Brontanax
BAE Systems' first sovereign uncrewed Collaborative Combat Aircraft, directed from a Typhoon cockpit.
Last refreshed: 24 July 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Britain has a CCA prototype and a 2027 clock; can it catch America's head start?
Timeline for Brontanax
Unveiled as Britain's first sovereign Collaborative Combat Aircraft
Drones: Industry & Defence: Britain unveils its first sovereign combat droneBackground
BAE Systems unveiled Brontanax, Britain's first sovereign uncrewed Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), at the Farnborough International Airshow on 22 July 2026. It is built to fly and fight alongside crewed jets, directed from the cockpit of a Typhoon for electronic warfare and precision strike tasks.
Sized like a Hawk trainer, Brontanax is built at BAE's Warton site in Lancashire by more than 500 staff and 75 partner firms, under the in-house FalconWorks advanced-projects Arm. A prototype is targeted to fly against the 300 million pound StormFighter programme, the first hardware to sit against that funding line within Britain's 5bn pound Defence Investment Plan.
The unveiling puts Britain in the CCA race a step behind Washington, where the US Air Force awarded CCA production to Anduril and General Atomics in June 2026. Brontanax sits above the Apache loyal-wingman work of Project NYX in the UK's emerging autonomy hierarchy.
