Installed in the nose of a missile or bomb, the seeker locates the target and guides the weapon toward it. Seekers are among the most expensive parts of a guided weapon, and Boeing’s argument is that their cost is what limits how many the military can buy.

Boeing’s Ultra Low-Cost Seeker, or ULCS, is an active seeker, meaning it emits its own radar signal rather than relying on one from an aircraft or a ground station. Boeing built it largely from commercial parts adapted for military use, and it is still in development.

The company said it is looking at using the ULCS in its air and missile defense interceptors, its guided bombs and its cruise missiles, because its design allows for reuse across all three rather than requiring a different seeker for each weapon.

Boeing said the seeker is designed for strikes from the air, land or at sea, in any weather and against moving targets. The company ran several tests on the ULCS earlier this summer.

Engineers checked the sensor design in an anechoic chamber, which absorbs stray signal reflections. The seeker also flew aboard a Beechcraft 1900 over land and water, where Boeing said it found and tracked targets as expected.

At Spaceport America in New Mexico, the seeker tracked a passing drone from a fixed position on the ground. Boeing then mounted it on a rocket standing in for a missile and launched it at a second drone carrying a reflector, which bounced radar back as a full-size target would. Boeing said the seeker survived the acceleration and vibration of every test, and detected and tracked its targets each time.

Reuse across weapons is the major selling point, according to Boeing.

“We are developing ULCS with the goal of sharing a common sensor architecture across several of our programs,” said Bob Ciesla, vice president of Boeing Precision Engagement Systems. He said the seeker is modular and built to an open standard so Boeing can fit it to different weapons and change it later without redesigning it.

Boeing already builds seekers for other weapons, some of them for competitors. The company makes the active radar seeker for the Lockheed Martin PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement interceptor and said it drew on that work for ULCS while aiming to build something cheaper for use against less sophisticated threats.

Steve Wright, Boeing’s senior manager for weapon sensors and advanced guidance, said work remains to be done.

“We still have more work to do, but the rapid testing our teams have completed prove[s] that this capability is real and will fundamentally change how we look at seeker affordability across our programs,” he said.

Boeing said its teams are studying the test data and using the results to shape the next round of work, including several flight tests in 2027 that will attempt to more closely replicate real-world scenarios.

Boeing is not alone in its attempts to exploit modularity. On Aug. 10, Lockheed Martin announced Strigo, a line of radio-frequency sensors, missile datalinks and seeker technologies built around the same modular premise, designed to serve a variety of weapons.

Boeing did not say whether its ULCS is being funded internally or attached to any existing funded weapons program. Nor did it say just how ultra-low the cost of its new seeker will be.

The airlifter, tail number 01-0194, assigned to the 445th Airlift Wing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, was parked overnight at Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport in Texas on March 4, 2025, when severe storms and microbursts of up to 80 mph sent two private Bombardier Challenger jets careening into it.

Video shot that morning showed one of the business jets come to rest beneath the C-17’s wing. The same storm system damaged numerous aircraft at airports across the metroplex.

The collision damaged the C-17’s left-side door, fuselage and nose. The crew flew it home with a Boeing-qualified and Air Force-approved temporary nose panel and landing gear down.

Back in Ohio, maintainers repaired the door and fuselage but determined the left nose panel had to be replaced, which is where the job stalled.

Boeing was unable to find a vendor willing to build tooling for a single nose panel, according to the Air Force. After an unsuccessful repair attempt, the jet was looking at a year in storage followed by another year of repair work, sidelining one of only nine C-17s the wing counts as mission-essential.

The wing turned to the Air Force Rapid Sustainment Office (RSO), a Life Cycle Management Center division at Wright-Patterson that hunts for ways to fabricate parts the supply chain can’t deliver.

Engineers there deemed the panel a good candidate for incremental sheet forming, or ISF, in which a robot presses a flat metal sheet into shape a little at a time. Because the machine follows a digital path rather than a mold, tooling is unnecessary.

