Anduril and General Atomics win contracts to build drones that fly alongside fighter jets
The service will buy the first 150 drones under a separate autonomy competition that will choose a software provider in 2027.
- On Wednesday, the Air Force awarded production contracts to General Atomics and Anduril for Increment 1 of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, enabling the service to field at least 150 systems by the end of the decade, according to Col. Timothy Helfrich, program acquisition executive for fighters and advanced aircraft.
- Helfrich stated the service re-solicited the original five vendors—including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman—before selecting the two winners through competitive evaluation. The contracts arrive four months ahead of schedule.
- While focusing on Increment 1 production, the service is separately managing a second increment of the CCA program with nine vendors, maintaining a modular strategy designed to allow rapid, continuous software upgrades.
- Requesting $996.5 million in fiscal 2027, the Air Force aims to keep per-unit costs under $30 million—roughly one-third the price of a Lot 17 F-35A, Helfrich noted.
- Three vendors—Anduril, Shield AI, and RTX subsidiary Collins Aerospace—were selected to compete for the mission autonomy software contract, with the Air Force planning to downselect to one provider by summer 2027.
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29 Articles
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Anduril, General Atomics get Air Force contracts to build first drone wingmen
Air Force leaders have given initial production contracts to Anduril and General Atomics, which will both build collaborative combat aircraft based on their respective prototypes. Northrop Grumman’s self-financed offering was not selected. Several companies also received money to develop software that will compete to pilot the service’s future fleet of drone wingmen. The Increment 1 CCA contracts are for three lots of the drone wingmen, Air Forc…
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