Task Force Falcon Strike will utilize one-way attack drones composed of unmanned systems from above, on and below the sea, managed by U.S. military support staff and regional partners, according to a Thursday release.

The move to launch this unit follows CENTCOM’s establishment of Task Force Scorpion Strike in December 2025, a Middle East-based task force equipped with one-way attack drones as the military strived to integrate drone technology across the services.

“Task Force Falcon Strike will expand on Scorpion Strike’s success given the tremendous innovation happening among our regional allies and partners,” Adm. Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander, said in the release. “Integrating and deploying our new capabilities together will help us rapidly realize the new possibilities that are on the horizon.”

Scorpion Strike was the first to launch an aerial attack drone from a U.S. Navy warship last December, the month of its announcement. The unit also deployed one-way unmanned aerial systems during Operation Epic Fury and during strikes on Iranian port facilities in July with unmanned attack vessels at sea, the statement highlights.

CENTCOM began consulting with and officially inviting regional partners to join Falcon Strike, aiming to expand attack-drone capabilities across the Middle East into a “unified multi-domain, multinational deterrent.”

“The United States military has a lot of strong partnerships and friends in the region,” Cooper said. “We are collectively stronger when we integrate and deploy new capabilities together.”

The release did not specify which regional partners CENTCOM is working with on the unit.

Personnel from the U.S. Special Operations Command Central, located at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, will lead Falcon Strike’s staff of U.S. and regional representatives after it launched Scorpion Strike, the release states.

The announcement comes as the U.S. continues its war with Iran, which has depleted the U.S. munitions stockpile and caused military leaders to weigh the possibility of developing cheaper anti-drone technology at a faster pace.

The program, described as “extreme teaming” with industry partners, entered the phase with “unprecedented maturity,” Gen. Dale White, director of Critical Major Weapon Systems, said in a Wednesday keynote address at an event in Dayton, Ohio.

The engineering and manufacturing phase includes maturing, integrating and testing all parts of the F-47. It will produce a small number of test aircraft for evaluation and includes priced options for low-rate initial production. White did not specify the number of test aircraft being produced.

The first Boeing F-47 is on track for its first flight in 2028. The Air Force plans to buy at least 185 F-47s, matching the size of the F-22 Raptor fleet it intends to replace.

“The F-47 will fly in this administration,” White said during his speech at the Life Cycle Industry Days, hosted by the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center.

White, who also acts as direct reporting portfolio manager to the deputy defense secretary, is tasked with managing weapons systems, such as the F-47 and B-21 programs.

In March 2025, President Donald Trump announced that the force will proceed with development of sixth-generation Boeing F-47s under the Next Generation Air Dominance program, or NGAD, intended to replace the F-22 Raptor.

“In terms of all of the attributes of a fighter jet, there’s never been anything even close to it, from speed to maneuverability, to what it can have, to payload,” Trump said at the time, insisting that the aircraft will be built and in the air during his administration.

“And this has been in the works for a long period of time,” he continued. “America’s enemies will never see it coming.”

NGAD is a “family of systems” that includes the F-47 and Collaborative Combat Aircraft designed to achieve air superiority. The F-47’s modular design is intended to accommodate emerging technology and integrate long-range strike capabilities to counter threats in contested environments.

The F-47 program was allotted $3.45 billion in fiscal year 2026 funding and over $5 billion in the fiscal 2027 budget request.

The defense company’s first YFQ-44A was built in its Pickaway County, Ohio, manufacturing facility, dubbed Arsenal-1, according to a social media post. Anduril first announced the facility’s construction in January 2025 and slated its first products manufacturing to begin July 2026.

In January 2026, Anduril declared that its first product would be the YFQ-44A, a missionized variant of the company’s FQ-44, or “Fury,” autonomous fighter jet, for the U.S. Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program.

The $1 billion, 5 million-square-foot facility is located near Rickenbacker International Airport and plans to add 4,000 jobs to the area.

The aircraft’s production comes two weeks after the Air Force conducted its first-ever live-fire test with its CCA. The YFQ-44A executed an end-to-end, beyond-line-of-sight strike against a simulated target using an inert AIM-120, which is an advanced medium-range air-to-air missile.

As Anduril announced the aircraft’s production, the Air Force also revealed on Monday the completion of a recent Agile Combat Employment exercise that showcased CCA operations at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada.

“Air superiority in today’s increasingly contested environments requires the rapid fielding of affordable mass,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach said in the release. “CCA are essential to this effort. By integrating uncrewed systems to fly alongside our Airmen, we extend reach and increase lethality.”

The multi-day exercise was conducted by the CCA Experimental Operations Unit and was meant to build foundational tactics, techniques and procedures that will shape how the aircraft are integrated into the force, the release says.

