Latest news with #XQ-67A
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Our First Look At The YFQ-42 ‘Fighter Drone' Collaborative Combat Aircraft
We now have our first actual look at General Atomics' YFQ-42A 'fighter drone' prototype. The YFQ-42A, as well as Anduril's YFQ-44A, are being developed under the first phase, or Increment 1, of the U.S. Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program, and both designs are expected to make their maiden flights later this year. Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force Gen. David Allvin shared the picture of the YFQ-42A seen at the top of this story on social media today. The Air Force had announced the start of ground testing of both Increment 1 CCA designs on May 1, at which time the first images of a Anduril's YFQ-44A were also released. 'THE WORLD's FIRST LOOK AT OUR NEW YFQ-42A!' Allvin wrote in an accompanying post on X. 'As the @DeptofDefense matches threats to capabilities under @SecDef's [Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's] leadership, Collaborative Combat Aircraft will prove not only cost-effective, but truly lethal…No doubts these uncrewed fighters will put our adversaries on notice!' THE WORLD's FIRST LOOK AT OUR NEW YFQ-42A! As the @DeptofDefense matches threats to capabilities under @SecDef's leadership, Collaborative Combat Aircraft will prove not only cost-effective, but truly lethal…No doubts these uncrewed fighters will put our adversaries on notice! — General David Allvin (@OfficialCSAF) May 19, 2025 'The YFQ-42A is an exciting next step for our company,' David Alexander, President of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., said in a separate statement. 'It reflects many years of partnership with the U.S. Air Force of advancing unmanned combat aviation for the United States and its allies around the world, and we're excited to begin ground testing and move to first flight.' What can be seen in the head-on view of the YFQ-42A we have now is largely in line with renderings and physical models that General Atomics has shown in the past. The design has some low-observable (stealthy) features and shares some broad similarities with past company designs like the Avenger. It is also notably less slender than Anduril's YFQ-44A, which could offer advantages and disadvantages. General Atomics has also previously confirmed that its CCA design is derived from the experimental XQ-67A drone originally developed for the Air Force's once-secretive Off-Board Sensing Station (OBSS) program. A core aspect of OBSS was a so-called 'genus/species' concept, involving a core 'genus' set of components from which multiple 'species' of differently configured drones could be crafted, lessons from which the Air Force has said are being incorporated broadly into the CCA program. General Atomics has been further proving that concept out via its Gambit family of drones, which all feature a common 'chassis' that incorporates landing gear, as well as key mission and flight control computer systems. The XQ-67A has been flying for more than a year now, offering General Atomics a valuable risk reduction asset for its CCA work, as well. Though partially obscured by the flight-test data probe, there is a notably different colored section on the bottom of the front of the nose with what looks to be a grill and an additional feature of some kind above it, the purpose of which is not immediately clear. Past renderings of the General Atomics CCA design have shown a trapezoidal window in the same general location, a feature typically associated with forward-facing electro-optical and/or infrared sensor systems. As TWZ has noted in the past, the position under the nose could be a likely location for an infrared search and track (IRST) sensor. IRSTs can spot stealthy targets and offer other benefits, and would align with the air-to-air combat role that is expected to be the main focus of the Increment 1 CCAs, at least initially. General Atomics has been separately using its stealthy Avenger drones to demonstrate potential air-to-air combat capabilities, including while equipped with podded IRST systems. Anduril's YFQ-44A also notably has what appears to be a forward-facing camera system prominently on top of its nose, which could, at least, be used to provide visual inputs for control and additional situational awareness during initial testing. General Atomics' YFQ-42A prototype could have a broadly similar system installed in its nose. What may be the doors for the YFQ-42A's ventral payload bay are also visible, along with the drone's tricycle landing gear. 'I think CCA can actually be, in some cases, a mobility aircraft,' Mike Atwood, vice president for Advanced Programs at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI), had said during a panel discussion at the Air & Space Forces Association's (AFA) 2025 Warfare Symposium in March. 'One of the reasons that GA chose to have an internal weapons bay was for carrying not just missiles and kinetics, but to do that logistics.' 'We showed up at these World War II leftover airfields. And we quickly realized these airfields are in really bad shape, really bad shape, and we started to really appreciate runway distance,' Atwood had also said at AFA's annual Warfare Symposium. 'It's hard to make a fast-moving aircraft use a lot less runway. And so what we realized is we needed a trailing-arm landing gear.' A trailing-arm landing gear arrangement helps ease the impact of landing, which in turn can help reduce wear and tear, something that is especially beneficial for operations from short and potentially rough fields. It can also similarly help with rough field takeoffs. The Air Force said that the Increment 1 CCAs are the first aircraft, crewed or uncrewed, to be developed from the ground up to align with its Agile Combat Employment (ACE) concepts of operations. ACE centers heavily on short-notice and otherwise irregular deployments, including to far-flung locations with limited infrastructure. You can read more about how the Air Force's CCA vision aligns with ACE here. As it stands now, the Air Force is still looking to acquire 1,000 CCAs, if not more, across a series of iterative development cycles. Service officials have previously said that between 100 and 150 Increment 1 CCAs could be acquired, but it remains unclear whether that fleet with consist of YFQ-42As, YFQ-44As, or a mix of both types. 'A competitive Increment 1 production decision is expected in fiscal year 2026,' which begins on October 1, 2025, the Air Force had said as part of the announcement about the start of ground testing at the beginning of the month. The Air Force is now in the process of finalizing requirements for Increment 2 of CCA, which are expected to be significantly different from those for Increment 1. In March, Air Force Maj. Gen. Joseph D. Kunkel, director of Force Design, Integration, and Wargaming and deputy chief of staff for Air Force Futures, indicated that the second phase of the program could call for designs that are both less complex and cheaper. More details are likely to continue to emerge about the Increment 1 CCA designs, as well as other plans for the program, as the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A progress through ground testing toward their first flights. Contact the author: joe@
