Anduril YFQ-44A Fury Flies in Formation With F-35s During U.S. Air Force Autonomous Combat Aircraft Testing.

Anduril Industries’ YFQ-44A Fury autonomous combat aircraft has flown alongside F-35 fifth-generation fighters during U.S. Air Force testing, according to TWZ reporting published on September 15, 2026. The milestone shows that an uncrewed combat aircraft can operate safely in a complex formation with advanced fighters, moving the Air Force closer to deploying autonomous aircraft as force multipliers in high-end air combat.

During the July exercise at Creech Air Force Base, Fury used Anduril’s Mission Autonomy system while operating with F-35s, other crewed aircraft and additional Collaborative Combat Aircraft in scenarios involving live sensor data. The F-35 did not yet directly command Fury, but ongoing integration work is aimed at enabling pilots to task autonomous teammates in flight, a capability that could expand sensor coverage, combat mass and survivability while reducing the number of crewed aircraft exposed to enemy defenses.

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Anduril’s YFQ-44A Fury flew alongside F-35 fighters during U.S. Air Force testing, marking a key step toward operational manned-unmanned air combat (Picture Source: U.S. Air Force)

On September 15, 2026, A significant new milestone in the evolution of U.S. airpower has emerged, with Anduril Industries’ YFQ-44A Fury Collaborative Combat Aircraft having flown in formation alongside F-35 fifth-generation fighters during U.S. Air Force testing. According to TWZ, which disclosed the development following a briefing with senior Anduril executives at the Air, Space & Cyber Symposium, the flights took place during a July exercise involving the Air Force’s Experimental Operations Unit at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada. The achievement is important not simply because an autonomous combat aircraft shared the airspace with an F-35, but because it brings the United States closer to a fundamentally new model of air warfare in which crewed fifth-generation fighters could eventually command distributed formations of autonomous combat aircraft.

The YFQ-44A Fury represents one of the most consequential elements of the U.S. Air Force’s effort to transform Collaborative Combat Aircraft from experimental platforms into operational force multipliers. During the Creech exercise, Fury operated under Anduril’s Mission Autonomy system while sharing airspace with F-35s, other crewed aircraft and additional CCAs. Air Force personnel were able to operate Fury’s autonomy functions while Anduril personnel remained in a supporting role, an important indication that the technology is progressively moving beyond contractor-led demonstrations toward systems designed for operational military users. TWZ reported that the July activity also involved live sensor data and increasingly representative tactical scenarios, making the flights considerably more meaningful than a simple formation demonstration.

The critical distinction, however, is that the F-35 was not yet directly controlling or tasking Fury during those flights. That difference is fundamental to understanding the milestone correctly. Flying safely alongside a fifth-generation fighter demonstrates that Fury’s aircraft and autonomy architecture can function inside a complex operational environment; allowing an F-35 pilot to command autonomous teammates in real time would represent the much more transformative achievement. TWZ reported that Anduril is already working on what it calls “quarterback integration,” including hardware-in-the-loop, software-in-the-loop and aircraft-based development, with live-flight integration activities expected to follow. Human-machine interfaces, initially including tablet-based concepts, form part of that effort.

The real technological breakthrough will not be measured by how closely Fury can physically fly beside an F-35, but by how little attention an F-35 pilot ultimately needs to devote to managing it. A viable CCA cannot simply become another aircraft that must be remotely piloted from an already information-intensive cockpit. Fifth-generation pilots are simultaneously processing sensor fusion, electronic warfare information, communications, weapons employment and rapidly changing tactical conditions. For manned-unmanned teaming to become operationally decisive, the pilot should be able to assign mission intent, priorities and tactical objectives, while Fury’s onboard autonomy determines how best to execute those instructions within established parameters. In this model, the F-35 pilot increasingly becomes the human command element of a wider autonomous formation rather than the remote pilot of several individual drones.