Working with the University of Dayton Research Institute, the team began production in January 2026. Boeing, along with maintainers from the wing, installed the finished panel in July, and 01-0194 took to the skies again July 30, nearly 17 months after the storm.

“This is a tremendous win for our maintenance group,” Col. Karen Gharst, the 445th Maintenance Group commander, said in a statement. “Using the ISF technology to rapidly produce an otherwise unobtainable part allowed us to avoid a prolonged work stoppage.”

The event marks the first incrementally formed part to fly on an Air Force aircraft.

Boeing closed the C-17 line in 2015, and the Air Force expects to fly the fleet into the 2070s, meaning this may not be the last time the service has to hunt for parts nobody makes anymore.

The RSO is currently working on parts for a KC-135 and an F-15.

Boeing’s BSU-111/B Payload Delivery Unit is a wing-and-turbojet engine kit that converts a 500-pound Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) into a long-range JDAM (JDAM LR) dubbed the GBU-75. The result is a gravity bomb with the reach of a cruise missile.

Boeing said it has spent nearly $100 million of its own money on the program.

“Scaling production of the GBU-75 will provide the fleet with an affordable, sustainable solution designed to eliminate long-range land and sea-based threats to U.S. and international forces,” said Bob Ciesla, vice president of Boeing Precision Engagement Systems.

The BSU-111/B wing-and-engine kit is the latest modification to the JDAM family, which has previously seen the gravity bomb receive a tail kit that steered it roughly 15 nautical miles and a wing kit that further stretched that distance to 40.

The Kratos-designed TDI-J85 engine pushes that past 300.

The JDAM LR’s capabilities go beyond land strikes. The QuickStrike Long Range mining variant pairs it with a bomb carrying a ship-tracking sensor. Boeing has shown concepts loading large numbers onto Air Force bombers, though no Air Force buy has been announced.

The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, buys JDAM for both the Air Force and U.S. Navy. The first GBU-75s are bound for the Navy.

The Navy demonstrated the weapon back in April, when Super Hornets released two JDAM LRs over the Point Mugu Sea Range off California.

The April 1 round separated cleanly, fired up its engine and flew 34 minutes before landing within meters of its target. The April 3 round added altitude changes and maneuvering. Each covered roughly 200 nautical miles.

When announcing those tests in April, Capt. Sarah Abbott, the Navy’s Precision Strike Weapons program manager, emphasized the need to give the fleet’s JDAMs greater standoff range.

“As Naval Air Forces in theater continue to rely heavily on JDAM systems, the program recognizes a critical need to provide the fleet with greater standoff range,” she said. “This new capability allows pilots to engage targets from significantly safer distances, maintaining a tactical advantage in contested environments.”

Reusing existing infrastructure is a key aspect of the program’s appeal.

Navy budget documents describe JDAM LR as a modification to the baseline program, built on the existing production line and guidance hardware. Any jet that can drop a conventional JDAM can carry the new variant without modification, according to Boeing’s release.

The award, which had not appeared in the Pentagon’s daily contract announcements as of Aug. 5, is an undefinitized action, meaning Boeing began work before the two sides agreed on a price. The Government Accountability Office has long called these contracts risky because contractors are reimbursed for allowable costs, regardless.

Boeing’s release did not say how many GBU-75s the contract buys, how much they cost or when deliveries begin.

Crews loaded concrete-filled 500-pound BDU-50s and 2,000-pound BDU-56s, built to the size and weight of the real thing, onto the Eagle II’s hardpoints. Over 10 missions, the wing dropped 36 practice bombs, twenty-four 500-pounders and twelve 2,000-pounders, achieving satisfactory scores with zero safety incidents.

Test crews at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, previously dropped bombs from an F-15EX under the 85th Test and Evaluation Squadron, but this is the first time an operational squadron has done so.

The training comes as the 142nd prepares to swap its F-15C Eagles, designed strictly for air-to-air combat, for the multi-role F-15EX. The wing received the Air Force’s first combat-ready Eagle II in June 2024, and is slated to receive 17 more.

