Collaborative Combat Aircraft: Autonomous Wingmen Enter Production

The future of military aviation took a significant step forward in June 2026.

On June 17, the U.S. Air Force awarded production contracts to Anduril Industries and General Atomics for the first generation of Collaborative Combat Aircraft, commonly known as CCA. These aircraft are essentially autonomous drone wingmen designed to operate alongside traditional fighter aircraft.

General Atomics will produce the FQ-42 while Anduril will produce the FQ-44. Unlike the smaller quadcopters most people associate with the word drone, Collaborative Combat Aircraft resemble small fighter jets and are being developed for high-end military operations.

The concept could fundamentally change how air forces operate.

Instead of sending only expensive crewed aircraft into dangerous airspace, a fighter pilot could eventually operate as part of a larger team containing multiple autonomous aircraft. Those unmanned aircraft could carry sensors, weapons, electronic warfare equipment, or other mission-specific payloads while extending the reach of the crewed fighter.

The Air Force is planning for approximately 1,000 Collaborative Combat Aircraft, with more than 150 expected to be procured by the end of the decade.

Cost is one of the reasons the program is so important.

Modern fighter aircraft are incredibly expensive to manufacture, operate, and replace. The Air Force has been targeting a price for Collaborative Combat Aircraft that is significantly lower than traditional fighters. Building capable autonomous aircraft at scale could allow the military to deploy larger numbers of systems without requiring an equally large fleet of extremely expensive crewed aircraft.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the program is the software.

The Air Force is treating the aircraft and the artificial intelligence controlling their missions as separate technologies. Companies including Anduril, Shield AI, and Collins Aerospace are competing to develop mission autonomy software for the aircraft.

That means the physical aircraft could potentially receive increasingly capable autonomous behavior through software updates rather than requiring an entirely new generation of hardware.

It represents the same transformation we have seen throughout the technology industry, now applied to military aviation.

Hardware still matters, but software increasingly determines what that hardware can actually do.

The war in Ukraine has already demonstrated how dramatically inexpensive drones can change a battlefield. The Collaborative Combat Aircraft program takes that lesson into a completely different category, combining fighter-like aircraft, advanced sensors, artificial intelligence, and autonomous decision-making into a larger combat network.

There are still major technical, ethical, and operational questions surrounding autonomous military systems. Human oversight, reliability, cybersecurity, electronic warfare, and determining exactly how much authority should be given to autonomous systems will remain critical issues.

Still, the June production decision represents an important milestone. Autonomous combat aircraft are moving from experimental prototypes toward something the U.S. military actually intends to manufacture and deploy at scale.

At ND.Builds, we follow developments like these because military technology often demonstrates something much larger about the direction of the technology industry. Artificial intelligence is moving beyond the screen and becoming connected to machines, vehicles, sensors, businesses, and physical infrastructure.

Your business probably does not need an autonomous fighter jet. But automation, artificial intelligence, smarter software, and connected digital systems are already becoming practical tools for everyday companies.

ND.Builds builds modern websites and digital systems designed for businesses that want to be ready for what technology does next.