The EOU completed multiple sorties, integrated with manned platforms in the local airspace and simulated scenarios.

“Our test teams can continuously use these warfighter-run exercises to gather and analyze data that aids in informed CCA fielding decisions well ahead of the normal process to deliver combat capability when needed by our Air Force and the Nation,” said Brig. Gen. Jesse Friedel, Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center commander, whose team members observed the event.

Air Force officials have continuously asserted that any decision to deploy munitions still lies in the human operator’s hands, as they have control and command of the platform at all times, even though the aircraft are unmanned and semi-autonomous.

In a recent roundtable, former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said that building trust between human operators and autonomous systems begins with computerized, man-in-the-loop simulations and training exercises, such as Red Flag at Nellis.

The Air Force awarded the CCA contracts last month to Anduril and General Atomics for their YFQ-44A and YFQ-42A, respectively.

The service has eyed 100 to 150 aircraft in its program’s first increment, with a longer-term goal of fielding 1,000 CCAs.

Anduril had not yet announced Tuesday the number of YFQ-44As the facility will produce, but the production line has the capacity to build 150 each year.

The team, dubbed Task Force Talon Synapse, is slated to launch in the “coming weeks,” according to a Tuesday release, and will focus on incorporating AI applications into intelligence support, protecting critical infrastructure and monitoring the regional security environment.

“This will be a historic milestone as we work with one of our most capable regional partners to rapidly deliver evolving AI advancements to our warfighters,” Adm. Brad Cooper, CENTCOM commander, said in the statement.

“Together, we and our Emirati partners share a strong commitment to adopting AI applications that will foster innovation at speed and scale,” he continued.

The Abu Dhabi-based unit will be made up of around 20 American and Emirati personnel with AI, data and cybersecurity expertise, the announcement says.

The task force’s creation was discussed last year by Cooper and UAE National Security Advisor Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed al-Nahyan, per the release.

During a trip to the region last month, CENTCOM and AI industry leaders gathered together as well.

For almost a decade, the UAE has strived to accelerate its defenses with AI capabilities through collaborations, like with Anduril to coproduce advanced autonomous drones.

In March 2025, the White House hosted al-Nahyan, who views adopting artificial intelligence as a national responsibility. The talks focused on bilateral relations between the two countries, AI and emerging technology, according to a UAE release at the time of the official visit.

The agents are able to fly the F-16s in the Viper Experimentation and Next-gen Operations Model, or VENOM, program through the aircraft’s additional hardware, software and instrumentation installed, according to a release.

A F-16 Fighting Falcon equipped with the technology completed a sortie recently at the Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, for the 96th Test Wing, per the announcement.

The modified aircraft began flights in June to verify that the aircraft worked properly with all the technology involved. A month later, the unit began in-air-testing using an agent to autonomously control the flight.

The pilots, located in the cockpit during the flights, monitored the AI agents to ensure the flight and mission systems tests objectives were met, the release reads.

“Getting the aircraft into the air is always a monumental milestone for a complex test program,” Tim Stevens, a VENOM test pilot with the 40th Flight Test Squadron, said in the release.

“It represents years of design, modification and test planning poured into this project by a dedicated team of hundreds,” he continued.

VENOM, which is a joint effort between the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, and the Air Force was initiated under the Air Combat Evolution program. The aircraft in the program are meant to serve in the next phase of AI development in DARPA’s Artificial Intelligence Reinforcements program.

The aircraft underwent months of ground testing of its engines and systems to ensure the functionality of the technology, and also completed many simulation hours dating back to 2024, according to the release.

The 53rd Wing and 96th Test Wing joined together in the VENOM program, but the early tests have been conducted by developmental testers in the 40th Flight Test Squadron.

U.S. Army Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, 19, of Carrollton, Texas, and 1st Lt. Tyler James Feehan, 25, from Ewa Beach, Hawaii, died July 17 and July 18, respectively, according to a Department of Defense release.

The active-duty soldiers were killed during an enemy attack at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base, Jordan.

Gonzales was stationed at Ansbach, Germany, assigned to 1st Battalion, 57th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 52nd Air Defense Artillery Brigade, 10th Army Air Missile Defense Command.

Feehan was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 55th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 32nd Army Air Missile Defense Command.

The incident is currently under investigation, the release states.

On Saturday, U.S. Central Command announced that another U.S. service member is missing following the attack, while four troops, who have since been discharged, were medically evacuated to hospitals in Jordan.

For the ninth consecutive night, the U.S. “hit [Iran] very hard again tonight,” President Donald Trump said on Sunday. The strikes, he said, were in honor of the soldiers who were killed.

“The strikes will continue degrading Iranian military capabilities used to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners transiting the Strait of Hormuz,” a CENTCOM post from Sunday reads.