Three of the wing’s pilots had prior air-to-ground experience, and all three had been through a nine-month course on the science of dropping bombs and associated tactics. They constructed a condensed version of that course focusing on the basics of bombing and began training the rest of the wing’s pilots.

“The team as a whole outperformed any expectations that we held and went above and beyond, and I think the results ended up speaking for themselves,” said Maj. Jesse Loya, one of the three pilots who developed the training program.

Earlier this year, members of the bomb load crew went to Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, to become certified on bomb loading using F-15E Strike Eagles. Once certified, they returned home and trained the loaders who went to Idaho.

The Air Force has said its growing F-15EX fleet will eventually replace aging F-15E Strike Eagles.

“The speed at which this wing established a completely new capability is a testament to our airmen,” said Col. Joshua Hovanas, commander of the 142nd Operations Group. “This is the first milestone on our path to becoming a premier multi-role fighter squadron.”

The wing returns to Nellis at the end of August to train with live bombs.

Introduced Monday as H.R. 9780 by Rep. Abe Hamadeh, R-Ariz., the BRRRRT Act (Bolstering Recognition, Resurgence, Retention, and Remembrance of the Thunderbolt) gets its name from the bone-rattling “BRRRRT!” sound the jet’s 30mm Gatling gun makes when fired.

Rep. Don Davis, D-N.C., is co-leading the bill. He and Hamadeh both sit on the Armed Services subcommittee that writes fighter force-structure policy, with Davis as the committee’s vice ranking member. Four Republicans also signed on as original cosponsors, including members from Georgia and Missouri, home to the last two A-10 bases.

The bill comes as the Air Force has ramped up A-10 divestment yet has not identified the aircraft that can, and will, take on the close air support and combat search and rescue missions the Warthog has assumed for decades. The service says those roles will be filled by some combination of platforms like the F-35A, F-15E and F-16.

“The A-10 has repeatedly proven itself on the battlefield, saving American lives and delivering unmatched close air support when our troops need it most,” Hamadeh said in a statement announcing the bill. “The BRRRRT Act ensures we do not retire a proven weapons system before a certified replacement exists.”

This bill is the latest move in a lengthy tug-of-war between the Air Force and lawmakers.

The Air Force began fiscal 2026 with 162 Warthogs and tried to retire them all. Congress refused, setting a floor of 103.

Following heavy A-10 involvement in Iran, including the recovery of downed F-15E aircrew, the service announced it would keep squadrons flying at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, and Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, into 2029 and 2030, roughly 54 jets across three squadrons.

Reaching 126 aircraft would mean halting retirements already scheduled and towing aircraft back out of the boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona.

The bill gives the Air Force 90 days after enactment to explain how it will restore depot work, training, sustainment and flight testing, programs that were all cut in anticipation of retiring the fleet.

The depot line at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, closed in February. The last class of new Warthog pilots graduated in April, and the Weapons School course at Nellis is winding down.

Under the bill, retiring more A-10s would become harder, as well. The defense secretary would first have to certify that a replacement is fielded and fully operational, and get that in writing from the Army secretary, the Marine Corps commandant and the head of U.S. Special Operations Command. A mission does not count as replaced, the bill says, if another aircraft picks it up as a secondary tasking.

Should the bill fail to pass, the terms could find their way into the annual defense authorization act instead, which is how the 103-jet floor came to be. Hamadeh took that route in June, placing two A-10 provisions in the House bill that reappear in the BRRRRT Act.

Editor’s note: At the time of publication, the text of H.R. 9780 had not been made public. Details of the bill are based on the July 13 Legislative Counsel draft, provided to Defense News.

The deals fall under the U.S. Air Force’s Family of Affordable Mass Missiles program, or FAMM. The Defense Department said it reached agreements with Anduril for its Barracuda-500, CoAspire for its Rapidly Adaptable Affordable Cruise Missile and Zone 5 Technologies for its Rusty Dagger.

The move boils down to cost-effectiveness. The Air Force is betting that low-cost weapons can do the work the service once reserved for far more expensive munitions.

Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles, designed to be fired at heavily defended targets from a safe distance, cost more than $1.3 million apiece. The service wants its new missiles for a fraction of that, closer to $218,000 per round, cheap enough to shoot many for less than it once cost to shoot one.

The FAMM program splits into a lugged variant carried by fighters and bombers (FAMM-L) and a palletized variant dropped from airlifters (FAMM-P), both with ranges of 250 to 500 miles.

Anduril said its framework agreement runs seven years, with deliveries starting in 2027. According to the company, the Air Force intends to buy up to 8,000 FAMM rounds a year across both variants and all the competing vendors.

The deals are framework agreements, not orders for missiles. They set the terms and promise the companies steady business, giving them a reason to invest in bigger production lines.

The Defense Department said the missiles still have to complete testing and qualification, and that the actual buys depend on Congress approving the multiyear deals the Pentagon is seeking.

Anduril pitched its missile as proof that cheaper weapons can be built at volume.

“Barracuda-500 is specifically designed to expand the United States’ stand-off strike capability,” Anduril said in its release. “By augmenting existing critical munitions inventories with a more affordable, producible, and flexible option, Anduril is enhancing America’s arsenal of munitions, ensuring that we have the capability required to deter our adversaries.”

To keep the vendors competing, the Pentagon is splitting the work among all qualified suppliers under firm fixed-price terms with a minimum order floor, and companies that beat their production schedules become eligible for additional orders.

Budget projections call for 28,000 missiles across all vendors over five years for $12.6 billion, reaching 7,990 rounds in the final year.

The agreements stem from the Acquisition Transformation Strategy, the Pentagon’s push under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to buy weapons faster and from nontraditional suppliers.

Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Michael P. Duffey said the FAMM deals showed the department “expanding the defense industrial base, fielding capabilities faster, and attracting private investment.”

Zone 5 runs its U.S. operation from California but was acquired in June by Kongsberg, a Norwegian defense company. Anduril and CoAspire are based in California and Virginia, respectively.

The agreement comes on the heels of a May announcement that tapped the same three companies, along with Leidos, for the Army-led Low-Cost Containerized Missiles program, a parallel push for ground-launched affordable missiles.

The crash is the first time an OA-1K has been destroyed since the missionized aircraft entered service in April 2025.

The board determined the pilot mistakenly engaged the fuel shutoff valve, normally reserved for emergencies, when the instructor told him to open the nearby fuselage fuel tank valve, a routine check crews run on nearly every flight.

The mistake “isolated the fuel supply from the aircraft firewall, starving the engine of fuel in flight,” the report said.

No one was hurt, but the aircraft was destroyed, with damage estimated at $17.9 million.

The report points to a key difference between the Block-0 and Block-1 variants as a likely source of the confusion.

Photos included in the report show the red fuel shutoff valve handle and the silver fuselage fuel tank valve lever positioned about five inches apart on the front-left side of the cockpit.

A photo taken from the pilot’s front-seat vantage point in the Block-1 variant shows the silver fuselage fuel tank valve partly hidden by the inboard power lever, while the red emergency shutoff handle is in clear view.

Of the student’s 37.3 flight hours in the aircraft, 34.1 were in the Block-0 trainer variant, which has a significantly smaller power lever that does not obscure the silver fuselage fuel tank valve he intended to activate.

The student pilot had logged just 3.2 hours in the Block-1 he was flying that day.

The board found the student “incorrectly identified the fuel shutoff valve handle as the fuselage fuel tank valve lever.” The report does not recommend any change to the cockpit layout.

The student pilot was an active-duty U-28 evaluator pilot with more than 2,300 flight hours.

The civilian contractor instructor was a qualified OA-1K instructor with 551 hours in the OA-1K. The report does not indicate how many hours the instructor had in each variant.

The crew was flying an initial qualification training sortie from Will Rogers Air National Guard Base under the call sign ZORRO 75.

The aircraft was operated by the 17th Special Operations Squadron, the formal training unit standing up the Skyraider II fleet, and assigned to the 492nd Special Operations Wing at Hurlburt Field, Florida.

