Anduril's YFQ-44A CCA makes first flight

Anduril's YFQ-44A demonstrator makes its first flight in late October 2025. (Anduril)

Anduril's YFQ-44A collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) has conducted its first flight, launching the flight-testing phase, the company announced on 31 October. The milestone came 556 days after development began, Jason Levin, senior vice-president of engineering for Air Dominance & Strike for Anduril, said in a statement.

Rapid development was enabled by “an intense focus” on schedule, close collaboration with the customer, including providing access to Anduril's computer-aided design (CAD) materials, and a simple vehicle design, an Anduril spokesperson told Janes on 5 November.

The flight was semi-autonomous, which the spokesperson said meant that there was no human operator “flying the aircraft behind the scenes with a stick and throttle”. The operator supervised the flight, launching it with the press of a button, according to the spokesperson.

“The aircraft executed the flightpath and landed on its own,” the spokesperson said.

Levin emphasised that the YFQ-44A was not designed to be remotely piloted. “All of our taxi and flight tests have been and will continue to be semi-autonomous,” he said.

The aircraft “executes a mission plan on its own, manages flight control and throttle adjustment independent of human command, and returns to land at the push of a button” while monitored by an “operator ‘on the loop' but not in it”, Levin said in the statement.

“By integrating autonomy into the earliest ground and flight tests for YFQ-44A, we're tackling the hardest challenge that this technology presents first,” he said, adding that this would accelerate learning to deliver the capability faster.

The first flight was always planned to be semi-autonomous, the spokesperson said, adding that this was enabled by “extensive testing and verification of software performance and reliability”.