A Nevada Air Force Base was picked to house General Atomics’ FQ-42, a week after the U.S. Air Force dubbed the Collaborative Combat Aircraft as Vengeance.
On Friday, a new FQ-42 Vengeance aircraft was delivered to Creech Air Force Base, according to a Monday company release, and will continue regular test and evaluation operations to experiment with the new jet.
“Every week, the Air Force is pushing forward with new and more impressive accomplishments using Vengeance. It’s amazing to think of how far this program has come in such a short amount of time,” Vice President of Advanced Programs Mike Atwood said in the release.
The announcement follows two months after Creech conducted an Agile Combat Employment exercise using Anduril’s FQ-44 Fury, allowing airmen to carry out sorties and build foundational tactics and procedures that will mold how CCA are integrated into the force.
Anduril has yet to announce which Air Force base will house Fury.
Vengeance, which has an internal weapons bay and other low observability and boosted survivability features, flew alongside F-35 and F-15E Strike Eagles in preparation for collaborative control operations with manned aircraft, per the statement.
Recently, Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink revealed that the service expects to have at least 500 autonomous aircraft in service by 2032, with them meant to perform many of the same missions manned fighters complete currently.
“By then, our special operators will have the ability to employ thousands of autonomous one-way attack systems, and we will have autonomous fighters like the Collaborative Combat Aircraft,” Meink said during last week’s keynote address at the Air & Space Forces Association’s 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference.
General Atomics said the company completed a new “low-observable paint facility” aimed at supporting CCA production with increased manufacturing space, and the company is on track to deliver six aircraft per month.
Vengeance’s production is underway on General Atomics’ dime as “government funding plans mature,” per the statement, in an effort to prevent delays in delivery.
The service’s fiscal 2027 request included $996.5 million in procurement funding for the CCA program. It also requests $150 million in advanced procurement for the following fiscal year and $1.37 billion in continued research and development. The total program request is $2.37 billion.
Cristina Stassis is a reporter covering stories surrounding the defense industry, national security, military/veteran affairs and more. She previously worked as an editorial fellow for Defense News in 2024 where she assisted the newsroom in breaking news across Sightline Media Group.
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