CALIFORNIA — The U.S. Air Force awarded engineering-and-manufacturing development and production contracts to Anduril and General Atomics for Increment 1 of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. The agreements cover the first three production lots of unmanned aerial vehicles, enabling the Air Force to field a minimum of 150 aircraft by the end of the decade.

These contract awards were issued four months ahead of the original schedule. The Air Force selected Anduril, Shield AI, and RTX subsidiary Collins Aerospace to advance to the next phase of the CCA Increment 1 mission autonomy software competition. The service plans to evaluate software packages from these three vendors over a multi-month period before selecting a primary autonomy provider in 2027.

The unmanned aircraft are designed to operate alongside future F-47 and current fifth-generation fighter platforms. The modular drones will be retrofitted with various equipment for missions, including offensive strike and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

Col. Timothy Helfrich, program acquisition executive for fighters and advanced aircraft, said the program is achieving cost targets below approximately $30 million per unit. "It is important to know that what we looked for at selecting the air vehicle vendor was based on their ability to meet the Air Force's schedule, the demanding cost criteria and performance required to still deliver operational capability of 150-plus aircraft by the end of the decade," Helfrich said. "The bottom line is, we have to deliver 150-plus by the end of the decade, so that does kind of set a lower limit for how many we have to get across the lots," he said.

The production CCA drones from General Atomics and Anduril will maintain designs similar to their prototype versions, with General Atomics' platform designated FQ-42A and Anduril's as FQ-44A. Its CCA is named Dark Merlin, deriving from the company's XQ-67A drone, a prototype of which completed its first successful flight in February as part of the Air Force Research Lab's Low-Cost Attritable Aircraft Platform Sharing program. Anduril's CCA program is named Fury.

A company prototype crashed during an April test at a company-owned facility in California. The prototype resumed flight operations approximately one month after the incident. Helfrich stated that this prototype crash did not affect the Air Force's contract award decision for the company.

The Air Force requested $996.5 million in its fiscal 2027 budget for CCA Increment 1 procurement. The first production lot contract will be awarded following the approval of this budget. The Air Force intends to purchase additional Increment 1 drones in subsequent production lots without reopening the competition to other vendors.