The crew had leveled off at 2,300 feet above the ground when the instructor called for the fuel check. After erroneously cutting off fuel, the student realized his mistake and turned it back on a few seconds later, but by then the engine was already winding down, and restoring fuel alone would not restart it.

He never told the instructor seated behind him what had occurred.

The instructor took the controls, called a mayday and put the Skyraider II down in a field near Southeast 119th Street and South Sooner Road. The aircraft clipped a tree, road signs, two utility poles and a barbed-wire fence before coming to a stop, with a piece of utility pole guy wire twisted around the propeller.

The board cited three factors that substantially contributed to the crash, all tied to how the tandem crew handled the moment rather than the aircraft itself: pilot task saturation, ineffective task prioritization, communications challenges and ineffective crew resource management.

The report notes that the student was also struggling with his helmet and intercom settings amid engine and wind noise, and turned his attention to the communications problem just as fuel pressure began to drop.

The board also faulted the crew for skipping the emergency steps that might have prevented the crash.

Rather than running the critical action procedures, the instructor focused on setting up the forced landing. Those procedures are “designed to restart the engine, and if unsuccessful, feather the propeller to increase glide distance and time available for decision making before impact,” the report said.

At 2,300 feet, the board found the crew had time to try.

The OA-1K is a militarized version of the Air Tractor AT-802 crop duster, bought under U.S. Special Operations Command’s Armed Overwatch program. It is designed to give isolated special operations teams armed overwatch and reconnaissance from rough dirt strips. The program of record is 75 aircraft, though 53 have been funded to date.

The maneuver surfaced in a Wednesday report accompanying the House Appropriations Committee’s fiscal 2027 defense bill, and it runs on money the White House went looking for a week earlier.

In a June 17 budget amendment to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., the Office of Management and Budget asked Congress to steer more than $1.55 billion into the Air Force’s research and development account to keep the airborne battle management jet alive — money the service had left out of its original request after the Pentagon moved to cancel the program just a year ago.

Getting there required two cuts and one deposit.

OMB carved about $651 million from the Navy account that buys the E-2D Hawkeye and $899 million from the Air Force’s other procurement account. It funneled the combined sum into Air Force research, development, test and evaluation.

The House report pins the Air Force half on the Special Update Program, one of the service’s classified procurement lines.

The justification ran identically across all three amendments: The money would “deliver two E-7 Wedgetail prototype aircraft and continue Engineering Manufacturing and Development activities for a program of record.”

The Air Force already has seven E-7s on contract, including two rapid prototypes and five more added under a March modification. However, all are developmental jets meant to prove out the U.S. design before any production decision, which is why the money lands in research and development rather than procurement.

The committee pointed to the war in Iran to make its case.

“The conflict in Iran has reinforced the need for the Air Force to maintain a credible airborne battle management capability, currently being met with the Air Force’s E–3 Airborne Warning and Control System and the Navy’s E–2D Hawkeye programs,” the committee wrote. “As the E–3 is set to retire, the E–7 Wedgetail will serve as modern replacement for lost battle management capability.”

Panel pushes back on taking Hawkeye money

The Hawkeye money, though, was not OMB’s to spend. The House panel backed the E-7 realignment but rejected the Navy offset, restoring the $651 million the White House had taken from the Hawkeye program.

“While the committee wholly supports the E–7 program and funding realignment, the Committee also restored the E–2D program to six aircraft for fiscal year 2027,” the report states. “The committee understands the operational necessity of the E–2D platform; the complementary nature of the E–2D and E–7; and believes that more aircraft, not fewer, are necessary to support our warfighters now and in the future.”

For all the money in motion, it buys prototypes and development work, not a Wedgetail fleet. Lawmakers want to know what comes next.

The report orders the Air Force secretary to brief the House and Senate defense appropriations subcommittees, alongside the 2028 request, on “the full E–7 acquisition strategy, to include required quantity; funding requirements across the future years defense program; and schedules for development and production.”

