Pictured is a U.S. Air Force photo of Anduril Industries’ YFQ-44A prototype in flight.
Anduril Industries‘ YFQ-44A Fury prototype drone for the U.S. Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program had its debut flight Oct. 31 at a California test site, according to the Air Force.
Jason Levin, Anduril’s senior vice president for engineering, air dominance, and strike, told reporters on Oct. 31 that “we’ve already begun integrating weapons with YFQ-44A, and we’ll execute our first live shot next year.”
Photos of the first flight appear to show a pod under the aircraft, but, asked about this, Levin replied, “I can’t talk about any of the mission systems and sensors or load-out specifics of the YFQ-44A.”
In its statement, the Air Force said, “Developmental flight activities continue across both vendor and government test locations, including Edwards Air Force Base, where envelope expansion and integration work will inform future experimentation. The Air Force’s Experimental Operations Unit, located at Nellis AFB, will be instrumental in evaluating operational concepts as the program transitions from testing to fielding substantial operational capability for Increment 1 before the end of the decade.”
The General Atomics YFQ-42A Gambit CCA prototype began flight testing in August. The General Atomics and Anduril aircraft are competing for CCA Increment 1. Next year, the Air Force is to pick one and to begin CCA Increment 2 development.
“All of our taxi and flight tests have been and will continue to be semi-autonomous,” Levin said in a company statement. “To achieve the scale we need at the speed that the threat demands, we are building and testing a new type of production system for YFQ-44A. Through the employment of a common software backbone called ArsenalOS, our production system multiplies the effects of the thousands of design-for-manufacturing decisions made during the development of YFQ-44A.”
Newly minted Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach said in October that CCAs may have their own squadrons.
“We’re thinking that they’re not going to be embedded in current fighter squadrons, but rather they’re gonna be their own squadrons, and there will be a strategic basing process with these,” Wilsbach said at his Senate Armed Services Committee nomination hearing.
CCAs are to exchange target information with manned fighters and possibly KC-46A Pegasus tankers, built by Boeing.
At Wilsbach’s nomination hearing, Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) referenced reports that Ukraine is making 200,000 drones per month at an average price of $500. “We don’t have remotely that capacity here, and I believe we’re missing the major lesson of Ukraine, which is the importance of drone warfare,” he said. “We’ve gotta have a major initiative in this area, in my view. Do you agree?”
“I do, senator,” Wilsbach replied. “We’ve come to the same lessons learned that you have, that this is a tactic that would be useful for us, and it creates massive dilemmas for your adversary because they have to honor those 200,000 a month. They don’t know what they’re up to. They might have a weapon on them. They might just be a decoy, but they have to honor them, and you end up overwhelming their defenses, and then you eventually get one to the target and you achieve objectives. We’re learning that lesson. And, by the way, you can 3D print one-way attack drones at scale so we should invest in that, I believe.”
A version of this story originally appeared in affiliate publication Defense Daily.