US Air Force shortlists seven companies to replace MQ-9 Reaper with 500 new MMA combat drones.

The U.S. Air Force narrowed its Massed Modular Aircraft (MMA) competition to seven defense contractors to develop a low-cost, long-range unmanned aerial system intended to succeed the MQ-9A Reaper. The accelerated program aims to field affordable, attritable combat mass capable of executing strike and intelligence missions across extended operational distances while reducing per-airframe costs.

The U.S. Air Force selected Anduril, Chaos Industries, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Grid Aero, Otto Aerospace, Shield AI, and Swarm Aero to build prototype proposals for the MMA initiative. The program targets a base airframe cost of approximately $10 million to rapidly scale production and replace contracting Reaper inventories by 2029.

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The U.S. Air Force has selected seven companies in its MMA competition to develop a lower-cost successor to the MQ-9 Reaper, as combat losses have accelerated the decline of a fleet already reduced from 351 aircraft in FY2022 to 135 by May 2026. (Picture source: US DoD)

On September 30, 2026, Air & Space Forces Magazine revealed that the U.S. Air Force narrowed its Massed Modular Aircraft (MMA) competition to Anduril, Chaos Industries, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Grid Aero, Otto Aerospace, Shield AI, and Swarm Aero, with each company moving toward a prototype proposal for an aircraft intended to assume the missions of the MQ-9A Reaper drone. Each MMA must carry at least 2,800 lb (1,270 kg) over a 2,300 nmi (4,260 km) combat radius, self-deploy 8,000 nmi (14,816 km), exceed 200 kt (370 km/h) and operate from runways no longer than 6,000 ft (1,829 m), while accepting interchangeable ISR, strike, electronic warfare and communications payloads. The program has accelerated from a prototype within 21 months and 20 mission-ready aircraft by FY2031 toward a prototype roughly one year after award and scaled fielding potentially in 2029. U.S. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink wants 100 MMA drones by 2029 and 500 by 2032 at roughly $10 million per base airframe, putting 500 unmanned aircraft at $5 billion before sensors, weapons, control equipment, spares and sustainment are included.

The Massed Modular Aircraft (MMA) competition is being accelerated as the MQ-9A inventory is rapidly contracting. The U.S. Air Force fell from 351 Reapers in FY2022 to 135 by May 2026, a reduction of 61.5 percent, while an August estimate placed Reaper losses during Operation Epic Fury at 45 aircraft, equal to one-third of the remaining May inventory. Those 135 aircraft still supported 56 combat lines, leaving only 2.41 inventory aircraft per line before maintenance, training, testing and depot requirements are deducted, while 12 Air National Guard units in 11 states remained MQ-9 operators. Replacing losses with new MQ-9As is unavailable in the near term because their production has ended in 2025, and General Atomics estimates a restart would require two to three years. The MMA also targets a $10 million base airframe compared with roughly $30 million to $50 million for an MQ-9 depending on configuration, changing how many losses the U.S. Air Force can financially and industrially replace.

The requirements also define the MMA drone as a long-range payload carrier rather than a direct Reaper copy. Its minimum payload places it in the class needed for an AGM-158 JASSM-ER or LRASM missile, while the loaded combat radius corresponds to 8,520 km outbound and return before reserves, routing, or loiter time are included. The separate self-deployment range requirement reduces the reliance on C-17 transport or sealift movement between theaters, while the modular payloads allow different unmanned aircraft to carry sensors, weapons, electronic warfare equipment, or communications relays instead of duplicating every capability on every airframe. The requirement for one operator to supervise several aircraft is equally important: a 500-aircraft fleet controlled individually would reproduce much of the MQ-9 manpower burden. The MMA instead trades some individual aircraft capability for range, payload, numbers and distributed mission functions.

General Atomics' Wildfire shows how far that concept can move toward an unmanned heavy stand-off strike. The clean-sheet aircraft exceeds the 14,816 km ferry-range threshold and can carry two AGM-158C LRASMs or four Joint Strike Missiles (JSMs); two LRASMs alone weigh roughly 2,500 kg, nearly twice the MMA's minimum payload. General Atomics also intends the Wildfire to network dozens of unmanned aircraft using autonomy derived from its FQ-42A work, allowing formations to be managed without assigning a conventional pilot-style control relationship to every drone. Production capacity is measurable: General Atomics has more than 464,500 m² of manufacturing space available and has previously produced up to 100 aircraft annually. That rate could generate the entire 2029 objective in one year, and would already cover 75 percent of the MMA's 133-aircraft annual average required to add another 400 aircraft during 2030-2032.

