USAF Tests New Air-to-Air Missile
By Stephen Losey
The military’s secretive new air-to-air missile appears to have been publicly photographed for the first time during testing.
A missile matching previously released information and renders of the AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile, or JATM, was photographed being carried by an F/A-18F Super Hornet on May 13, shortly after taking off from Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Jonathan Tweedy, a Florida-based aviation photographer who posts on Instagram at @flightline_visuals and took the pictures, told Air & Space Forces Magazine he also photographed a second Super Hornet with an inert version of the JATM among the five planes that flew that day.
JATM, which is being built by Lockheed Martin and has been in development since 2018, is intended to be the successor to the AIM-120 AMRAAM, which is now the main radar-guided air-to-air missile used by the Air Force and Navy. Details on the new missile are classified, but JATM reportedly will be able to fly farther than the AMRAAM and can fit on existing missile rails and in the internal weapons bays of fighters. Testing has been ongoing at Eglin.
On May 13, an EA-18 Growler from VX-9, the Navy’s air test and evaluation squadron nicknamed the Vampires, took off first, Tweedy told Air & Space Forces Magazine in a series of messages. It was followed by the Super Hornet with the live JATM and another with an inert JATM, both from VX-31, the Dust Devils test squadron. They were followed by another pair of Super Hornets, one from VX-9 and another from VX-31, he said.
Tweedy snapped a series of photos during their departure, shortly after 11 a.m. Central time and said at first he didn’t realize what he had captured.
“I was more excited at the fact that I had caught VX-31 and VX-9 together,” Tweedy said. “It wasn’t until after I reviewed my photos that I noticed the [JATM] missile.”
Tweedy said he checked his photos afterward and noticed one seemed to have a live missile, indicated by yellow bands. He wasn’t sure what he had photographed, but judging by its size and the lack of fins on the missile’s midsection, he knew it wasn’t an AMRAAM. He sent the picture to a friend, who is knowledgeable on military technology, who quickly identified it as a JATM.
Tweedy monitored air traffic control during the test flight and said he heard chatter indicating the fighters released their JATMs over the Gulf of Mexico.
The Air Force plans to spend $1.47 billion on R&D for JATM over the next five years, according to budget documents released in April. It also is spending nearly $369 million on procurement for JATM in fiscal 2026, as well as another $8.8 billion between fiscal 2027 and fiscal 2031.
AFSOC Pushes Forward with OA-1K
By Greg Hadley
With a shrinking fleet and growing operational demand, Air Force Special Operations Command sees the new OA-1K combat scout aircraft as key to a “new era,” officials say.
Even as budget constraints threaten to limit the number of aircraft built, AFSOC is charging forward on the program, also known as Armed Overwatch. The command recently received its 18th airframe from contractor L3Harris, Commander Lt. Gen. Michael Conley told lawmakers. And ahead of the annual SOF Week conference that started May 18, a command official said the OA-1K will start operational testing later this year, then likely fly in large-scale exercises in 2027.
“We’re kind of transitioning and pivoting—the program has matured to the point where we can actually start to demonstrate capability, so it’s really reaching an exciting point in the program where we can actually start to see the benefits and the fruits of the labor up to this point,” Lt. Col. Robert Wilson, AFSOC’s Armed Overwatch requirements branch chief, told reporters May 15.
Combat deployments are coming in the next few years, Wilson said, though he declined to offer a definitive timeline.
Both Conley and Wilson made the case that the OA-1K, dubbed the Skyraider II, can be a “Swiss Army knife” for the joint force—not only capable of conducting multiple missions, but easily transportable. Crews will be able to break down the modified crop duster and put it on a transport aircraft for quick deployments.
“With rapid disassembly and reassembly, OA-1K can be loaded into mobility aircraft like a C-5 or C-17 for rapid worldwide deployment, supporting missions around the world at a moment’s notice,” Wilson said. “And importantly, we’re talking a matter of hours, instead of the days or weeks that it would have otherwise required to fly around the world.”
