The YFQ-44A flew Oct. 31 in California, pushing the service’s autonomous “wingman” effort into its next phase.
VICTORVILLE, Calif. — Anduril Industries’ prototype unmanned jet, known as Fury and designated YFQ-44A, made its first flight on Oct. 31 at Southern California Logistics Airport, the company and the Air Force said. The semi-autonomous aircraft executed its mission plan and returned to land under human oversight but without a remote pilot on the stick.
The milestone advances the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, a rapid effort to field jet-powered drones that fly alongside crewed fighters such as the F-22 and F-35. Anduril and General Atomics are the two contractors building production-representative test articles in Increment 1, with a competitive production decision targeted in fiscal 2026. Service leaders view these aircraft as a path to “affordable mass” and added protection for pilots as the Pentagon refocuses on high-end conflict. The first Fury flight arrives as testing across the program accelerates and as the service refines how autonomous systems will operate with human crews.
On its debut, Fury flew a preplanned profile that included autonomous throttle, altitude and navigation control while a ground operator monitored the jet’s actions. Anduril describes the system as “semi-autonomous,” emphasizing that it is not a remotely piloted aircraft. The aircraft is designed to take off, manage the flight, and return to land at a command from the ground. Company officials say a “kill switch” allows an operator to abort a mission, and any decision to employ weapons must be approved by a human. “These fly out ahead of manned fighters,” Chief Executive Brian Schimpf said earlier this year, arguing the concept is meant to find and deter threats before a human pilot is in range.
Fury’s first flight capped an unusually fast design-to-flight sprint, with Anduril saying it moved from concept to wheels-up in roughly a year and a half. The prototype carries the YFQ-44A designation the Air Force assigned to Anduril’s CCA entrant. The jet uses a commercial business-jet class engine and parts chosen for manufacturability; Schimpf said elements such as the landing gear were designed so they could be built by common machine shops to scale up production. The company says the aircraft is built for software-driven autonomy, with a human “on the loop” to supervise and intervene when necessary.
The Air Force confirmed it is advancing multiple designs in parallel to gain data on flight performance, autonomy and mission systems. Officials said the early flights will inform how uncrewed aircraft complement fifth- and sixth-generation platforms. In a statement marking Fury’s first flight, senior leaders called competition a driver of speed and innovation. Anduril executive Jason Levin said flight testing now shifts to proving speed, maneuverability, autonomy, range and weapons integration. The company has begun integrating weapons and plans its first live shot next year as envelope expansion continues at government and vendor test sites including Edwards Air Force Base and Nellis Air Force Base units focused on experimentation.
The broader CCA program is aimed at teaming small groups of uncrewed jets with each fighter, multiplying sensors and missiles while lowering risk to aircrews. The Air Force has discussed acquiring more than 100 CCAs in the first increment over the next several years, with a longer-term planning assumption of 1,000 aircraft across the fleet. The push follows years of autonomy experiments and digital engineering work and comes amid concerns about pacing threats and the need to disperse combat airpower. As autonomous systems gain capability, Air Force leaders have stressed that humans will retain control over the use of force even as software handles split-second flight tasks.
General Atomics, the other Increment 1 contractor, announced in late August that its YFQ-42A began flight testing and said last week a second aircraft has now flown, underscoring a quickening tempo on both lines. The service has not disclosed dates or durations for individual test sorties, and Anduril has not released details such as flight length for Fury’s debut. Company officials said the first series of flights will burn down risk in stages, from subsystem checks to more stressing maneuvers, before moving to multi-ship autonomy and operations alongside crewed fighters. Program managers say the parallel paths are meant to reduce schedule risk and sharpen requirements ahead of production decisions.
Fury traces back to a design created by Blue Force Technologies, a North Carolina firm Anduril acquired in 2023, which the startup adapted into a CCA-focused, fighter-like jet roughly half the size of an F-16. The YFQ-44A airframe features swept wings, a chin inlet and cruciform tail, with external hardpoints for weapons. While the Air Force has not published a price target for each jet, leaders say using commercial-grade components and software-first development should hold down costs compared with crewed fighters. Anduril has touted a mass-production strategy relying on a broad supplier base and a planned “hyperscale” factory in Ohio to build aircraft at rate if the program moves forward.
Public comments around autonomy have drawn scrutiny, including concerns about ethics and command authority. Anduril maintains that Fury is not remotely piloted “behind the scenes” and that lethal actions will remain under human authority. Company founder Palmer Luckey has said the United States faces a capable adversary and framed the effort as a race to maintain military advantage, though he declined to detail assessments of foreign programs. For now, officials emphasize near-term flight test goals: validating the software “brain,” proving reliability and maintainability, and demonstrating that a team of robotic aircraft can collaborate to achieve mission objectives in complex airspace.
Next steps include continued flights at vendor and government ranges, weapons carriage and release testing beginning next year, and multi-ship autonomy trials leading into 2026. The Air Force plans to choose at least one vendor for Increment 1 production in fiscal 2026 and has signaled that contracts to both competitors are possible. Additional increments with different requirements are expected to start concept work in 2026, including potential international partners. The experimental operations unit at Nellis is slated to help refine tactics as the test articles mature, with the service aiming for substantial operational capability before the end of the decade.
At the Oct. 31 flight in Victorville, spotters photographed the gray jet flying with two L-29 chase planes under bright desert skies. The scene was a reminder that much of the early CCA work is unfolding in familiar Southern California test corridors even as companies promise to build the aircraft using a more distributed, commodity supply chain. “It’s not a race to first flight at any cost,” Anduril’s Levin said this fall, describing autonomy as the hardest technical problem and the one the team prioritized for the earliest sorties.
As of Sunday evening, both CCA prototypes are flying and expanding test points. The next major milestone is additional Fury sorties and planned weapons work in 2026, followed by a production decision later that fiscal year.
Author note: Last updated November 9, 2025.