Well, Anduril has had quite the 24 hours.
Pairing up: Last night, Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. David Alvin announced the mission design designation for the company’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), YFQ-44A. This makes Anduril’s drone, along with the YFQ-42A prototype by General Atomics, the first-ever unmanned aircraft to be given a fighter-jet designation. According to Gen. Alvin, prototypes will be ready to fly this summer.
“The most badass Air Force in the world is about to get even more lethal,” he wrote on X, “Our #1 job is putting warheads on foreheads!”
- The Air Force picked five companies to develop CCA aircraft early last year.
- Anduril and General Atomics were chosen to design prototypes in April 2024.
- The idea of the program is that by pairing drones with manned fighter jets, the “teamed” aircraft become more effective and lethal. The unmanned jets can support fighters in everything from air-to-air combat, to electronic warfare, to reconnaissance.
CCA is part of the embattled Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program and is seen as a vital way of modernizing the Air Force. For nontraditional defense companies, it’s also a way of collaborating with the primes.
Now, Anduril will further test and hone the design of YFQ-44A alongside the Air Force. If Gen. Alvin is right, we should expect a flight test in just a few months.
“The designation is evidence of the program’s progress, and we continue to work tirelessly to deliver a capability that will expand the United States’ ability to project combat airpower,” Dr. Jason Levin, SVP of engineering at Anduril, said in a written statement to Tectonic.
Long-range: Then came the second announcement. This morning, the defense tech darling told Tectonic that the Air Force Armament Directorate (EB) and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) have moved Anduril’s Barracuda-500 autonomous air vehicle (AAV) into the next phase of the Enterprise Test Vehicle (ETV) prototype project.
Barracuda-500 is essentially a low-cost, long-range autonomous cruise missile that can travel up to 500 nautical miles, carry up to 100 pounds of payload, and loiter for up to two hours. Anduril was tapped to join the ETV autonomous systems development program last June and carried out a successful flight test of Barracuda-500 in cooperation with EB and DIU last September. Now, the company is one step closer to scaling up production of the low-cost, modular missile system.
The next phase of the project will include more flight tests that prove Barracuda-500’s collaborative capability, especially in contested environments.