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The U.S. Air Force recently awarded production contracts to General Atomics and Anduril Industries
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to build its first fleet of semi-autonomous collaborative combat aircraft, moving a program from prototype to full-scale manufacturing in just over two years, according to Reuters
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The Air Force awarded production contracts to General Atomics for the FQ-42
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and Anduril for the FQ-44 without disclosing the cost or size of the order
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Alongside the hardware contracts, the Air Force simultaneously moved forward on the software side of the program
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awarding mission autonomy production contracts to a pool of six vendors. Those were Anderil General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX, Collins Aerospace, and Shield AI
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The Air Force ultimately intends to field about 1,000 collaborative combat aircraft
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using continuous competition among vendors to drive down costs while scaling fighter capacity
