NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — The U.S. Air Force has officially named its first Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) as the FQ-42 Vengeance and FQ-44 Fury, marking a new stage in the service’s effort to field semi-autonomous uncrewed aircraft alongside crewed fighters.
Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink announced the names on September 14 during the Air & Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference. He also outlined plans to have 500 CCAs operational by 2032, with a longer-term objective of approximately 1,000 aircraft.
The aircraft are intended to operate alongside crewed platforms, including the F-35 and the future F-47, providing additional sensors, weapons and electronic warfare capabilities without requiring another pilot in the air.
Production and Fleet Expansion
The Air Force awarded production contracts to General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Anduril Industries in June 2026 for Increment 1 CCAs. The companies are now manufacturing the aircraft, with the first production examples already beginning to come off their respective production lines. The contracts are intended to support the delivery of more than 150 combat-capable aircraft by the end of the decade.
The service has also requested nearly $1 billion in fiscal year 2027 funding to begin Increment 1 procurement and support the production effort.
The CCA program is being developed around a human-machine teaming concept. The aircraft are semi-autonomous, allowing onboard systems to perform functions while human operators remain responsible for higher-level mission decisions.
FQ-42 Vengeance and FQ-44 Fury
The two aircraft previously carried the prototype designations YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A.
The FQ-42 Vengeance, developed by General Atomics, comes from the company’s earlier CCA development work, including the XQ-67A program.
The FQ-44 Fury, developed by Anduril, is based on the Fury design that originated with Blue Force Technologies, which Anduril acquired in 2023.
The Air Force's official announcement confirmed the two names as part of the service’s CCA program.
Testing at Creech Air Force Base
The naming announcement follows operational testing conducted at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada, in July 2026.
During the exercise, the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft Experimental Operations Unit operated both aircraft in a realistic operational environment and integrated them with crewed aircraft. The testing focused on developing tactics, techniques and procedures for using CCAs in more austere operating locations.
Air Force personnel also tested the ground-support requirements for the aircraft. A YFQ-44A Fury was refueled and prepared for additional operations, while crews loaded inert AIM-120 air-to-air missiles during the exercise. The Air Force said the activity helped evaluate the reduced logistical requirements needed to operate CCAs from remote and forward locations.
Members of the Royal Netherlands Air and Space Force also observed the exercise. The United States and the Netherlands are working on platform-agnostic, open-architecture, semi-autonomous capabilities intended to support data sharing and interoperability during combined operations.
The Air Force is continuing flight testing, operational experimentation and autonomy development as it prepares to move the FQ-42 and FQ-44 from testing toward operational service. The planned expansion to 500 aircraft by 2032 and approximately 1,000 in the longer term represents a major increase in the number of uncrewed aircraft the service intends to operate alongside its crewed fighter fleet.
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