That transition could profoundly change the geometry of air combat. An F-35 and its autonomous teammates would not necessarily need to remain together as a conventional formation. Future CCAs could potentially be positioned ahead of, alongside or across different sectors of the battlespace, creating additional axes from which sensors, weapons or other combat effects could be generated. Such a formation would present an adversary with a much more complicated targeting problem. Identifying the crewed F-35 would no longer necessarily identify the location of every significant threat, while attempts to engage autonomous aircraft could consume interceptors, missiles, sensors and command attention that would otherwise be concentrated against scarce American fifth-generation fighters. Fury could contribute not merely additional aircraft, but additional tactical dilemmas.

For the United States, the strategic implications are especially significant in a potential high-end conflict against a technologically sophisticated peer adversary. Contemporary air-defense environments increasingly combine long-range surface-to-air missiles, advanced fighters, electronic warfare, distributed sensors and long-range weapons designed to threaten traditional force packages. Against such defenses, relying exclusively on exquisite crewed platforms creates unavoidable limitations in numbers, cost and acceptable risk. Pairing the F-35 with autonomous aircraft such as Fury offers another approach: preserve the judgment, adaptability and sophisticated sensor fusion of American pilots while distributing additional combat capacity across a larger number of uncrewed platforms. Rather than replacing the F-35, CCA technology has the potential to multiply the combat leverage of every F-35 that enters the battlespace.

This has particular geostrategic relevance in the Indo-Pacific, where enormous distances, dispersed operating locations and the possibility of highly contested airspace could place extraordinary demands on American airpower. A mature Fury-F-35 architecture could eventually allow the United States to generate greater force density without exposing an equivalent number of pilots or depending exclusively on the availability of additional high-cost crewed fighters. It could also complicate an adversary’s prewar calculations by forcing opposing commanders to prepare for force packages whose autonomous component can be expanded, dispersed and assigned higher-risk missions. That uncertainty has deterrent value because it requires an adversary to allocate more defensive resources against a wider and potentially less predictable American combat architecture. At the same time, the development highlights why Anduril’s role is strategically important to the modernization of the U.S. defense-industrial base.

The significance of Fury is not limited to producing an aircraft capable of autonomous flight; the harder objective is creating autonomy that American warfighters can employ under operational conditions without introducing unsustainable manpower, infrastructure or cognitive requirements. According to TWZ, Air Force personnel were already operating Fury’s Mission Autonomy functions during the July exercise, while the next major step is expected to bring the crewed fighter itself into the command relationship. Anduril’s progress reflects a particularly important American advantage: the ability to combine the experience and operational knowledge of the U.S. Air Force with the speed, software expertise and autonomous-systems innovation of a new generation of U.S. defense companies.

Anduril’s YFQ-44A Fury flying alongside F-35s should be understood as an early but strategically important building block toward a different model of American air superiority. The immediate achievement is not that the F-35 already commands Fury in combat, it does not, but that an autonomous combat aircraft has now operated alongside fifth-generation fighters during increasingly realistic U.S. Air Force experimentation while its autonomy was being employed by Air Force personnel. The decisive milestone will come when an F-35 pilot can assign Fury meaningful tactical tasks in live flight without sacrificing situational awareness or becoming burdened with the responsibilities of remotely piloting another aircraft. If Anduril and the U.S. Air Force successfully cross that threshold, the implications will extend far beyond one unmanned aircraft: the F-35 could increasingly function as the crewed centerpiece of a distributed combat ecosystem in which autonomous platforms extend reach, increase force density, create additional tactical dilemmas and absorb levels of operational risk that commanders would hesitate to impose on manned aircraft. Such an architecture would combine two qualities that have historically been difficult to achieve simultaneously, high-end technological sophistication and scalable combat mass, making Fury’s flights alongside the F-35 not simply an aviation milestone, but a glimpse of an emerging form of American airpower built around human judgment, fifth-generation capabilities and autonomous mass.

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Written by Teoman S. Nicanci – Defense Analyst, Army Recognition Group

Teoman S. Nicanci holds degrees in Political Science, Comparative and International Politics, and International Relations and Diplomacy from leading Belgian universities, with research focused on Russian strategic behavior, defense technology, and modern warfare. He is a defense analyst at Army Recognition, specializing in the global defense industry, military armament, and emerging defense technologies.