What Is Vectis? Lockheed Martin’s U.S.-Developed Combat Drone Designed to Fight Alongside F-35 Fighters.

Lockheed Martin is expanding development of its Vectis collaborative combat aircraft for U.S. Air Force, with Skunk Works now planning four additional aircraft alongside the first prototype as the company targets a first flight by the end of 2027. The U.S.-developed subsonic unmanned aircraft is designed to operate independently or alongside crewed fighters such as the F-35, adding sensors, weapons and autonomous combat mass for air-to-air combat, precision strike, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, targeting and electronic warfare missions.

Lockheed Martin announced the four-aircraft expansion on September 14, 2026, bringing the planned Vectis test fleet to five aircraft and giving the program considerably more capacity to explore autonomous and collaborative operations beyond a single flight demonstrator.

Related Topic: U.S. Lockheed Martin Unveils Vectis Unmanned Combat Aircraft to Team With Poland F-35A Fighter Jets

AI-generated image of Lockheed Martin’s Vectis, a subsonic collaborative combat aircraft being developed to operate independently or alongside crewed fighters such as the F-35 in future high-intensity air operations. (Picture source: Army Recognition Group)

From an aerospace perspective, Vectis is particularly significant because Lockheed Martin has placed survivability at the center of the aircraft’s concept. Its tailless configuration, internal weapon carriage and deeply recessed upper-fuselage air intake suggest that low observability is a central design objective rather than a secondary characteristic. Lockheed Martin describes Vectis as a Group 5 collaborative combat aircraft designed for high survivability and integration with fifth-generation and future combat aircraft, although the aircraft has not yet flown and its actual signature performance remains to be demonstrated.

Vectis measures approximately 34 ft (10.4 m) in length with a wingspan of around 38 ft (11.6 m), placing it much closer in scale to a compact combat aircraft than to the smaller tactical drones normally associated with unmanned operations. That size potentially provides the internal volume required for fuel, sensors, mission systems and weapons while maintaining a comparatively compact airframe. Its external configuration also provides important clues about its intended operating environment. The tailless planform, aligned edges and prominent fuselage chines are consistent with techniques used to manage radar reflections, while removing conventional vertical tails can reduce major radar-reflecting surfaces at the cost of greater dependence on flight-control software and aerodynamic control.

One of the aircraft’s most distinctive features is the deeply recessed intake positioned on the upper fuselage. Rather than exposing the engine inlet directly at the front or underside of the aircraft, the intake is set behind a descending channel that helps obstruct direct line of sight to the engine face, normally an important source of radar reflections. The arrangement may therefore contribute to signature management while also supporting practical operational requirements. An upper-mounted inlet can reduce vulnerability to foreign-object ingestion when operating from damaged, austere or debris-covered runways, an increasingly important consideration as U.S. airpower concepts place greater emphasis on dispersed operations and reduced dependence on large established bases.

Lockheed Martin’s Vectis is a new autonomous collaborative combat aircraft designed to operate independently or alongside crewed fighters such as the F-35. (Video editing Army Recognition using Lockheed Martin Video)

The prototype will be propelled by the Williams International FJ44-4 turbofan, which produces more than 3,600 lbf (16 kN) of thrust. Using an existing, mature engine reduces propulsion-development risk and lets Skunk Works focus on the airframe, autonomy, mission systems, signature reduction, and weapons integration. Lockheed Martin says the FJ44-4 provides the speed, range and endurance required for the Vectis demonstrator while supporting the program’s aggressive development schedule.

Vectis is not being presented as a supersonic unmanned fighter. Its operational value is instead expected to come from a combination of survivability, endurance, payload, autonomy and cooperative tactics. This reflects a fundamental principle behind collaborative combat aircraft: an autonomous aircraft does not need to reproduce every characteristic of a crewed fighter to increase the effectiveness of a fighter formation. It can carry additional sensors or weapons, perform electronic warfare, move closer to defended areas, or occupy tactical positions that would create greater risk for a crewed aircraft.

For an F-35-led formation, Vectis could therefore increase the number of sensors and weapons available without requiring an equivalent increase in crewed fighters. An unmanned aircraft operating forward or offset from the main formation could search for threats, contribute targeting information, support electronic attack or add air-to-air missile capacity while the crewed fighter remains farther from the most dangerous portion of the engagement. Lockheed Martin specifically identifies precision strike, ISR and targeting, electronic warfare, and offensive and defensive counter-air among the aircraft’s intended missions, giving Vectis a considerably broader role than an unmanned aircraft optimized solely for reconnaissance or weapons carriage.

