Anduril’s YFQ-44A makes its maiden flight and begins CCA flight testing

The US Air Force has begun flight testing Californian company Anduril Industries’ YFQ-44A Fury Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA). The company says the YFQ-44A is designed to gain and maintain air superiority in highly contested environments through a focus on autonomy and affordable mass, which it describes as a paradigm shift in how the United States will employ and project combat airpower this decade and beyond.

The company says the Fury went from a clean sheet design to first semi-autonomous flight of a CCA in just 556 days, faster than any major fighter aircraft program in recent history. It says it designed the YFQ-44A for a specific USAF mission: to enhance survivability, lethality, and mission effectiveness by teaming with 4^th, 5^th and 6^th generation crewed fighter aircraft, or operating independently.

The USAF now has both of its CCA prototypes in flight test – in August the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc (GA-ASI) YFQ-42A began its own flight test program.

Here in Australia a more advanced CCA program, Boeing Defence Australia’s MQ-28A Ghost Bat, has surpassed 150 flights and more than 20,000 simulated flying hours of a digital twin with a production decision anticipated around the end of this year.

The CCAs are designed to help the USAF shift towards scalable force packages and human-machine teaming. Designed to operate alongside crewed aircraft, the CCA will extend operational reach, enhance survivability and increase lethality in contested environments.

As force multipliers, they are intended to support rapid deployment and affordable mass, delivering combat power at a fraction of the cost of traditional fighters. In particular, they are designed for high-rate production enabling the USAF to reach its goal of producing more than 1,000 CCAs on an accelerated timeline.

The YFQ-44A was not designed to be a remotely-piloted aircraft, and that is not how Anduril is operating it, the company says. All of its taxi and flight tests have been and will continue to be semi-autonomous, though it executes a mission plan on its own, manages flight control and throttle adjustment independent of human command, and returns to land at the push of a button, all under the watchful eye of an operator “on the loop” but not in it.

Anduril’s investment in the fury is the driving force behind Arsenal-1, the 5 million ft² production facility the company is building in Columbus, Ohio. The YFQ-44A will be the first program to move into the factory when its doors open, and the company says it is on track to begin production of prototype CCA at Arsenal-1 in the first half of 2026.