Air Force Buys Two Drone Wingmen and Keeps Their Autonomy Software Separate
· TexaHub · Drones, Defence & Security, AI in Industry
General Atomics and Anduril won production contracts for Collaborative Combat Aircraft, while Anduril, Shield AI and Collins compete for the software that will fly them.
Two airframes into production
The U.S. Air Force announced on 17 June that General Atomics and Anduril have each received engineering-and-manufacturing development and production contracts for Increment 1 of its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) programme [1]. The contracts cover the first three production lots and arrived four months ahead of schedule, according to Col. Timothy Helfrich, the service's portfolio acquisition executive for fighters and advanced aircraft [1].
The prototypes now drop their Y prefix: General Atomics' aircraft becomes the FQ-42A and Anduril's the FQ-44A, with the “Q” denoting an uncrewed platform [4]. Helfrich said the production versions have been refined but remain fundamentally the same designs [2]. The Air Force re-solicited all five companies that bid originally, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing, before staying with the two firms selected in 2024 [2]; Defense One reports that Northrop Grumman's self-financed offering was not selected [6].
Contract values were not released. Helfrich said they are classified, but that the service is meeting or beating its goal of a unit cost around one-third that of an F-35, roughly less than $30 million per aircraft [2]. Neither company's share of the lots has been disclosed [2]. The Air Force is requesting $996.5 million in fiscal 2027 to begin CCA procurement, and the first lot will be awarded once that budget is approved [1].
Scale and schedule
Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said the contracts reaffirm the plan “to procure over 150 combat capable CCA by the end of the decade” [3]. The service's longer-term goal is a fleet of around 1,000 CCAs of various types, and it wants Increment 1 aircraft to have a combat radius of at least 700 nautical miles [2]. They are meant to fly alongside the F-47, the F-35A and the F-22A, conducting strike, reconnaissance and electronic warfare with minimal direction from crewed pilots [2].
Both companies stress manufacturing readiness. General Atomics president David Alexander said “manufacturing is already well underway” [4], and the company says the aircraft went from contract award to first flight in 15 months [4]. Anduril's Mark Shushnar said the company has already put its full-rate production processes and tooling into use on prototypes [2], and GovCon Wire reports that Anduril says its line can deliver up to 150 aircraft per year in the current design [7]. Anduril also claims the award is the first time a new company has won a fighter aircraft programme since the 1970s [6].
The programme has had setbacks. A General Atomics prototype crashed in California in April; the company attributed it to an autopilot miscalculation of the aircraft's weight and centre of gravity and applied a software fix [1]. Accounts of the pause differ: DefenseScoop says flying resumed after roughly a month [1], while Air & Space Forces Magazine reports a pause of about six weeks [2]. Helfrich said the crash did not influence the decision [1]. Anduril's push for semi-autonomous software delayed its first flight by months [6].
Software sold separately
The more novel part of the award is the software. The Air Force buys mission autonomy, the software that flies the aircraft tactically, separately from the airframes, a strategy it calls “software sold separately” [2]. A pool of six vendors (Anduril, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX's Collins Aerospace and Shield AI) holds a baseline six-year contract vehicle [6]. Anduril, Shield AI and Collins received production options funding the first of two six-month competitive phases; after each phase the service will narrow the field, with a single primary autonomy provider for Increment 1 to be selected by summer 2027 [1]. Anduril is the only company with CCA contracts on both the hardware and software sides [3].
Payment is tied to performance. The Air Force says the software contract uses a “first-of-its-kind award fee exposure strategy”, under which it “will only pay the entire licensing fee if a vendor provides a combat capability aligned with warfighter needs and feedback”, and it may license software from any of the six vendors at any point over six years [3]. Helfrich added that the service plans a large-scale fly-off at the three-year point to decide whether to switch providers [1].
The enabler is the government-owned Autonomy Government Reference Architecture (A-GRA), which is mandatory for vendors so the service can mix and match software and hardware [6]. Earlier this year Collins software flew on the General Atomics aircraft and Shield AI's on Anduril's [6]. Shield AI says its Hivemind software, which it describes as assuming the role of a human pilot, will focus on behaviours involving multiple autonomous aircraft operating together under human supervision [5]. Anduril says its Lattice for Mission Autonomy is fully A-GRA compliant [3].
What to watch
The structure treats the airframe as a long-lived platform and the autonomy as a replaceable component, an approach familiar from commercial software but untested at this scale in combat aviation. If it works, the Air Force gains continuous competition on the part of the system most likely to improve quickly. The risk is integration: each software change will presumably still need to be tested on aircraft built by different companies, which could erode some of the speed the model promises.
The budget context is large. GovCon Wire, citing DefenseScoop, reports that CCA is part of $21 billion requested for fiscal 2027 for munitions, counter-drone technology and uncrewed systems [7]. Nine vendors are competing for Increment 2, for which Helfrich gave no timeline update [6]. The next milestones are congressional action on the fiscal 2027 request, which gates the first production lot [1], and the first autonomy down-select about six months from now [2].
Sources
[1] Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to build first operational CCA drones — DefenseScoop, 17 Jun 2026
[2] Air Force Selects Both General Atomics and Anduril for CCA Production — Air & Space Forces Magazine, 17 Jun 2026
[3] USAF Orders Both General Atomics’ FQ-42 And Anduril’s FQ-44 Into Production — The War Zone, 17 Jun 2026
[4] U.S Air Force Awards GA-ASI Production Contract for FQ-42A CCA — General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, 17 Jun 2026
[5] Shield AI awarded U.S. Air Force production contract for Collaborative Combat Aircraft mission autonomy — Shield AI, 17 Jun 2026
[6] Anduril, General Atomics get Air Force contracts to build first drone wingmen — Defense One, 17 Jun 2026
[7] Why the Air Force Wants $1B in FY27 for This UAS Program — GovCon Wire, 24 Jun 2026