The U.S. Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program—which aims to procure about 1,000 autonomous aircraft to serve as “loyal wingmen” to crewed fighter jets—is reaching new heights in 2026.
The two aircraft selected by the branch for testing and evaluation under the first CCA phase or “increment”—General Atomics’ (GA-ASI) YFQ-42A Dark Merlin and Anduril’s YFQ-44A Fury—both achieved new milestones this year after first taking flight in late 2025.
Earlier in February, the Air Force and GA-ASI—which builds uncrewed Predator attack drones such as the MQ-9A Reaper—announced that the Dark Merlin made its first semiautonomous flight alongside crewed fighters. And this week, the branch told reporters at the Air & Space Forces Association’s annual Warfare Symposium in Colorado that it has begun weapons integration testing with Anduril’s Fury, strapping inert air-to-air munitions to the drone to validate safety and airworthiness.
Carrying live munitions into combat is just one envisioned use of the CCA wingmen, which are also designed to extend the range of fighter jet sensors for enhanced situational awareness.
The Air Force expects to procure two CCA systems apiece for each of about 500 fighters obtained via its Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. It plans to order about 100 drone sidekicks during the first CCA increment.
Colonel Timothy Helfrich, who directs the Air Force’s Agile Development Office, said in September that first increment production contracts are expected to be handed out this year. They could go to one or both companies.
The branch hopes for the CCA aircraft to be operational by 2030. That would allow it to pair them with fifth-generation jets such as Lockheed Martin’s F-35A, as well as sixth-generation fighters such as Boeing’s F-47.
Autonomous Testing Begins
GA-ASI and Anduril in 2024 won contracts to build and demonstrate their production-representative CCA designs for the Air Force.
The “Y” in the drones’ designations signifies that they are preproduction test aircraft, and it will be dropped when production begins. The “F” denotes fighter, and the “Q” indicates they are uncrewed.
GA-ASI began ground testing the YQF-42A in May, following that up three months later with an initial flight in coordination with the Air Force. David Alexander, president of GA-ASI, on Monday shed some light on what inspired the drone’s avian moniker.
“Dark merlins are hunting machines, built for speed and aerodynamics,” said Alexander. “They harass other falcons for fun, and they eat what they kill. The name sums up our new uncrewed fighter perfectly.”
The company said it has since built and flown multiple Dark Merlin prototypes and showcased “push-button autonomous takeoffs and landings.” Another company, Skyryse, is developing a similar capability for commercial fixed-wing aircraft and rotorcraft.
GA-ASI for more than five years has used its MQ-20 Avenger as a “CCA surrogate,” integrating and testing different autonomy systems. In 2025, for example, an Avenger equipped with its proprietary TacACE software and Shield AI’s Hivemind—the autonomy software powering Anduril’s Fury—switched between the two programs on a single flight. GA-ASI later teamed with Lockheed Martin and L3Harris, enabling the human pilot of an F-22 Raptor to command the Avenger using a cockpit tablet.
The company has also built and flown the MQ-67A, an autonomous airborne sensing jet that it said served as a “flying prototype” for the Dark Merlin.
The YFQ-42A’s inaugural semiautonomous test flight leveraged Collins Aerospace’s Sidekick autonomy system, which per Collins is designed for combat-related missions. The software is “intuitive, adjusting to the pilot’s working style and mission specifics,” the company said Friday.
The flight was managed by a human operator on the ground, who transmitted commands for the aircraft to execute on its own. GA-ASI and Collins said personnel conducted more than four hours of semiautonomous operations, which the former said “sets new benchmarks for combat autonomy, mission flexibility, operator control, and system reliability.”
Sidekick was integrated on the Dark Merlin using the government-owned Autonomy Government Reference Architecture (A-GRA) blueprint, which has been developed with help from private companies such as Merlin Labs and Reliable Robotics.
The same architecture was used to integrate Shield AI’s Hivemind on Anduril’s Fury. Though the company has not yet begun semiautonomous flight testing, a spokesperson this week told digital media outlet Defense One that it will happen “very soon.”
In the meantime, Anduril has begun a series of critical tests to gauge the YFQ-44A’s ability to externally carry AIM-120 advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles. The munitions so far have been inert and not intended for operational deployment. But eventually, human personnel will command the CCA aircraft to release real weapons.
Boeing, which has been flight testing its MQ-28 Ghost Bat in Australia, announced the start of live fire testing in December. The Ghost Bat is another CCA candidate, as are Lockheed Martin’s Vectis and Northrop Grumman’s YFQ-48A Talon Blue—the three aircraft that lost out to the Dark Merlin and Fury.
Per Helfrich, about 20 firms are in the running for second increment “concept refinement” contracts like those awarded to GA-ASI and Anduril. Those awards are expected in early 2026.