Prior to the war in Iran, the Air Force wanted to scrap the E-7 program, a platform already flying with Australia, the U.K. and other allies, after an Air Force official said its per-aircraft cost had climbed from $588 million to $724 million, and amid doubts about whether it could survive in contested airspace.

The previous plan was to lean on extra E-2Ds and a future of space-based sensors instead.

The war with Iran undercut that case, exposing a near-term battle management gap that satellites cannot yet fill, compelling the Pentagon to reverse course this spring.

Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Gregory Masiello, who took over the F-35 Joint Program Office last July, testified before an open session of the Airland Subcommittee as the program defends a fiscal 2027 request that bundles more than $13 billion for the jet in fiscal 2027 alone. The request includes a buy of 85 U.S. aircraft and full funding for the Block 4 modernization effort and the engine core upgrade.

This hearing marks the first time the F-35 program’s leader has appeared before the subcommittee since 2016. Since then, the fleet has grown from 170 aircraft to more than 1,300.

In his written testimony, Masiello pointed to a sustainment system that was originally built to support 700 to 800 aircraft, well short of the fleet now flying.

“If I have over 1,300 operational aircraft out there, I believe we have set and enabled a sustainment system for about 7 to 800,” he said. “So there is our challenge in readiness.”

The hearing comes on the heels of a Government Accountability Office report this month that found just one in four F-35s were fully mission capable (FMC), meaning able to fly all assigned missions. Overall mission capable rates of jets able to fly at least one mission fell from 67% in fiscal 2021 to 44%.

Masiello put the program’s mission capable rate at 56%, above GAO’s 44%, a gap he ascribed to methodology. He stopped short of contesting the GAO’s FMC figure, but emphasized that “context matters,” arguing the discrepancy results from how his program defines mission capable.

Partially dragging down the FMC rate is the acceptance of incomplete jets. Pressed by ranking member Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., Masiello confirmed the Marine Corps has accepted six F-35Bs with no radar installed, opting instead to wait for a newer APG-85 radar.

When Kelly asked whether an F-35 with no radar could be considered FMC, Masiello conceded, “I don’t think I would count them as fully mission capable,” adding that he would discuss the radar’s capability in more detail in the closed session that followed.

Masiello blamed years of underbuying spare parts as the fleet grew, not a broken system. In response, the program has launched what it calls the Global Support Solution Reset, a roughly $13.7 billion effort through 2031 that targets five problem areas including spares, depot capacity and maintenance plans.

“It’s not a systemic issue with the system having the ability,” he said. “It’s the fact that we didn’t put enough parts and pieces on the shelf, and we’ve increased the demand exponentially with the number of aircraft fielded, and we didn’t do the same thing with the spare parts and the system.”

Asked what is most responsible for keeping jets from FMC status, Masiello pointed to software issues and the jet’s canopies, whose limited lifespan he called a particular problem on a low-observable jet.

The modernization track is running behind as well. The full Block 4 suite, once due in 2026, is now years off. Masiello said the program has fielded 22 of 55 planned Block 4 capabilities, the suite of new sensors, electronic warfare and weapons meant to keep the jet ahead of modern air defenses. The program fielded seven of those in last year’s software upgrade, with another six due this summer.

Contributing to modernization delays are the jet’s power and cooling capabilities. The engine core upgrade, slated for fielding in 2031, is meant to power and cool the full Block 4 suite, whose new radar and sensors draw more power and generate more heat than the current jet can handle.

On program accountability, Masiello said in his written statement that the program would revise contracts to carry “meaningful incentives and penalties,” a change GAO has urged for years after finding the program paid Lockheed Martin millions in fees even as readiness slid.

But that isn’t GAO’s only recommendation. GAO has made 46 sustainment recommendations since 2014, including three in this month’s report. As of March, the Pentagon had implemented just 14, leaving most still open a decade later.

Asked by the committee’s newest member, Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., how many of the GAO’s recommendations the program had closed, Masiello wouldn’t commit to a specific number, preferring to note that they were “probably all to some degree in process.”

