Autonomous airpower crossed a procurement line this month when the US Air Force selected General Atomics and Anduril to build the first operational fleet of Collaborative Combat Aircraft, the fighter-class drones designed to fly with crewed jets. General Atomics’ aircraft is the FQ-42A “Dark Merlin”; Anduril’s is the FQ-44A “Fury.” [E1]
Production selection matters because CCA has moved beyond the test-range grammar of loyal-wingman demonstrations. The service is no longer only proving whether an uncrewed aircraft can accompany a fighter; it is choosing suppliers for aircraft intended to become an operational fleet, with two airframes now carrying the first production awards. [E1]
Scale gives the program its industrial signal. The Air Force goal cited for the first fleet is “at least 150 systems by the end of the decade,” and the service previously aimed for roughly $30 million per aircraft, about one-third of an F-35. Col. Timothy Helfrich said current cost projections are coming in below those earlier estimates. [E2]
Cost discipline sits at the center of the CCA bet. Helfrich said the air-vehicle selection turned on vendors’ ability to meet “the Air Force’s schedule, the demanding cost criteria and performance required,” putting timetable, price and combat utility in the same procurement box. [E4]
Autonomy remains the unresolved layer. The Air Force has not yet chosen the mission-autonomy provider that will fly the behavior stack; Anduril, Shield AI and Collins Aerospace are competing for that role, with a primary provider expected by summer 2027. [E3]
That split between airframe and autonomy is the important design choice. The aircraft suppliers are known, while the software supplier is still open, which lets the service treat the vehicle and the mission brain as separable industrial layers rather than a single locked platform. [E3]
CCA therefore marks a broader supplier shift in combat aviation. Defence primes and AI-native firms are both moving into the core of the airpower stack, with attritable, software-upgradable aircraft becoming a production program rather than a speculative concept. Helfrich described CCA as “the next evolution of air power” and “our first instance of taking human-machine teaming into the aviation world to this extent.” [E4]