coming off the line early next year. The company says it has built the facility and supply chain around a potential production rate of 150 aircraft per year, although that figure is a planned capacity rather than an existing Air Force order. Anduril executives said the company has already advanced procurement of long-lead items and worked with its Tier 1, 2 and 3 suppliers to support that rate, while also examining additional production lines. They emphasized that the current Air Force pricing is based on a substantially lower annual buy than 150 aircraft, but said the Fury’s unit cost is well below $20 million at the quantities currently contemplated. The company also says the production line is designed for relatively rapid reconfiguration, allowing capacity to be shifted between products in weeks rather than the months or years associated with more traditional aircraft production facilities.
Earlier this year, the Air Force awarded contracts for the production of FQ-44A Fury and General Atomics FQ-42A Dark Merlin drones — the latter has now been formally named Vengeance. This sets the service up to operate a split initial fleet of CCAs. As you can read about here, the Air Force is now aiming to have at least 500 CCA in service by 2032, a substantial step up from earlier plans, with the USAF having previously talked about acquiring “over” 150 of these drones by the end of the decade. The 500 target will likely include upcoming increment two CCAs, as well, the requirements of which the Air Force is still working on.
For Anduril, the next major milestone should go far beyond simply putting a Fury and an F-35 in the same formation, demonstrating that a crewed fifth-generation fighter can actually command and employ the autonomous aircraft as part of a live mission.
If Anduril’s timeline holds, that testing could begin relatively soon.
The U.S. Air Force is now aiming to have at least 500 Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) in service by 2032. The service also wants to have an equal number of Massed Modular Aircraft (MMA) drones to succeed its MQ-9 Reapers by that time. In terms of stated CCA force structure plans, this is a substantial step up, with the service having most recently talked about acquiring “over” 150 of these drones by the end of the decade.
A composite image showing the FQ-42 and FQ-44 designs together with their new official nicknames. USAF
“We will have autonomous fighters like the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCA. We intend to have at least 500 of these in service by 2032,” Meink said in his speech. “Our intent is to field 100 MMAs in 2029 at even a lower cost than the CCAs and a fraction of [the] cost of manned aircraft we build today. Then by 2032, 500 of these [MMA] platforms will join our force.”
When it comes to CCAs, “today, the first FQ-42 and FQ-44 increments are already rolling off the assembly line,” Meink added. “They’ll be performing many of the same missions that we do with manned fighters today.”
A row of YFQ-42A prototypes. General Atomics previously gave the company name Dark Merlin to this design. GA-ASI
The Air Force’s stated CCA force structure targets have fluctuated significantly in recent years. In 2023, then-Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall outlined plans to acquire at least 1,000 CCAs, if not more, across the life of the entire program. However, Kendall and other Air Force officials subsequently talked about a far smaller initial fleet of between 100 and 150 drones.
“These contracts reaffirm our confidence in the strategic path forward for the program to procure over 150 combat capable CCA by the end of the decade,” Meink himself said in a statement in June when the production orders for the FQ-42 and FQ-44 were announced.
A YFQ-44A prototype, with an inert AIM-120 air-to-air missile under its wing, seen during a test. USAF
The FQ-42 and FQ-44 are also being acquired under the first phase, or Increment 1, of the CCA program. At least one additional increment is planned, and could lead to orders for one or more additional types of CCA. Though it is not immediately clear, it is possible, if not probable that Increment 2 CCAs are factored into the latest 500 drone figure.
TWZ’s Jamie Hunter got a close look at the Skunk Works’ Vectis drone at Air, Space, & Cyber 2026. Photo: Lockheed Martin
“We talk about 500 by 2032, [but] we could actually build more of them than that,” Secretary Meink also said today during a question-and-answer session immediately following his speech. The goal of the CCA program “from the get-go” was “simple aircraft that you could build fast and at a lower cost,” he continued.
“So now we’re in a situation to [sic] where we could actually build more than we can actually afford to buy,” he added.
It is unclear what the unit costs of the FQ-42 or FQ-44 are currently. The Air Force has said previously that it is targeting a price point of around $20 million apiece once full-rate production gets underway.