Despite all the criticism, the jet’s unique capabilities drew high praise from across the aisle. Kelly, a Democrat and former Navy combat pilot, called himself and the committee strong supporters of the F-35 program.

Kelly recalled flying an F-16 against an F-35, noting that he “could not see it on radar even when I’m looking right at it.” But he tied that support to accountability, telling Masiello the program needs to show it can improve readiness and control costs.

Masiello made the same case from the program side, citing the jet’s prominent role in recent operations, including Epic Fury, the U.S. air campaign against Iran. He said operators had told him it was “the only aircraft that can hit some of the targets” those missions required and could “act as a quarterback of that joint force.”

The program’s global reach adds to the sustainment burden. Allied nations own and operate most of the F-35s based in Europe and the Pacific, and they keep buying more.

Masiello said Poland signaled plans to double its 32-jet order during his visit this month, though he had not yet seen a contract. That growing fleet draws on the same global spares pool and sustainment system now straining to keep U.S. jets ready, even as it spreads the program’s cost and industrial base across allied countries.

Masiello warned that funding only part of the fiscal 2027 request would slow the production line and cut deliveries. For now, the readiness fight, modernization and the sustainment reset all hinge on a budget Congress has yet to pass.

The Air Force made the announcement Wednesday, saying it reached the decision four months ahead of schedule. The contracts went to General Atomics for its FQ-42A and Anduril for its FQ-44A, as part of CCA Increment 1.

The two aircraft were previously designated the YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A. Dropping the Y prefix signals their shift from prototype to production.

Often referred to as “loyal wingmen,” CCA are jet-powered, semi-autonomous unmanned aircraft built to fly alongside crewed fighters such as the F-35 and the planned F-47, extending their sensors and weapons while taking on risk that would otherwise fall to pilots.

“Collaborative Combat Aircraft change how we project power and generate mass in highly contested environments,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach said in the release. “Delivering this capability to our warfighters faster ensures our forces maintain the tactical edge required to deter and, if necessary, defeat any adversary.”

The Air Force is committing to a large CCA fleet, though it won’t happen all at once. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said the contracts reaffirm the service’s confidence that it can buy more than 150 combat-capable CCA by the end of the decade, well below the program’s long-term goal of roughly 1,000.

“By moving fast from competitive selection into full-scale manufacturing, we position ourselves to field highly credible and combat-ready semi-autonomous systems to stay ahead of the pacing challenge,” Meink said in the announcement.

Separately, the Air Force opened a competition for the software that will operate the CCA.

“Mission autonomy is the cornerstone of the CCA concept, and leveraging a competitive, multi-vendor environment ensures we capture the latest technology,” Meink said, noting that this approach capitalizes on current technology while leaving room for future breakthroughs.

Six companies won spots in a six-year pool: Anduril, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX Collins Aerospace and Shield AI.

From that group, the service picked three to begin work on autonomous software right away. Anduril, RTX Collins Aerospace and Shield AI will take part in the first of two six-month rounds of head-to-head competition.

The service said those three were chosen based on their ability to meet the program’s schedule and cost demands. The Air Force plans to name a single primary software provider for Increment 1 by summer 2027.

Using an approach the Air Force calls first-of-its-kind, the service will pay the full licensing fee only if a vendor “provides a combat capability aligned with warfighter needs and feedback.”

This arrangement affords the Air Force the ability to acquire and implement state-of-the-art technology that is continually evolving.

Despite three companies getting first crack at developing the autonomy software, the Air Force may award software licenses to any of the six vendors within the pool at any point over the next six years.

Providing the foundation for this strategy is the government-owned Autonomy Government Reference Architecture, a modular, open-systems approach that enables the Air Force to move software between aircraft and avoid being locked into a single vendor.

The service said in February that it had integrated government-owned autonomous software into both prototypes using that architecture, which it called proof the software could move across vendors and platforms.

The contracts come on the heels of the service’s fiscal 2027 budget request, which marked the first time it asked Congress for money to buy CCA rather than just develop them.

The service declined to disclose the value of the contracts or how many of each aircraft the two companies will build.