Trump said that “probably” three service members were killed in action, as opposed to two.

As of Monday morning, the Pentagon had not clarified whether a third service member was killed in action.

The command said in a social media post Sunday that U.S. military personnel found unidentified remains at the location of the attack. CENTCOM said that an examination process to verify the remains is ongoing.

The deaths of Gonzales and Feehan bring the toll of American troops killed in the war with Iran to 16. More than 400 U.S. troops have been wounded in the campaign, which began Feb. 28.

Separately, on July 18, a U.S. service member was killed in action in northern Iraq during a controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian one-way attack drone.

“A second service member was wounded and continues to receive medical treatment for a minor injury,” CENTCOM said in a statement.

CENTCOM had not yet provided additional information Monday, such as the identities of those service members killed or missing.

Frank Kendall, the Air Force’s 26th secretary who served under former President Joe Biden, said in a Thursday roundtable hosted by Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies that gathering experience in the field and through simulations help operators establish trust with autonomous systems, like the Collaborative Combat Aircraft.

“You have to accumulate a basis for trust over time, and so I think we just need to think carefully about how we structure things in order to make that opportunity,” Kendall said during the roundtable.

Earlier this week, the Air Force announced that it conducted the first-ever live-fire test of an inert AIM-120 from an Anduril-made YFQ-44A. The CCA recently completed an end-to-end, beyond-line-of-sight strike against a simulated target, the service announced, but did not specify when the exercise occurred.

The Air Force is scheduled to continue live-fire testing with General Atomics’ YFQ-42A this fall.

Kendall said that using the aircraft in Red Flag, the service’s leading large-force aerial combat training simulation held at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, will be “fascinating,” but he worries about the force using initial setbacks as an excuse to “retreat” instead of pushing ahead.

The former secretary was optimistic that institutional support will be enough to overcome those setbacks, saying that enthusiastic operators want to see the aircraft’s full potential realized.

Kendall recalled when he once asked an Air Combat Command crew who were developing CCA tactics why there wasn’t more resistance.

“[A young fighter pilot’s] answer was, ‘Sir, these things are going to save our lives.’” Kendall recalled.

The simulations define the exercises, he added, saying that it showcases how the aircraft protects crew fighters effectively right now even as the force needs to develop more sophisticated tactics.

“The guys with the CCAs are beating the crap out of the guys without them, and not losing any manned fighters,” he said.

Kendall said that computerized, man-in-the-loop simulations are the best tool to assist operators in learning how to use the aircraft effectively since more trials can be completed. Integrated simulations have been used by the Air Force for roughly 30 years.

“In simulators with cockpits their sensors are showing them simulated threats as well as their friends, and then they basically fight a battle together,” he explained.

Kendall referred to a time when he took a flight in an F-16 modified by artificial intelligence. In flight, the aircraft’s testers would collect data points, he said, and run a million simulations to adjust the software overnight to complete the flight again the following day.

The first increment CCA aircraft in the program are “all the same” as weapons carriers, but in Increment II, Kendall stipulates that the force can begin equipping them with sensors and possibly distributed electronic warfare capabilities.

China is working on this autonomous system capability as well, he added, stating that air battles could soon be CCA versus CCA. Intelligence is going to play a significant role in how well the U.S. understands their systems, tactics and vulnerabilities, he said, noting that it’s a “hard game” to play.

In Increment I, the Air Force showed interest in obtaining 100 to 150 aircraft, the first phase of a longer-term goal of eventually fielding 1,000 CCAs.

Trump will be traveling to North Dakota to visit the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library as part of the country’s 250th anniversary celebrations, marking it the inaugural use of the Qatari-donated aircraft over a week after the U.S. Air Force began its commissioning flights.

The aircraft had to undergo significant renovations to deem it suitable for presidential use, and after the modifications “final exam,” it must complete an unknown amount of commissioning flights that allow the White House to confirm mission-capability and finalize protocols for the president’s safety.

After the flights are completed, the aircraft will be officially “commissioned” into the active executive airlift fleet and available for presidential use alongside the VC-25A and C-32 fleets.

The commissioning flights have yet to be completed, and a timeline has not been made clear.

One of the original VC-35As previously used by Trump took its last flight a day prior to the aircraft’s commissioning flights commencing.

Initially, plans to replace the aging VC-35A with two new VC-25B were slated for 2024, but supply chain issues and a lack of properly cleared workers delayed Boeing’s plans until 2028, causing the president to use the luxury jet Qatar donated to the U.S. in 2025.

The new Air Force One Boeing 747-8i sports the red, white and blue livery that Trump initially sought during his first presidential term in 2018.

