Anduril’s YFQ-44A takes flight
The YFQ-44A, Anduril’s bid for the US Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) has finally started its flight trials following on the heels of the General-Atomics YFQ-42A, which took off in late August this year.
The Anduril article, published on 31 October explains that “Anduril and the US Air Force began flight testing at record speed, taking the YFQ-44A from clean-sheet design to wheels-up in just 556 days, faster than any major fighter aircraft program in recent history.” It is worth noting that General Atomics expressed a similar sentiment during its flight trial announcement, with the company’s president adding that “It’s been our collaboration that enabled us to build and fly the YFQ-42A in just over a year. It’s an incredible achievement and I salute the Air Force for its vision and I salute our development team for delivering yet another historic first for our company.”
- YFQ-42A enters flight tests with USAF | Calibre Defence
- The growing collaborative combat aircraft marketplace – Calibre Defence
Moving back to Anduril, the company states that the first flight was semi-autonomous, as opposed to remotely-piloted. It adds that all following flights will also be semi-autonomous. However, the YFQ-44A does operate under a human on the loop, which usually means a human is maintaining awareness of what the aircraft is doing and can intervene if required.
The YFQ-42A appears to have met similar standards, although it arguably has an advantage in that the General Atomics “autonomy core has been trained across more than five years of flight testing using GA-ASI’s jet-powered MQ-20 Avenger, an aircraft no other company has.”
A key element of the USAF CCA programme is scale. It wants to build at least 1,000 CCAs to enter service by 2029 and fly in support of the F-47 air dominance fighter. Naturally, this is quite an aggressive timeline given that both aircraft have only just taken flight. But Anduril emphasises that the YFQ-44A has been designed with manufacturing in mind, adding that there is a need to rapidly ramp production to introduce affordable mass. With that in mind, the YFQ-44A is expected to be the first product produced at the company’s Arsenal-1 hyperscale factory in Ohio. Production is expected to start in the second half of 2026.
Like Anduril, General Atomics emphasised that its YFQ-42A is being developed in a “high-rate production environment” that will enable the USAF to meet its goal of producing 1,000 CCAs. On the current timelines, it will be challenging for either company to produce 1,000 aircraft in three years. Especially as flight testing can reveal unexpected challenges with system performance that may yet need to be addressed.
- Calibre Defence Brief: US F-47, UK Excalibur, and Poland Satellites
- Anduril selects Ohio for Arsenal-1 – Calibre Defence
The Anduril article sets a determined tone, explaining that the company has worked closely with the US Air Force and overcome many obstacles to get to this stage. Again, the General Atomics press release included similar statements, indicating that both companies are working closely with the USAF throughout the development process. “YFQ-44A will be produced at rate by a broad labor pool, commoditized supply chain, and industry-standard manufacturing processes,” Anduril states.
Calibre comment: Is maturity key?
Whilst Anduril and General Atomics have been working to get their CCAs into the sky, others have entered the race. Lockheed Martin announced Vectis, its internally funded CCA back in September, and Helsing followed with its own CCA, the CA-1 Europa shortly after. Both feed into the growing market of CCAs available to users in Europe and America.
Broadly speaking, many of the CCAs appear to have similar characteristics. There will of course be differences in radar cross section and the performance of their autonomy stacks which is unlikely to be made public. However, one element that does set them apart at present, is the maturity of the autonomy stacks. The YFQ-42A has had a lot of training data made available for its autonomy stack, and the MQ-28 Ghost Bat has conducted regular flight tests for some time now. Lockheed has tested the ability of human pilots to command AI pilots in real-life flight and during simulated air-to-air engagements. These are important processes that define how operationally ready the CCA is, and to some extent its ability to meet the USAF’s ambitious in-service dates. The learning process for AI depends on operational data being available, as well as the capacity to train the algorithms – which includes a lot of infrastructure as well as a lot of computers.
It stands to reason that those aircraft flying with more mature autonomy stacks that have demonstrated operationally relevant capabilities should have the edge. However, if industrial drivers are considered more important at this stage, the CCA programme could go in any number of directions, including production contract awards to several vendors.
By Sam Cranny-Evans, published on November 3, 2025. The lead image shows the YFQ-44A taking off for its flight trials. Credit: Anduril.
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