Capture Guidance

Anduril

FQ-44A Collaborative Combat Aircraft Source

The U.S. Air Force selected Anduril and General Atomics to build the first Collaborative Combat Aircraft air vehicles, while Anduril, Shield AI, and RTX subsidiary Collins Aerospace remain in a separate autonomy software competition. The service is requesting roughly $1.4 billion for development and nearly $1 billion for procurement in fiscal 2027, and Air Force acquisition officials tied source selection to schedule, cost, performance, and delivery of 150-plus aircraft by the end of the decade. Anduril now holds both an FQ-44A production role and an autonomy lane, giving the company a rare chance to bind airframe, mission software, manufacturing, and sustainment into a repeatable Air Force buying model.

Anduril’s near-term risk is losing architectural control inside a program it has already won on hardware. The Air Force separated the air vehicle award from the autonomy award and kept backup software vendors available for licensing changes, so the FQ-44A could enter production while the mission-behavior layer, upgrade cadence, and data-rights economics remain contestable. Anduril should fund an architecture-control team with authority across Fury production, Lattice integration, flight-test data, autonomy certification, government interfaces, and sustainment planning. That team should deliver a government-ready package that shows how FQ-44A mission software can be certified, updated, trained, and maintained across squadrons without forcing the Air Force into a fragile vendor stack.

General Atomics protects the other air-vehicle lane with the FQ-42A, while Shield AI and Collins Aerospace compete directly for the autonomy layer that could define fleet behavior, training loads, and software revenue. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman lost the first hardware source selection but remain relevant through future increments, backup software channels, and integration work around crewed platforms. Shield AI and Collins can weaken Anduril’s long-term economics if the Air Force treats autonomy as the portable value layer and the FQ-44A as one production airframe among several. Anduril needs test evidence that its autonomy stack reduces pilot workload, accelerates mission rehearsal, supports mixed-fleet operations, and gives the Air Force a manageable upgrade process during the six-month performance periods.

Anduril should add a dedicated CCA category-shaping and sustainment capture line that joins flight-test evidence, autonomy licensing, training devices, maintenance concepts, and allied adoption into one executive-managed campaign. The company can protect five-year revenue by making the Air Force evaluation criteria measure operational software refresh, deployable maintenance, sortie generation, and mission-data reuse across FQ-44A units. Export work should stay tied to Air Force-approved configurations and partner-force training needs, since allied demand will follow U.S. fielding confidence before separate national programs mature. Anduril should fund the architecture-control team and sustainment capture line before the next autonomy downselect, locking FQ-44A production to the software, training, and support layers that can survive later air-vehicle competitions.