Shield AI to Provide Autonomy for US Air Force Combat Aircraft
Shield AI has been selected as a mission autonomy provider for the U.S. Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. The company's Hivemind autonomy software will be integrated into Anduril's Fury aircraft. The selection marks a significant step in deploying AI for advanced military aviation.
- The Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program plans to acquire at least 1,000 uncrewed aircraft, intending to pair two CCAs with each of the 200 Next-Generation Air Dominance platforms and 300 F-35s. The Air Force has budgeted over $6 billion for the CCA program and related efforts over the next five years. - Shield AI's Hivemind software acts as an AI pilot, enabling aircraft to make decisions and operate without GPS, communications, or a human operator. It has been tested on multiple aircraft, including the F-16, and is designed to be platform-agnostic, allowing for rapid integration into new systems. - The Anduril Fury, designated YFQ-44A by the Air Force, is a high-performance unmanned aircraft capable of reaching speeds of Mach 0.95 and altitudes of 50,000 feet. It is constructed primarily from carbon fiber and is designed for "affordable mass," enabling commanders to take greater risks with the platform. - The CCA program initially awarded contracts to five companies: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Anduril, and General Atomics. The field was later narrowed to Anduril and General Atomics to build production-representative test articles for the first increment of the program. - The Air Force is using a government-owned Autonomy Government Reference Architecture (A-GRA) for the CCA program, which decouples the mission software from the aircraft hardware. This open-architecture approach is intended to prevent "vendor lock" and allow for rapid integration of new software and algorithms from a variety of companies. - Alongside Shield AI providing autonomy for Anduril's YFQ-44A, defense giant RTX has been selected to supply its autonomy software for General Atomics' YFQ-42A platform, the other aircraft in the final phase of the CCA competition. - Shield AI, founded in 2015, has a valuation of approximately $5.3 billion as of a March 2025 funding round. The company has received numerous government contracts, including a potential $60 million STRATFI contract with the Air Force Special Operations Command.