Beyond any fleet size target, the Air Force is still very much in the process of figuring out how future CCAs will be deployed, launched, recovered, supported, and otherwise operated on a day-to-day basis, as well as employed tactically. During today’s question-and-answer session today, Meink drew attention to a dedicated Experimental Operations Unit (EOU) the service has established to lead the process of laying the groundwork for future CCA operations. The EOU notably led a significant new round of operational testing of YFQ-42 and YFQ-44 prototypes at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada back in July, which TWZ was first to report on. The EOU supported another similar test exercise at Edwards Air Force Base in California in April.
A YFQ-44A at Edwards Air Force Base during a test exercise in April 2026. USAF
“Getting them [CCAs] into these developmental kind of operational units, so they can start experimenting with that – familiarity breeds confidence, right?” Meink said.
The Air Force continues to make it clear that it sees its future CCA fleets as essential for providing capabilities and operational capacity necessary to succeed in future conflicts, especially a potential high-end fight against a near-peer opponent like China.
“Collaborative Combat Aircraft change how we project power and generate mass in highly contested environments,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach said in a statement when the FQ-42 and FQ-44 production contracts were announced. “Delivering this capability to our warfighters faster ensures our forces maintain the tactical edge required to deter and, if necessary, defeat any adversary.”
The MMA drones are expected to conduct the same general strike and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) mission sets the service’s MQ-9A Reapers perform today. Major Reaper losses in the course of operations against Iran, compounded by significant additional attrition and deliberate divestments in recent years, are key drivers behind the MMA effort, which officially kicked off in July.
A US Air Force MQ-9A Reaper drone. USAF
“As we saw in Epic Fury [the nickname for major combat operations against Iran earlier this year], ISR/strike platforms have been essential. We have used MQ-9 and even now the ULTRA aircraft to great effect,” Meink said during his speech today. The MMA program is “building on these lessons” and “will provide affordable, attritable, long-range strike, and we will be able to field them at scale.”
“MMA is designed to deliver the results our combat commanders need,” Chief of Staff Wilsbach said during his own separate keynote at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference today. “That’s how we stay ahead by moving quickly, investing in new tech, and delivering to our warfighters what they need to win.”
If the Air Force can meet its target of having a fleet of at least 500 MMA drones by 2032, this will be another significant boost to the service’s overall uncrewed capabilities. As of May, the Air Force had 135 MQ-9s left in inventory, and there have been more reported losses since then.
General Atomics, which developed the Reaper, has already put forward a new design called Wildfire as a potential successor. Many other companies are already lining up to submit their own proposals to meet the Air Force’s MMA needs.
Between the latest CCA force structure plans and the new MMA program, the Air Force’s fleets of combat drones are on track to look very different by 2032.
Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works advanced projects division has shared all new information about its stealthy Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) type drone design named Vectis, which it first unveiled a year ago. One of the most intriguing details is the true nature of its air inlet configuration, pointing to the premium on survivability the Skunk Works has placed on its CCA offering, especially when compared to other CCA designs.
Vectis has a far more exotic, deeply recessed “submerged” top-mounted air intake than was originally disclosed when Vectis first came out of the shadows. This further underscores the heavy emphasis Skunk Works says it has been placing on its CCA’s ability to stay undetected and live to fight another day. Vectis is also the first tailless CCA design we have seen from a U.S. manufacturer.
An updated view of Vectis. Lockheed Martin Skunk Works Lockheed Martin
Ron Fehlen, Lockheed Martin Vice President and General Manager of Skunk Works, gave TWZ and other outlets an update on Vectis last week ahead of today’s start of the Air & Space Forces Association’s 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference. Skunk Works says work on constructing the first prototype of Vectis – a word that means lever or pole in Latin, and that Lockheed Martin has said reflects the ‘leverage’ the drone offers – is underway now. The goal is to have it flying by the end of next year. There are already plans to build four more prototypes using internal funding.
Check out the Skunk Works’ new Vectis video below:
Source: Lockheed Martin
“It is designed, as you can likely see, to be both survivable and affordable and flexible across the range of missions that our customers need, have needed, and continue to need into the future,” Fehlen said by way of introduction. “The technical specs, as you can imagine, are designed to meet and, in some cases, exceed the customer sets that we are working with and their requirements and their mission needs.”
The basic core of the single-engine Vectis that we have seen now is largely unchanged from what had been shown at the time of the unveiling last year. It is still a tailless drone that has a lambda wing planform and air intake mounted on top of the central part of the fuselage, as well as a prominent chine line around the forward end and a shovel-like shape to its nose. New renderings do show revised positions for various conformal antennas and/or sensor apertures around the central fuselage. These are all established features of low-observable (stealthy) aircraft designs.
