Air Force taps RTX, Shield AI to provide drone wingman autonomy

AFA 2025 — The Air Force has selected defense giant RTX and startup Shield AI to supply the autonomy capabilities for the service’s first round of drone wingmen, two sources with knowledge of the process confirmed to Breaking Defense.

RTX will supply the autonomy software, essentially the computer pilot for the drones known as Collaborative Combat Aircraft, to General Atomics’s YFQ-42A. Shield AI will similarly provide autonomy for Anduril’s YFQ-44A, the source said. Aviation Week first reported the wins by RTX and Shield AI.

The Air Force previously disclosed that the service had winnowed the pool of autonomy vendors to five unnamed companies, though officials have since declined to disclose specifics. One source said that ensuing competition knocked out Anduril, which was competing for the autonomy deal separate from its aircraft offering.

An Air Force spokesperson declined to comment, saying only that “all subcontractors are protected by enhanced security measures.”

Anduril, General Atomics, RTX and Shield AI all referred queries to the Air Force.

The Air Force previously awarded contracts for the drone wingmen airframes to General Atomics and Anduril last year, marking the first “increment” of the CCA program. General Atomics’s YFQ-42A more recently took to the skies for its first flight. Anduril’s YFQ-44A is expected to follow in October, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink told reporters in a roundtable on Monday.

Although Anduril missed a target to fly the drone by the summer, Diem Salmon, the company’s vice president for Air Dominance and Strike, said the firm is still “well ahead of the program schedule” to achieve its maiden flight. 

“There’s just a little bit more on the software development side that needs to get wrung out. So that’s what’s currently driving our schedule right now,” Salmon said during a briefing with reporters on Monday. “But again, I think that’s going to allow us to kind of leapfrog the overall test plan, because we are kind of tackling that hard part first.”

Details about the second CCA increment are still not known. Meink said Monday the Air Force is still in the “learning phase” for the CCA program, where efforts under the first increment will inform its subsequent iteration.