Anduril's YFQ-44A autonomous combat drone fired a live AIM-120 missile at a target for the first time
A US combat drone has fired a live air-to-air missile in flight for the first time. Anduril's YFQ-44A launched an AIM-120 at a target over the Mojave Desert on July 10, after an operator tasked the aircraft to engage; the aircraft then executed the firing sequence on its own.
A US combat drone has fired a live air-to-air missile at a target for the first time. Anduril's YFQ-44A Collaborative Combat Aircraft launched an AIM-120 missile over the Mojave Desert on July 10, in what the Air Force and Anduril describe as the first live-fire weapons test by a US autonomous combat wingman drone. According to Anduril's account, the aircraft's Lattice software ingested a target track, a human operator tasked the aircraft to engage that target, and the YFQ-44A then executed the weapons employment sequence on its own. The flight took off from Edwards Air Force Base and was run by the 412th Test Wing's Air Dominance Combined Test Force, following earlier test phases that used inert weapons carriage and data-link integration checks. The Air Force and Anduril announced the milestone on July 15. The Air Force has stated that weapon release remains a human decision. Even so, the test marks a threshold: an unmanned fighter-type aircraft now flies, tracks a target and completes a live firing sequence within a single autonomous envelope, a set of tasks previously split across a human pilot and separate weapons systems.