USAF tests Anduril YFQ‑44A autonomy

The U.S. Air Force has started putting Anduril’s YFQ-44A combat drone in warfighters’ hands, not just engineers’, during experimental sorties at Edwards Air Force Base. (af.mil) Air Combat Command said on April 16 that its Experimental Operations Unit ran the exercise with the YFQ-44A alongside the 412th Test Wing, using operator-led sorties to build tactics and logistics procedures for future deployments. (af.mil) Anduril said Air Force personnel handled end-to-end operations during the event, including launching, recovering, and turning the aircraft daily. The company said the testing began less than two years after its prototype contract award and six months after the YFQ-44A’s first semi-autonomous flight. (anduril.com, anduril.com) A collaborative combat aircraft is an uncrewed fighter designed to fly with piloted jets, adding sensors, weapons, or decoys without putting another pilot in the cockpit. The Air Force says the YFQ-44A and General Atomics’ YFQ-42A are its two Increment 1 prototypes. (af.mil) The Air Force has been moving the program from lab work toward operations in steps. It began ground testing of the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A in May 2025, then gave both aircraft fighter-style designations in March 2025, calling them the first in a new generation of uncrewed fighters. (acc.af.mil, af.mil) This round of testing centered on the software loop around the aircraft as much as the aircraft itself. Jane’s reported that operators uploaded mission plans, initiated autonomous taxi and takeoff, retasked the jet in flight, and ingested post-flight data through Anduril’s Menace-T command-and-control system. (janes.com) That matches the Air Force’s stated goal for the Experimental Operations Unit: put operators at the center early, write the first tactics and procedures, and shorten the path from prototype to fielded capability. Lt. Col. Matthew Jensen said every sortie in the April exercise was generated and flown by a warfighter rather than an engineer or test pilot. (af.mil) The service is also testing how these aircraft would be sustained away from large main bases. Air Force statements described the exercise as work on deploying and sustaining collaborative combat aircraft in a contested environment, and outside reporting said the YFQ-44A flew from Edwards back to Anduril’s Southern California test site during the event. (af.mil, twz.com) The Air Force has said it wants an operational collaborative combat aircraft capability by the end of the decade, with a readiness unit planned for Beale Air Force Base in California. This week’s YFQ-44A exercise shows what that timeline looks like in practice: fewer demonstrations for executives, more sorties run by the people expected to use the aircraft. (anduril.com, acc.af.mil)