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| Science & Technology |
| US Air Force awards production contracts to Anduril for drone wingmen |
| 2026-06-21 |
| [JP] The US Air Force on Wednesday awarded production contracts to General Atomics and Anduril Industries to build its first fleet of semi-autonomous Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), moving a program that began just over two years ago from prototype to full-scale manufacturing. The department awarded production contracts to both companies — General Atomics for the FQ-42 and Anduril for the FQ-44, the Air Force said, without disclosing the cost or size of the order. The contracts were awarded months ahead of schedule, a sign that both aircraft meet mission requirements and are ready for manufacturing. "By moving fast from competitive selection into full-scale manufacturing, we position ourselves to field highly credible and combat-ready semi-autonomous systems to stay ahead of the pacing challenge," said Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink. "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." In a press release, Anduril said that the contract "establishes a structure for the Air Force to buy additional lots of production FQ-44 aircraft across the next several years, providing a clear path for the Air Force to rapidly and affordably expand fighter capacity." Alongside the hardware contracts, the Air Force simultaneously moved forward on the software side of the program, awarding mission autonomy production contracts to a pool of six vendors: Anduril, General Atomics, Lockheed MartinLMT.N, Northrop GrummanNOC.N, RTX's RTX.N Collins Aerospace, and Shield AI. In a notable departure from traditional Pentagon procurement, the Air Force is pursuing a strategy it calls "software sold separately," deliberately decoupling the purchase of the CCA's mission autonomy software from its airframe. |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #2 |
| Posted by: MikeKozlowski 2026-06-21 17:49 |
| #1 |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2026-06-21 12:03 |