Skunk Works’ Fehlen also shared last week that Vectis is approximately 34 feet long and has a wingspan of around 38 feet. As a comparison, the Navy’s two-seat primary jet trainer, the T-45 Goshawk, is roughly 39 feet long by 30 feet wide.
The biggest new detail, as mentioned, is the shaping and position of Vectis’ air inlet. Fehlen stressed that this is actually not a new feature, and has “been a part of the design since the beginning,” but was not reflected in previously released renderings and scale models.
Another newly released rendering of Vectis showing the submerged intake. Lockheed Martin Skunk Works
The intake was depicted in the past as having a relatively straightforward configuration. It did appear to have a saw-tooth leading edge, another indication of stealthy design considerations. The visuals we have now show the intake is deeply recessed into the top of the fuselage, sitting behind a downward-sloping v-shaped channel.
A rendering of Vectis that Lockheed Martin released last year that did not depict the submerged intake. Lockheed MartinSkunk Works
Vectis doesn’t have a fully flush-mounted inlet, like what is found on Boeing’s MQ-25 Stingray tanker drone, among other designs, but it is close to it, very loosely similar to what’s found on the B-21. The rear is slightly raised above the v-like pocket where air flows down into the intake. Flush or near-flush intakes offer particular benefits when it comes to low-observability (stealthiness) and aerodynamic efficiency, but are also notoriously problematic, especially in certain flight regimes, as you can read more about here. This is even worse for high-performance aircraft that have a wide operating envelope and have to maneuver at higher angles of attack. The CCA would likely fit into this category, at least to a degree.
When it comes to Vectis, “there’s a lot of different reasons behind it [choosing this submerged intake configuration], but I’ll pick up on a couple here for you,” Skunk Works’ Fehlen explained. “The first is it reduces that frontal drag. So, anything sticking out in the wind, as many – as all of you know, I’m sure, creates drag on the aircraft itself. So, if you want better performance from a range, et cetera, then you need to be able to reduce that drag, and that’s an example.”
“It’s also interesting to me, particularly as the Air Force speaks about Agile Combat Employment, the ACE concept, as you’re aware. There is an advantage to having an inlet on the top of the aircraft if you’re out in more austere environments and you’re concerned about FOD [foreign object debris] pickup off of a runway,” he added.
Another newly released rendering offering a different perspective on the submerged intake. Lockheed Martin Skunk Works
Fehlen also confirmed that the inlet’s design has to do with survivability, but did not elaborate in any detail, which is unsurprising considering the sensitivities of such design elements. The original Vectis promotional video Lockheed Martin put out last year, seen below, showed an S-shaped duct behind the air intake and exhaust shrouding, which are features designed to further reduce a platform’s signature.
In terms of performance, Lockheed Martin has yet to share any hard specifications it is targeting for Vectis, or disclose details about the engine the design will use. Fehlen did also highlight the drag-reducing performance advantages of the drone’s tailless design, including for maximizing range.
Details about what other capabilities Vectis might have are still limited. Fehlen noted that the design is expected to be capable of both air-to-air and air-to-ground mission sets. In a new computer-generated promotional video, seen earlier in this story, the drones are depicted launching what look to be AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) and GBU-53/B Small Diameter Bomb II (SDB II) glide bombs, also known as StormBreakers. The AIM-120 has already emerged as something of a default initial weapon for Western CCA-type drones. The video also confirms Vectis has an internal bay that is able to accommodate at least two munitions, likely the size to accommodate medium-range air-to-air missiles.
Captures from Lockheed Martin’s new Vectis promotional video depicting the drones launching what looks to be an AIM-120 missile, at left, and a pair of GBU-53/B SDB IIs, at right. Lockheed Martin capturesA rendering of Vectis with its elongated internal bay open from the new promotional video. Note the AIM-120 in the background. Lockheed Martin captureAnother screen capture from the new Vectis promotional video showing two munitions loaded inside the drone’s internal bay. Lockheed Martin capture
In addition, the video shows Vectis as having a traditional electro-optical/infrared sensor turret behind a stealthy faceted enclosure under the nose. When the drone was first unveiled last year, TWZ noted that it could carry a variety of sensors, including compact radars and/or infrared search and track (IRST) systems, which would be particularly relevant in the air-to-air role.