Swarm Aero's Gamera uses a different route to achieve similar range and payload. The 21.9 m-wingspan unmanned aircraft carries more than 1,270 kg of payload across seven store locations and has a stated unrefueled range of 16,668 km, 12.5 percent beyond the MMA's minimum range, while also accommodating LRASM and JASSM-ER missiles. Fuel is concentrated inboard so the detachable outer wings remain dry, eliminating fuel tanks and associated plumbing from those structures and simplifying production, storage and transport. Gamera also uses the Honeywell TPE331 engine family already used by the MQ-9 and rated at roughly 1,000 shp, reducing propulsion development risk; Honeywell is developing a 1,500 shp version intended to permit an upgrade without major airframe changes. Swarm's Legion software is intended to let one operator or a small team supervise dozens of unmanned aircraft, making control system scalability part of the aircraft's 500-unit force model.

The other five competitors introduce different technical and industrial paths, but have not disclosed five known aircraft directly comparable with the Wildfire and the Gamera. Otto Aerospace is relevant because reducing aerodynamic drag can directly translate into fuel mass, payload, and aircraft size: its Celera 500L demonstrated a laminar-flow-oriented teardrop fuselage and high-aspect-ratio wing, reaching 4,572 m and 402 km/h in testing, while the company has also flown an unmanned laminar-flow aircraft for DARPA, although that aircraft is far smaller than MMA. Anduril already has the FQ-44 Fury CCA, the hybrid-electric Omen, and the Thunder tiltrotor, while Shield AI offers the V-BAT, the X-BAT, and its Hivemind autonomy work, but none of those known aircraft directly combines MMA's payload and combat radius. Grid Aero is developing the twin-engine Lifter Lite cargo UAS with AFWERX support, while Chaos Industries' established work is concentrated on radar and counter-UAS systems. The September 30 decision therefore reduced the industrial field to seven companies, but the Wildfire and the Gamera currently remain the only candidates with enough disclosed payload, range, weapon, and configuration data for a quantitative comparison.

The 500-aircraft objective creates a production requirement almost as demanding as the flight-performance thresholds. Going from 100 MMAs in 2029 to 500 by the end of 2032 requires 400 more aircraft in just 36 months, or 133.3 annually, 11.1 monthly and one completed aircraft every 2.7 days. A production target of 10 to 15 aircraft monthly corresponds to 120 to 180 annually, leaving little schedule margin at the lower end if the Air Force loses aircraft during operations, diverts production examples to testing, or encounters supplier interruptions. Cost sensitivity is similarly large: 500 airframes cost $5 billion at $10 million each, but $7.5 billion at $15 million, so every $1 million increase in average unit price adds $500 million across the planned fleet. Multiple manufacturers could divide the required output, but common weapon, sensor, autonomy, communications, and ground-control interfaces would then be necessary to prevent several MMA types from creating separate support systems.

The transition from the MQ-9A Repaer to the MMA remains the program's immediate force-structure problem. FY2027 includes $766.2 million for MQ-9 procurement-related activities and research, development, test and evaluation but no new MQ-9 aircraft or MMA procurement, while MMA procurement is already expected to begin in FY2028. The Reaper entered service in 2007 around persistence over permissive or moderately contested airspace, but its long loiter time becomes a liability when the unmanned aircraft must remain within reach of modern layered surface-to-air missiles, electronic warfare, and short-range counter-UAS defenses. The MMA changes that equation through distance and distribution rather than expensive aircraft-level survivability: a 4,260 km combat radius supports stand-off employment, 1,270 kg or more of payload permits JASSM-ER/LRASM-class weapons, and modular aircraft can divide ISR, relay, electronic warfare, and strike functions. At fleet level, one aircraft lost from 135 MQ-9As removes 0.74 percent of inventory, whereas one aircraft lost from a 500-MMA force removes 0.2 percent; at the target airframe price, replacing five MMAs would also nominally equal the roughly $50 million value associated with one sensor-equipped MQ-9A.

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Written by Jérôme Brahy

Jérôme Brahy is a defense analyst and documentalist at Army Recognition. He specializes in naval modernization, aviation, drones, armored vehicles, and artillery, with a focus on strategic developments in the United States, China, Ukraine, Russia, South Korea, Türkiye, and Belgium. His analyses go beyond the facts, providing context, identifying key actors, and explaining why defense news matters on a global scale.