The US Air Force awarded its first funded production contracts for the Collaborative Combat Aircraft programme on 17 June 2026, picking Anduril (airframe designation FQ-44A) and General Atomics (FQ-42A)1. A Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCA, is an autonomous drone wingman built to fly alongside crewed fighters. A fresh source selection re-scored all five original competitors, and Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, three of the four largest US defence contractors, all bid and none was selected.
This is the first time production money, rather than another prototype study, has sat behind the airframe. The FY2027 request carries about $1.4 billion for development and $1 billion for procurement, against a target of more than 150 aircraft at under $30 million each2. That unit ceiling is roughly a third of an F-35A at about $82.5 million, so the Air Force can field a whole wingman fleet for the per-airframe cost of a far smaller crewed buy.
The heritage-prime oligopoly expected to inherit this franchise. The Defence Autonomous Warfare Group budget line had already jumped to $54.6 billion in a single cycle, and the institutions that won are not the ones that built the last three generations of fighters. The fair reading is continuity rather than upset: General Atomics has flown the Reaper for thirty years, and Anduril had swept counter-drone, CCA prototyping and Golden Dome before this award. The primes were not edged out in a fly-off. They were removed from production.
What remains unresolved is money rather than capability. Anduril still projects a $1.2 billion annual loss with profit deferred to 2030, and the FY2027 figures are a request awaiting congressional appropriation. The contract validates the manufacturing-rate strategy without yet validating the economics behind it.
