‘Fighter Drone’ Designations Officially Assigned To Collaborative Combat Aircraft By USAF

The U.S. Air Force has designated the drones that General Atomics and Anduril are currently developing as part of the first phase, or Increment 1, of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program as the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A, respectively. These appear to be the U.S. military’s first ever ‘fighter drone’ designations. The Increment 1 CCAs are expected to work closely together with crewed combat jets primarily in the air-to-air combat role, at least initially.

Chief of Staff of the Air Force Gen. David Allvin announced the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A during a keynote address at the Air & Space Forces Association’s 2025 Warfare Symposium this evening, at which TWZ is in attendance. In the U.S. military-wide designation system for aircraft and missiles “F” stands for “fighter” and “Q” stands for drone. The “Y” at the front indicates a prototype design.

A picture shown during Gen. Allvin’s keynote of a model of General Atomics’ CCA design with the YFQ-42A designation. USAF

A picture of a model of Anduril CCA design along with the YFQ-44A designation that also accompanied Allvin’s keynote. USAF

Allvin did not make any mention of official nicknames to go along with the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A designations. Anduril’s internal name for its design is Fury. General Atomics does not appear to have given its CCA design a name, at least publicly.

Interestingly, Blue Force Technologies, the company that originally started the development of Fury, displayed a test article with a notional YFQ-XX marking years ago. Anduril acquired Blue Force Technologies in 2023, and you read more about the story of how Fury came to be in this past in-depth TWZ feature.

A view of Blue Force Technologies’ booth at a past iteration of the Air & Space Forces Association’s main annual conference in Washington, D.C., showing a Fury nose section with the notional YFQ-XX nomenclature written on the side. A rendering behind also shows the drone armed with an AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile. Andrew Van Timmeren/LinkedIn

“Today, the Air Force announced the mission design series designation for Anduril’s CCA prototype: YFQ-44A,” Dr. Jason Levin, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Anduril Industries, said in a statement. “Together, in close partnership with the Air Force, we are pioneering a new generation of semi-autonomous fighter aircraft that is fundamentally transforming air dominance by delivering highly capable, mass-producible, more affordable, and more autonomous aircraft by the end of the decade.”

The designation “represents the first aircraft type of a YFQ designation, signaling a new era of uncrewed fighter aircraft,” Levin added. “It reinforces what we already knew: our CCA is a high performance aircraft designed specifically for the air superiority mission, acting as a force multiplier for crewed aircraft within the real constraints of cost and time.”

TWZ has also reached out to General Atomics for comment.

As it stands now, the Air Force is looking to buy at least between 100 and 150 Increment 1 CCAs. In 2024, the service selected General Atomics and Anduril to proceed in what has ostensibly been a competition for the first batch of CCAs – Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman had also submitted designs – but it remains unclear whether it will ultimately acquire YFQ-42As, YFQ-44As, or a mix of both. As already noted, the primary mission of the first tranche of CCAs will be acting as flying ‘missile trucks’ supporting crewed combat jets, in line with the new FQ designations, at least to start. Electronic warfare and Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions, as well as the ability to use the drones more indecently on their own missions, have also been discussed.

Additional views of models of General Atomics CCA design, at top, and Anduril’s Fury, below. General Atomics/Jamie Hunter

The Air Force is also in the process of refining requirements for additional drones as part of Increment 2 of the CCA program. The CCAs in the second tranche are expected to be more expensive than those in the first, though the exact capability mix they might have and what missions they might be tailored for are still unknown. The service has said in the past that it could acquire as many as 1,000 CCAs, or more, in total.

The Air Force is very much still exploring how it will incorporate CCAs into its concepts of operations and overall force structure, but Gen. Allvin and other service officials consistently say they expect the drones have a transformative impact.

“We’re looking at different ways to execute the same mission. We’re going beyond just single platforms equal single things,” Allvin said in his keynote tonight. “Maybe there’s different ways to provide combat effects, understanding what that is, embracing and leaning into human machine teaming, understanding what autonomy can actually do for us, knowing that’s going to be a part of our future.”

“And now we have two prototypes of Collaborative Combat Aircraft that were on paper less than a couple of years ago,” the Air Force’s top officer continued. “They’re going to be ready to fly this summer. … we are leaning into a new chapter of aerial warfare.”

Whatever the Air Force’s initial CCA force looks like in the end, what have now been dubbed the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A look set to have historic impact on how the service fights in the future.

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