Wilson said AFSOC has tested the capability in a hangar and plans to load a Skyraider into a cargo aircraft later this year as part of operational testing. He said the process requires a “handful of maintainers” and described it as taking “hours,” but did not provide exact details on how many personnel are needed and how long it takes.
After reassembly, the plane’s two crew members are trained to conduct “functional check flights” before flying missions, Wilson said.
Several OA-1Ks can fit on a larger transport aircraft. Air Force airlifters can already transport helicopters for all the services, but for fixed-wing aircraft, “this really is a unique capability,” Wilson said.
It’s an important one, because the OA-1K maxes out at about 250 mph with a range of 1,500 miles.
“OA-1K represents a new era for AFSOC, with the flexibility to support not only counterterrorism-like missions, but also crisis and contingency response, competition with more advanced adversaries, and even aspects of full-on conflict,” Wilson said.
Conley has made the case before that special operators will find “novel” ways to use the OA-1K once it is in the fleet, and both he and Wilson said the platform is modular enough to employ future payloads and weapons. L3Harris has already pitched its low-cost cruise missile as a possibility for the aircraft, and Conley indicated AFSOC is interested.
“It could do exquisite [signals intelligence], collect intel, and also be armed with up to 6,000 pounds of payload, whether that’s Hellfires, rockets, maybe some small cruise missiles that we’re working on,” he told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
U.S. Special Operations Command, which is procuring the OA-1K, has trimmed its planned purchase from 75 down to 53 airframes, citing resource constraints. AFSOC, as the “capability sponsor,” is still pushing for the stated requirement of 75, Wilson said.
General Atomics CCA Returns to Flight
By Greg Hadley and Stephen Losey
The YFQ-42A Collaborative Combat Aircraft has resumed flight-testing after a six-week pause that began when one of the drones crashed in early April.
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, which builds the YFQ-42A, announced the return to flight May 21 and said a safety review conducted by the Air Force and GA determined the crash was caused by an “autopilot miscalculation for the weight and center of gravity of the aircraft.”
The aircraft was destroyed in the crash near an airport in the California desert owned by General Atomics, though no one was hurt. Multiple YFQ-42As have been built as part of low-rate production.
The firm updated the drone’s software, and flights have resumed. During the safety pause, work on the program continued with ground testing and other activities.
The YFQ-42A’s autopilot software is separate from the mission autonomy software Shield AI and Collins Aerospace are developing for the CCA program. The autopilot is part of the flight autonomy software, which is responsible for the basics of flying the aircraft, while the mission autonomy software is the “AI pilot” that governs the flight software and executes specific maneuvers based on basic directions from a human operator.
The Air Force envisions its CCA program as a fleet of semi-autonomous drones to fly alongside and take direction from a manned fighter and its pilot.
For the first “increment” of the program, the service is considering the YFQ-42A and the YFQ-44A, built by Anduril. Both are envisioned as strike platforms, though future increments could perform electronic warfare, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, or more.
The YFQ-42’s return to flight comes as the Air Force is closing in on a decision about which drone it will move into production—officials say they will make their choice in fiscal 2026, which ends Sept. 30.
The Air Force released a statement that said it and General Atomics’ response to the YFQ-42A’s crash shows the strategy of accepting risk in the acquisition and testing phase, instead of in operations, is the right approach.
“The CCA program was and is set up to learn, even when the learning comes from ‘failing forward,’” said Col. Timothy Helfrich, portfolio acquisition executive for fighters and advanced aircraft. “We pushed the envelope, identified a risk, learned from the data, and have cleared the YFQ-42A to return to flight. Even when flight testing on the YFQ-42 was temporarily paused, the program was not.”
During GA’s flight pause, the Air Force conducted an experimental exercise with Anduril’s YFQ-44A. As part of that exercise, airmen from the Experimental Operations Unit (EOU)—not engineers or test pilots—flew the drone from Edwards Air Force Base in California in multiple sorties.
Helfrich pointed to the EOU exercise as an example of technology maturation and risk-reduction activities on the CCA program that continued during the YFQ-42A’s pause.
“Because of this momentum and our resilient, multi-vendor approach, overall CCA progress never missed a beat,” Helfrich said.