A new era of airpower focused on autonomy and affordable mass is moving into mass production: today, the Air Force selected Anduril for the production phase of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. Under the contract, Anduril will deliver an initial set of production FQ-44 semi-autonomous fighter aircraft to support continued testing, validation, and, ultimately, operational fielding. The contract also establishes a structure for the Air Force to buy additional lots of production FQ-44 aircraft across the next several years, providing a clear path for the Air Force to rapidly and affordably expand fighter capacity.
The decision is an important waypoint in the history of military aviation writ-large: FQ-44 is the first semi-autonomous fighter aircraft to move into serial production. We are well on our way to delivering this capability to warfighters.
Speed
The threat demands that we move with urgency. Crewed fighters and bombers are impressive technical feats, but they cannot be produced on the timelines or at the scales required to effectively deter or sustain a high-end fight. The CCA program is America’s answer to that intractable problem: by rapidly designing, developing, testing, and fielding large numbers of affordable, mass-producible semi-autonomous fighter aircraft, the program will enable America to rapidly regain airborne combat mass on an operationally relevant timeline.
Only by achieving affordable mass, by putting new and more intelligent aircraft on the ramp, can we successfully deter great power conflict. Today, just over two years after prototype award, the capability that we’ve built is real and moving into serial production. That timeline — prototype award in April 2024, start of ground test in April 2025, first flight in October 2025, and production contract in June 2026 — represents the fastest path from prototype to production for a fighter aircraft in more than 50 years.
By announcing a production decision months ahead of schedule, the Air Force is making their belief in the program clear. The decision serves as a testament to the capability that the combined Anduril-USAF team has built and the steps that we have already taken to prove it out.
Operationally-relevant capability
Moving fast only matters if the capability itself is actually worth fielding. In its current configuration, FQ-44 has the ferry range necessary to deploy anywhere in the world. It can takeoff and land on a short field. It has a combat radius that significantly exceeds the combat radius for current crewed fighters, and the speed to keep up. It has the payload capacity required to make a real impact on the battlefield. And, across hundreds of hours with Air Force experts and thousands of simulations, we have demonstrated that FQ-44 will do more than just survive the high-end fight: it will excel.
We have already taken important steps to prove the aircraft’s performance. Today, we have multiple aircraft flying regularly. We have completed dozens of sorties from multiple airfields, in multiple mission configurations, demonstrating the aircraft’s performance across greater portions of the flight envelope each time. We have flown two different mission autonomy software suites, switching between them mid-flight. We have integrated and flown the aircraft with inert air-to-air munitions. And, in our first exercise with the Air Force’s Experimental Operations Unit, we proved that a small crew with just days worth of training can launch, recover, and turn multiple FQ-44 sorties, without the infrastructure of a large, established base.
Together, Anduril and the Air Force have made progress towards our ultimate goal: delivering a real, operational capability, on the ramp and ready by the end of the decade. We have moved at pace to deliver an aircraft that meets the Air Force’s core air superiority mission, and we have done so on time and on budget. But critically, FQ-44 was designed to evolve: the aircraft’s modular design and open hardware and software architectures ensure that we can rapidly integrate new capabilities as real-world operations and program partners demand them.
Production
A handful of aircraft will not move the needle in a great power conflict. From the design of the aircraft itself to the production system that will deliver it, we have maintained a relentless focus on the need to deliver at scale.
Since day one, our focus has been on eliminating production risk early. We have been refining, testing, and iterating on our production system, in parallel with aircraft development, for the past two years. We have already implemented our full rate production processes and tooling on prototype aircraft, identifying and addressing issues during prototyping to streamline the transition into production.
The production line at Arsenal-1 is already on this path: work there is active today, and the production line itself is capable of delivering up to 150 aircraft per year in its current configuration. Everything on that line is on wheels, ensuring that we can iterate on our production system in parallel with iterations on the aircraft itself, or scale it further to meet additional surges in demand.
Way forward
The Air Force’s decision marks the first time that a new company has won a fighter aircraft program since the 1970s. For Anduril, there is no denying the magnitude of this milestone. What was once little more than a bar napkin idea has evolved into a production-ready capability in record time. We have conquered impossible odds, built a first-in-class capability, and are primed to deliver it at scale.
Still, we know that our journey on this program is just beginning. The hard part — scaling production and fielding an operational capability — is what comes next. As we move into the next phase of the program, we do so with overwhelming conviction in the aircraft that we have built, the team that builds it, and our ability to surmount the challenges that remain in front of us.
The threat demands a step change in airborne capability. The Air Force has selected Anduril’s FQ-44 to spearhead America’s response. We look forward to what comes next.