The sensor turret inside the stealthy faceted enclosure as seen in the new Vectis promotional video. Lockheed Martin capture
During the press call, Skunk Works’ Fehlen reiterated that Vectis is being designed with an eye toward modularity and open-architecture systems. This, in turn, will make it easier to integrate new and improved capabilities and functionality down the line. Open architecture is at the heart of every CCA offering we are aware of at this time.
Fehlen further highlighted Lockheed Martin’s extensive work to date on advanced autonomy packages and crewed-uncrewed teaming capabilities. This includes the development of the Multi Domain Combat System (MDCX), an “autonomy platform” that is already central to the U.S. Navy’s plans for the carrier-based MQ-25 Stingray. The head of Skunk Works also explicitly called attention to autonomous air intercept testing conducted in cooperation with the Air Force earlier this year using the unique X-62A test jet, and said that work is feeding into Vectis’ development.
The X-62A test jet seen during the autonomous air intercept testing earlier this year. USAF
On top of all this, Lockheed Martin is already actively laying the groundwork for the U.S. Air Force’s F-22 and F-35 fighters to control future CCA drones, via in-cockpit touchscreen-type user interfaces, likely involving tablets, at least at first.
The new Vectis promotional video also shows a traditional ground control station being used to direct the drones, but with the phrase “managed from anywhere” on the screens, as seen below. Fehlen did say that any specific requirements for autonomy, command and control, and other operational capabilities would be up to individual customers, and that third-party vendors could be involved.
Lockheed Martin
Beyond Vectis’ design and expected capacities, Fehlen touted the speed at which work on the first physical prototype is progressing, and highlighted the use of digital design techniques and advanced manufacturing processes.
“This team, when kicked off, took a design on a napkin, which we will likely frame one day in my office … two months later, they were in the wind tunnel validating the design,” he said. “So, in under two months, we’re already getting in the wind tunnel straight from off of a napkin. We had the first digital build in six months, and the first part release in eight months. So it gives you a touch of a sense for exactly how fast we’re moving.”
“This aircraft was designed in a fully integrated digital environment,” he added. “Really, it’s creating that unbroken digital thread from the design all the way through sustainment.”
“We’ve used advanced design and manufacturing processes developed for many years under our own internal investment … for other Skunk Works programs, we’ve pulled that into this, of course, to continue to advance our manufacturing as well as the advanced design capability,” Fehlen continued. “They’re using real production processes.”
A central fuselage part of the first Vectis prototype now under construction. Lockheed Martin Skunk Works
The Skunk Works boss stressed that this approach offers advantages not just for accelerating development and prototype, but also for reducing costs and positioning Vectis to enter full-scale production.
“It gives you the reliance and the confidence as you continue to move forward that you’re ready to off and build these things because you’re using those real production processes,” he explained. “An example of that is a technique that we call minimal tooling determinant assembly. It’s a technique that really enables an increased level of affordability and speed through really reducing the amount of touch labor required and increasing the first pass yield. We’ve seen, in many cases, an 80 percent reduction in labor hours to build up the aircraft itself.”
Part of one of the wings for the first Vectis prototype. Lockheed Martin Skunk Works
Fehlen made an indirect reference to flat-pack furniture from IKEA to provide additional context, in extremely general layman’s terms, about what this technique offers.
“That’s what we’re talking about, that idea that it can come together very quickly, limited touch, and limited error. We constrain that to reduce the number of labor hours, which is not just a cost implication, but also buoys the speed and how fast we’re going to be able to produce them,” he said. “You can imagine, as well, there’s a lot of simplification that goes into this. We have significantly reduced the part count. Again, back to simplify the build so that you can have a positive impact on speed and affordability, not new techniques, but we’ve applied them here with vigor to ensure that we are getting to the cost point that the services and our customers need in order to make this system effective.”
Another element of the first Vectis prototype, which is now being built. Lockheed Martin Skunk Works
In terms of actual unit cost, “we’re always looking at, and, of course, we’re targeting to be [at] the CCA competitive price, so we’re very cognizant of it and make trades associated with that,” according to Fehlen. Vectis is “focused more on the CCA side of the house, and obviously the price points that are highly relevant in that regime, and then, of course, making trades along the way, and to make sure that we can meet it.”
