The two prototypes for the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program have started ground testing, Air Force Chief Staff Gen. David W. Allvin announced May 1, ahead of a planned first flight this summer. The service also announced it has created a new kind of organization to operate the new aircraft.
The developments are another sign that the Air Force’s plans to move fast on the initial “Increment 1” of the program are on track.
“This is a huge milestone and another step toward first flight and rapid delivery to our warfighters,” Allvin wrote in a post on X. He had recently teased there was “big news” coming on the CCA program following a meeting with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth this week.
The two CCAs are the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems YFQ-42A and Anduril Industries’ YFQ-44A—the first unmanned aircraft in the Air Force inventory to receive a fighter designation. A winner for the Increment 1 competition is supposed to be announced sometime after October. Production of as many as 200 of the autonomous aircraft is supposed to be underway by 2028.
“We’re moving fast because the warfighter needs this capability,” Allvin said in a press release. “CCA is about delivering decisive advantage in highly contested environments. The program is accelerating fielding through innovative design and acquisition strategies—and both vendors are meeting or exceeding key milestones. These aircraft will help us turn readiness into operational dominance.”
General Atomics president David Alexander said “we remain on schedule to test and fly YFQ-42 in the coming months.” He also touted GA’s experience in unmanned systems, having “pioneered more than two dozen different unmanned aircraft types for the U.S. and its allies, including multiple unmanned combat jets flying today, and logged nearly nine million total flight hours.” Work on the YFQ-42 “will further expand the field of unmanned aviation, and we remain excited for the future.”
Jason Levin, Anduril’s senior vice president for air dominance and strike, noted that readiness for ground testing of the prototype aircraft came “just one year” after Anduril was chosen as a finalist for the CCA program. The milestone “highlights the program’s aggressive commitment to schedule,” he said. The YFQ-44A passed its critical design review in November 2024 and received its nomenclature in March.
“We are on schedule to fly YFQ-44A this summer,” he said.
Anduril and the Air Force are “pioneering a new generation of semi-autonomous fighter aircraft that will fundamentally transform air combat,” Levin said. “The YQ-44A delivers highly capable, mass-producible, and more affordable fighter capability at the speed and scale required to stay ahead of the threat.”
Delivering the first aircraft “at unprecedented speed” will ensure that the pilots developing tactics for the new aircraft “have ample opportunity to experiment and build the trust required to support operational fielding of CCAs before the end of the decade,” Levin said.
New Unit
The Air Force also announced May 1 that it has created a new organization to operate CCAs, and it has selected Beale Air Force Base, Calif., as the preferred location to host the new unit.
This “CCA Aircraft Readiness Unit” will “provide combat aircraft ready to deploy worldwide at a moment’s notice,” the service said.
“CCA are semi-autonomous in nature, so the ARU will not have to fly a significant number of daily sorties to maintain readiness,” according to USAF. “The aircraft will be maintained in a fly-ready status and flown minimally so the number of airmen required to support the fleet will be substantially lower than other weapons systems.”
The establishment of this new organization demonstrates “further progress toward operationalizing CCA capabilities.”
Beale is home to the 9th Reconnaissance Wing, which operates the crewed U-2 Dragon Lady and uncrewed RQ-4 Global Hawk reconnaissance aircraft. The base developed facilities and procedures for the RQ-4 series, until now the Air Force’s only semi-autonomous aircraft.
“The pace of innovation must outmatch the pace of the threat,” Allvin said. “CCA is how we do that.”
These first CCA aircraft are intended for a purely air-to-air mission: to carry additional missiles for the F-22 and F-35, which have a limited number of shots because they must carry missiles internally to remain stealthy. Pilots of the two frontline fighters have for years asked the Air Force to find a way to expand the number of weapons they can shoot per sortie. The CCA has emerged as at least one solution.
The CCA program is intended to provide the Air Force with “affordable mass,” dramatically expanding the number of aircraft and missiles the combat fleet can put in the air, and compelling an adversary to treat each one as a fully-capable threat aircraft. The idea is to overwhelm and confuse a defender as aircraft approach on multiple axes of attack.
Both the Anduril “Fury” and the as-yet unnamed General Atomics CCA take off and land conventionally on a runway. The Air Force has experimented with other autonomous craft, however, that launch from a vehicle on the ground and are either recovered vertically or are caught in a net.
While future iterations of the CCA are expected to carry out missions such as electronic warfare and ground attack, the Air Force has not yet released a roadmap explaining its plans for those aircraft.
In fact, the characteristics of Increment 2, which is set to get underway next year, remain undecided, according to Maj. Gen. Joseph D. Kunkel, head of Air Force Futures, who nevertheless has suggested it will be less, not more sophisticated than Increment 1.
Speaking on an AFA Warfighters in Action discussion April 24, Kunkel said that while there remain options for Increment 2 to be a “more exquisite” aircraft, “it’s probably going to closer to this low-end thing.”
Though Air Force leaders in the Biden administration suggested that Increment 2 would need more capabilities than Increment 1, Kunkel said extensive wargaming has shown that “there’s going to be room … for other capabilities that aren’t as exquisite … that are cheaper, that provide mass.”
He also said that in the quest for operational flexibility and low cost, CCAs might be launched in “other ways” than from a runway, “that don’t rely on bases,” suggesting they could be air-launched.
It’s unclear, though, where the Air Force sees the cost and capability boundaries between Increment 1—with an estimated price of $27-$30 million apiece—Increment 2, and expendable cruise missiles. The service has in recent years conducted “Rapid Dragon” experiments in which pallets of cruise missiles are dropped out of the back of cargo aircraft. Those experiments did not involve a recovery mechanism, though.
The CCA program parallels the Air Force’s Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program and is funded through the same budget line. The “family of systems” that comprise NGAD include CCAs and the crewed centerpiece of the formation, now known as the F-47. Service and industry leaders have recently said that tests have shown that F-22 and F-35 pilots can manage as many as six CCAs concurrently with their other flying demands.
Pentagon Editor Chris Gordon contributed to this report.