Overview
- Air Combat Command’s Experimental Operations Unit, not engineers or test pilots, ran the YFQ-44A through full mission cycles at Edwards Air Force Base last week.
- Using Anduril’s Menace-T laptop system, operators uploaded mission plans, started autonomous taxi and takeoff, retasked the jet in flight, and handled post-flight data checks.
- The team proved a small footprint by running daily sorties from a simulated forward base with two Pelican cases, a laptop, and a handful of maintainers trained in a few days.
- The YFQ-44A flew from Anduril’s Southern California test site to Edwards for the exercise and returned afterward, and Air Force photos showed captive-carry of inert AIM-120–type missiles on underwing pylons.
- The tests feed the first CCA competition between Anduril’s YFQ-44A and General Atomics’ YFQ-42A, as the Air Force pursues at least 1,000 wingman drones with a production choice expected later this year.