The head of Skunk Works was responding here specifically to a question that mentioned the Air Force’s target of a roughly $20 million unit price for drones acquired under the first phase, or Increment 1, of its CCA program once full-scale production is achieved. The service announced in June that it was ordering fleets of both of the Increment 1 designs now in development, General Atomics’ FQ-42A Dark Merlin and Anduril’s FQ-44A Fury. The Air Force has plans for at least one more increment to this program, and has said in the past that it could pursue lower-cost (and less exquisite) designs.
A trio of YFQ-42A Dark Merlin prototypes. GA-ASIA YFQ-44A Fury prototype with an inert AIM-120 missile under its wing. USAF
“While not discussing suppliers, you can imagine we are ensuring that all of the decisions we make in the development and then the build out of these aircraft are designed around achieving that competitive cost point, while at the same time maximizing the amount of capability,” Fehlen added. “Those are the things that our customers are looking for, and we put it in a survivable solution.”
“There are some [companies] that are really going down the attritable [route], which defines a different price point than the CCA community has been targeting,” he also noted. Attritable designs are “quite a bit less from a cost point perspective and often from a capability perspective.”
With this in mind, there are still larger questions about where exactly Vectis may fit into U.S. military CCA plans, as well as those emerging from allied and partner air arms globally. Skunk Works has said in the past that it was eliminated from the Air Force’s CCA Increment 1 competition because it put forward a very stealthy “gold-plated” design that was not what the service wanted. Lockheed Martin had also indicated that its view of the capability/cost balance on new CCA-type designs had subsequently shifted very much in the opposite direction. Though it is still not entirely clear, what we’ve learned about Vectis in the past year would seem to signal that the pendulum at Skunk Works has swung back the other way again, at least to a degree.
As an interesting point of comparison, Northrop Grumman had also entered a higher-end design for the Increment 1 competition. In the wake of that loss, the company produced a much more familiar CCA design with a more traditional planform, which is now known as the YFQ-48A Talon Blue.
It’s also worth noting here that Skunk Works had publicly shared a future crewed-uncrewed teaming vision that included multiple tiers of drones back in 2022. This ranged from a cruise missile-like design the company now calls the Common Multi-Mission Truck (CMMT) all the way up to a concept for what could have been a very low-observable (stealthy) and highly autonomous flying wing uncrewed combat air vehicle (UCAV).
“We listen closely to our customers to deeply understand the operational environment and use those insights and our own analysis to inform the diverse solutions we develop for different mission sets,” Lockheed Martin told TWZ directly after the press call last week in response to a follow-up question about whether the 2022 vision was still relevant and if Vectis had supplanted the upper-tier concept shown at that time. “We continue to evaluate a range of crewed and uncrewed concepts against evolving customer needs.”
“Lockheed Martin Vectis addresses a warfighter need for a survivable, flexible and multi-mission capability, both domestically and internationally,” the company added in its statement. “We’re leaning into that demand, making strategic investments to accelerate Vectis’ progress and maturity and to deliver the capabilities our nation and allies need.”
A screen capture from a more recent Lockheed Martin video showing renderings of various different drone designs, including Vectis (at lower left), the CMMT (at upper right), and the stealthy flying-wing (at lower right). Lockheed Martin capture
Lockheed Martin and a host of other companies globally are being presented with a clearly expanding CCA market, but there is also still obvious interest in higher-tier UCAVs. China, in particular, has positioned itself as the current leader in the stealthy flying wing UCAV space, as well as a dominant actor in advanced combat drone developments more generally speaking. Russia, India, Turkey, and France continue to pursue flying wing UCAVs, as well. That being said, Skunk Works’ Vectis is arguably the closest we have seen to a low-observable UCAV to come out of recent CCA developments.
Regardless, Skunk Works is confident that there is a place for Vectis, together with autonomy and other capabilities it is developing, domestically and internationally, in this future uncrewed air combat ecosystem. It “is a survivable autonomous multi-mission platform, which we believe is the solution needed within today’s operational environment and into the future,” Fehlen said last week.
Skunk Works is committed to “delivering what’s next across … airframes, open architectures, to include artificial intelligence and autonomy, and then crewed-uncrewed integration,” he added. “Make no mistake, it will take advancements across all these areas to get to where our customers are going. We look at the full picture. Vectis is a holistic weapon system from our perspective.”
Altogether, “it’s an urgent need. We know that. We can hear it.”
UPDATE: 3:10 pm EDT
We now have a photo of the full sized Vectis mockup on the floor or Air, Space, Cyber 2026:
Login