In addition to taking the new Air Force One to North Dakota, the president also confirmed during the aircraft’s unveiling at Joint Base Andrews its use for the early July NATO leaders’ summit in Ankara, Turkey.

He also hinted that “at some point” this year, the administration will be traveling to China using the plane.

Trump is scheduled to appear in South Dakota on Friday for a fireworks show, but it is not clear which aircraft Trump will use to attend the demonstration.

The seven-year contract, awarded by the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, will quadruple the interceptors’ production, according to a Wednesday Lockheed release, in a time when U.S. lawmakers are pushing for an increase in munitions procurement.

After the war in Iran and other conflicts, the U.S. munitions stockpile has dwindled, leaving the country to place pressure on defense contractors to deliver more weapons as policymakers worry over the amount of key air-defense and precision-guided weapons available.

Even though the U.S. had enough for the Iran war, to restore the munitions stockpile to pre-war levels, it will take at least three years, which creates a “window of vulnerability” for a potential Western Pacific conflict, a May Center for Strategic International Studies report found.

The recent Lockheed contract is one of the first major multiyear procurement contracts a part of the Pentagon’s Acquisition Transformation Strategy, which is meant to reform the defense industrial base to accelerate the delivery of products at a lower cost.

“This new approach propels our efforts to strengthen the defense industrial base, expand production and deliver capabilities to the American warfighter at unprecedented speed and scale,” Tim Cahill, Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control president, said in the release.

The contract moves forward the January framework agreement between the Defense Department and Lockheed Martin, accelerating the number of THAAD interceptors from 96 to 400 per year, roughly a fourfold increase.

In support of ramped-up production, the company broke ground on a new Munitions Production Center in Troy, Alabama, in March as well as a new Munitions Acceleration Center in Camden, Arkansas, in January as part of a $9 million investment through 2030 for weapons facilities across the country.

The work for this contract will be completed across the four cities of Dallas, Texas; Sunnyvale, California; Troy, Alabama; and Camden, Arkansas.

Lockheed will provide THAAD missile rounds under “fixed-priced contract line-item numbers,” a Wednesday Pentagon release says, from March 2026 through June 2032.

At the time of the award, fiscal 2026 procurement funds of over $842 million are “being obligated,” the Pentagon release says.

Alongside the THAAD contract, Lockheed Martin has also established agreements with the department this year to produce more PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement, or MSE, interceptors and Precision Strike Missiles, or PrSM.

The Qatari-donated Boeing VC-25B Bridge aircraft arrived at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, and will begin its initial commissioning flights, the U.S. Air Force announced Friday.

“Fresh from receiving its new red, white, and blue livery and the final government modifications, the aircraft has entered service to provide critical, secure continuity for the commander in chief,” the release reads.

The Air Force announced the interim presidential aircraft is on track for its summer delivery in May. The move to use the aircraft donated by Qatar followed President Donald Trump’s dissatisfaction of Boeing’s delay to replace the current Air Force One aging planes with the new VC-25B aircraft.

The initial timeline for the replacements was 2024, but a lack of properly cleared workers and supply chain issues pushed the date back to 2028.

The delivery of the Bridge aircraft is meant to relieve pressure on the aging fleet until the long-term VC-25B enters service, the release says.

The aircraft underwent security modifications to ensure it was suitable for a president, and Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink told lawmakers in June 2025 that it would cost less than $400 million to modify.

For the modification’s “final exam,” it must complete commissioning flights that allow White House officials to validate mission-capability and finalize protocols required for the president’s safe and secure transportation, the statement says.

Once the flights are completed, then the aircraft is considered officially “commissioned” into the active executive airlift fleet and will be available for the president’s use alongside the VC-25A and C-32 fleets.

The Air Force has not clarified the specific type of security modifications the aircraft completed, but the service did note in the announcement that it was altered in a “disciplined engineering approach” that prioritized rigorous safety requirements.

The Bridge aircraft is equipped with advanced technologies, with the previous interior layout minimally changed.

Pilots and maintainers began training last October with the lease of an Atlas Air 747-8F and then a purchase of a Lufthansa 747-8i to serve as a full-time training resource for the entire crew.

On top of the aircraft used for training, a three-dimensional mock-up of the Bridge aircraft’s interior was delivered to the White House in January so staff could begin familiarizing themselves ahead of the first commissioning flight.

“Many thought it could not be done, but the United States Air Force was able to execute and provide a secure, reliable airborne command post on an accelerated timeline,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach said in the release.

The Air Force did not say how many commissioning flights the aircraft is set to complete or when Trump is expected to take his first flight in the new Air Force One.

This news comes after the VC-25A, which Trump was previously using, took its last flight Thursday, according to a social media post by a Trump administration official.