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Yahoo
See the Anduril and General Atomics drones the US Air Force just marked as the first-ever uncrewed fighter jets
The Air Force designated the first two uncrewed aircraft as fighter jets, the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A. The prototypes were designed as part of the USAF's next-generation air dominance program. Dubbed "loyal wingmen," the combat aircraft are expected to bolster the Air Force's fleet. The US Air Force marked two drone prototypes as fighter jets for the first time, ushering in a new era of military aviation. General Atomics' XQ-67A combat drone was designated YFQ-42A, and Anduril Industries' aircraft was dubbed YFQ-44A. Y designates prototype, F for fighter, and Q means uncrewed, per USAF naming conventions. Powered by jet engines, collaborative combat aircraft, as the Air Force calls them, were designed to fight alongside crewed F-22s and F-35s as " loyal wingmen" and carry out missions alone or in small groups. The Air Force said they envision a single, crewed sixth-generation stealth fighter could control more drones using low-cost, less-sophisticated autonomous technology. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David W. Allvin announced the historic designation in a keynote address at the Air Force Association Warfare Symposium earlier this week. Though symbolic in nature, Allvin said granting the fighter designation to the two collaborative combat aircraft prototypes is "telling the world that we are leaning into a new chapter of aerial warfare." Bolstering the US fleet with uncrewed fighters The experimental autonomous weapon system was developed as part of the Air Force's Next-Generation Air Dominance program, its push to develop a sixth-generation fighter and create a hybrid crewed-autonomous fleet. However, the ambitious next-gen initiative has been plagued by ballooning costs and development delays, raising concerns about the program's sustainability and prioritization within the Pentagon's budget. The Air Force's fleet has shrunk over the last two decades to about 5,500 aircraft due to skyrocketing costs for developing and producing new aircraft. The service plans to buttress its existing airpower with CCAs, which would be cheaper to build and maintain. Airmen could be trained more virtually so the crewed airframes would have fewer flight hours, and the aircraft's AI-driven software would bolster the fleet without risking human pilots. The push to build the next-generation aircraft and aerial systems comes amid China's rapid build-up of its air force. Though China has less advanced systems compared to the US, the country is heavily investing in evolving its fleet and fortifying its airfields in the Indo-Pacific, threatening US airpower in the region. A costly bid for next-gen aircraft Former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall previously said CCAs would cost a third of the price of crewed aircraft, estimating that one CCA would cost between $25-$30 million during a budget meeting with the House Appropriations Committee last April. During a panel at the Air, Space & Cyber Conference last September, defense experts said CCAs could cost less than $1,200 per pound, whereas crewed fighters and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft typically cost between $4,000 and $6,000 per pound. "That's how you get the affordability, at the same time that you get the survivability," Robert Winkler, vice president of corporate development and national security programs at Kratos Defense, said during the conference. Winkler added that while the airframe itself is affordable, the same can't be said about the drone's "exquisite" sensors, radars, and electro-optical cameras. "Obviously, you don't want to have these aircraft get out there and just get all shot down," Winkler said. "And obviously, you don't want them to be 'silver bullets,' where they cost so much that you can't afford to lose them, so there is a right balance." The Air Force aims to acquire 1,000 CCAs to use two for each of 500 advanced fighters, requesting $557.1 million from Congress to continue researching and developing the CCAs. Congress instead suggested cutting the CCA funds from the $3.3 billion budget allocated to its NGAD program in 2025 after a contract for its sixth-gen platform was paused, though a final decision on the CCA budget has yet to be made. The Air Force awarded initial contracts to five defense contractors — Anduril, Boeing, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman — to design a CCA concept aircraft. Last year, Anduril and General Atomics were selected to produce prototypes for the first developmental phase of the program. The Air Force plans to order more than 100 drones in the next five years, though the service hasn't ruled out the other companies to develop CCAs in future phases of the program. According to the Congressional Research Service, preliminary work has already begun for the second phase of the CCA as the Air Force explores working with domestic and international manufacturers to develop a more complicated platform that incorporates stealth technology. Anduril's Fury The Fury, a large uncrewed aircraft, was developed by Blue Force Technologies, a North Carolina-based aerospace company that was acquired by Anduril in September 2023. Powered by a single turbofan engine, the Fury was designed to reach speeds of over 650 miles per hour and operate at altitudes of up to 50,000 feet. Pending the aircraft's loadout, it can also tolerate thrusts of up to nine times the force of gravity at a ceiling of around 20,000 feet. The American defense technology company said it chose to invest in the Fury and turn it into a "high-performance, multi-mission" fighter recently designated as the YFQ-44A. Anduril also said it plans to integrate its Lattice system, an open software program that uses AI to integrate data from multiple sensors, to enable the drone for command and control. General Atomics' XQ67-A The CCA concept designed by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems is based on its existing XQ-67A platform, which the company said focuses on "flexibility, affordability, and mission effectiveness. " The XQ-67A primarily functions as an autonomous sensor platform with a modular design that can be adapted to each mission. The aircraft's specific dimensions have not been publicly disclosed, but its design resembles other combat uncrewed aerial vehicles, such as the MQ-25A Stingray and XQ-58A Valkyrie. The YFQ-42A will be designed to "integrate seamlessly" with crewed jets, providing fighter capacity "at a lower cost and on a threat-relevant timeline," according to a company press release. "These aircraft represent an unrivaled history of capable, dependable uncrewed platforms that meet the needs of America's warfighters and point the way to a significant new era for airpower," General Atomics said in a statement. Read the original article on Business Insider
