Ohio-built pilotless combat aircraft fires first missile in test

Ohio defense contractor Anduril Industries is celebrating the first missile fire test from its YFQ-44A "Collaborative Combat Aircraft" drone over a California Air Force base.

"We executed the first weapons shot from YFQ-44A, an important milestone in turning CCA into an operational capability," Mark Shushnar, Anduril vice president of autonomous airpower, said in a statement Wednesday, July 15. "This was more than a simple weapons release test. It demonstrated an end-to-end, beyond-line-of-sight strike against a simulated target."

Anduril's Ohio-made YFQ-44A aircraft took off from Edwards Air Force Base, its Lattice software latched on to a target track, and an operator tasked the aircraft to engage the target, Shushnar said.

The YFQ-44A fired an AIM-120 air-to-air missile as instructed, he said.

"We're one step closer to getting CCA to the warfighter with this live fire test," Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach said on the social media site X Wednesday.

Last month, the Air Force awarded CCA production contracts to both Anduril and General Atomics to move ahead with their versions of the pilotless CCA craft.

Anduril started production of its autonomous "Fury" Collaborative Combat drones at its "Arsenal 1" plant in Pickaway County in March.

"In its current configuration, FQ-44 has the ferry range necessary to deploy anywhere in the world," Shushnar wrote in his blog last month. "It can take off and land on a short field. It has a combat radius that significantly exceeds the combat radius for current crewed fighters, and the speed to keep up. It has the payload capacity required to make a real impact on the battlefield. And, across hundreds of hours with Air Force experts and thousands of simulations, we have demonstrated that FQ-44 will do more than just survive the high-end fight: it will excel."

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