Sometime in 2026, the Air Force will make a decision about what designs to produce for the first round of its drone wingmen program. The service is also expected to home in on what it wants next.
The designs selected for the next group of Collaborative Combat Aircraft represent a “broad spectrum” of concepts, which will be narrowed down at a later date for prototyping, an Air Force spokesperson told Breaking Defense.
“Tactical operating system” for warfighters has evolved to provide more situational awareness of the battlefield.
Service leaders are looking to find industry solutions for short/vertical takeoff and landing (S/VOTL) drones, ones that don’t require a runway, in the Group 4 or above category.
Dive into how General Atomics Aeronautical Systems plans to protect MQ-9s, adapt for peer threats and evolve its unmanned systems portfolio over the next five years.
“We already know the F-22 will play a critical role in crewed-uncrewed teaming operations, and General Atomics is in a unique position to get this started now,” company spokesman C. Mark Brinkley told Breaking Defense.
International customers will be able to acquire Gambit 6 from 2027, ahead of European “missionized versions” eligible for delivery in 2029, according to General Atomics.
Knowing when to build on commercial systems and when to develop something new can be the difference between parity and information dominance.
The tech startup’s YFQ-44A is the second of two drone prototypes to take flight under the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program.
It’s not the first time Trump has fixated on the technology.
The agreement unlocks "total access" for the Netherlands into the US Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, said Dutch State Secretary for Defense Gijs Tuinman.
The service has permitted furloughed employees to return to work “to ensure continuity of operations and avoid any potential delay” for the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, according to an Air Force official.
Balancing security and access to data are critical to providing users with trustworthy, reliable data for real-time decisions.
The companies intend for their jointly developed and produced version of the Gray Eagle to first fly in 2027.
“I can’t fund the government,” said Anduril Founder Palmer Luckey.
“This is certainly a growth market. It’s gonna take awhile to get there, but you could easily see hundreds of air vehicles built per year in this market sometime in the early 2030s,” Richard Aboulafia, managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory, told Breaking Defense.
RTX will provide autonomy capabilities for General Atomics’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft offering dubbed the YFQ-42A, while Shield AI will supply the autonomy pilot for Anduril’s YFQ-44A, a source told Breaking Defense.