The U.S. Air Force announced designations for the Anduril and General Atomics Collaborative Combat Aircraft Increment 1 prototypes (U.S. Air Force)
The U.S. Air Force has bestowed “mission design series” (MDS) designations on its two Increment 1 Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) prototypes.
The General Atomics Gambit offering is the YFQ-42A and Anduril Industries‘ Fury is the YFQ-44A, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Allvin told the Air and Space Forces’ Warfare Symposium in Aurora, Colo. on March 3. “Y” signifies prototype aircraft, “F” fighter/air-to-air mission, and “Q” a drone.
First flights are on track for this summer, Allvin said.
David Alexander, the president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. (GA-ASI), said in a statement that the “YFQ-42A continues a long and distinguished history for GA-ASI that dates back to the 1990s and the debut of the RQ-1 Predator, which later changed to MQ-1 Predator.”
“The YFQ-42A designation follows the Air Force’s decision to designate GA-ASI’s highly common predecessor aircraft as the XQ-67A Off-Board Sensing Station [OBSS],” GA-ASI said. “The XQ-67A was ordered by the Air Force Research Lab to support the development of concepts necessary to implement the vision for CCA.”
OBSS had its first flight in February last year, GA-ASI said, and the Air Force decided to narrow the CCA Increment 1 field to GA-ASI and Anduril last April, as the service moves to a possible competitive production decision on CCA Increment 1 in fiscal 2026.
“This MDS represents the first aircraft type of a YFQ designation, signaling a new era of uncrewed fighter aircraft,” Jason Levin, Anduril’s senior vice president of engineering, said in a statement. “It reinforces what we already knew. Our CCA is a high performance aircraft designed specifically for the air superiority mission, acting as a force multiplier for crewed aircraft within the real constraints of cost and time.”