Internal weapon carriage is particularly relevant to that concept. Keeping weapons inside the fuselage avoids the radar-signature penalties associated with external pylons and stores, allowing an aircraft designed around reduced observability to retain that configuration during combat missions. Lockheed Martin imagery has linked Vectis to air-to-air weapons, including the AIM-120 AMRAAM, suggesting a potential role in increasing missile capacity for fighter formations while preserving the low-observable characteristics of both crewed and uncrewed aircraft.

This opens several potential employment concepts. During an air-superiority mission, Vectis could add air-to-air weapons or occupy forward tactical positions while crewed fighters remain farther from enemy interceptors and surface-to-air missile systems. In strike operations, autonomous aircraft could potentially approach defended targets or support suppression of enemy air defenses without exposing a pilot to the same level of risk. Other aircraft could be configured for reconnaissance, targeting or electronic warfare, allowing a formation to distribute sensors, jammers and weapons across several autonomous aircraft instead of requiring every fighter to carry the complete mission package.

The deeper significance lies in this distribution of functions. Future air-combat formations could combine crewed fighters with several autonomous aircraft configured for different tasks: one concentrating on sensing, another on electronic warfare and another on weapons carriage. Information generated by one aircraft could then support an engagement performed by another, creating a distributed kill chain in which sensing, decision-making and weapons employment no longer have to originate from the same aircraft. Such an architecture could complicate an adversary’s targeting problem because disrupting a single aircraft would not necessarily eliminate the entire engagement chain.

Autonomy is therefore as important to Vectis as aerodynamic performance. Lockheed Martin says the aircraft is designed to fly independently or cooperate with crewed aircraft such as the F-35. In practical terms, this requires more than remotely piloting an unmanned aircraft from another cockpit. A fighter pilot managing a complex combat mission cannot continuously control several additional aircraft at the level of basic flight commands. The autonomous aircraft must instead be capable of executing assigned tasks, navigating, maintaining tactical relationships, reacting to changing conditions and cooperating with other aircraft while leaving the human operator focused on command decisions rather than direct flight control.

Connectivity is equally central to this concept. Lockheed Martin describes Vectis as providing multi-domain connectivity and integration with fifth-generation and future aircraft. Its military value would therefore depend not only on its onboard sensors and weapons but also on how effectively it can exchange targeting and mission data with the wider force. A forward-positioned Vectis could potentially detect or refine a target while another autonomous aircraft or a crewed fighter provides the weapon, allowing the formation to separate sensing from engagement and create a more distributed combat architecture.

Range and endurance will strongly influence how far this concept can be applied. Lockheed Martin says Vectis is being designed with endurance compatible with operations in the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and the U.S. Central Command area, although the company has not released a specific combat radius. That distinction matters because no precise operational range should be treated as established performance yet. The reference to the Indo-Pacific nevertheless clarifies the requirement: operations across the Pacific demand considerable endurance because of the long distances between bases, operating areas, and potential targets. A collaborative combat aircraft intended for that environment must operate with fighters across large distances while retaining enough fuel for tactical maneuvering and recovery.

Vectis also illustrates the difficult balance between survivability and affordability that will shape the collaborative combat aircraft market. Low-observable shaping, advanced materials, mission systems, sensors, and propulsion integration traditionally increase combat aircraft costs, yet autonomous aircraft are expected to generate much of their military value through numbers. Lockheed Martin therefore appears to be pursuing enough survivability and mission capability for Vectis to operate in contested environments without duplicating the full capability and cost structure of an F-35 or a future sixth-generation crewed fighter. The company explicitly says the aircraft is being developed around aggressive affordability goals and intends to offer it at a collaborative-combat-aircraft price point.

This helps explain why Vectis should not be viewed as a replacement for the F-35. Its intended contribution is to increase what a fighter-centered force can place in the battlespace: more sensors, additional weapons, more electronic-warfare capacity and a larger number of tactical nodes without adding the same number of pilots or high-cost crewed fighters. The concept also changes how operational risk can be distributed. Losing an advanced unmanned combat aircraft would remain militarily and financially significant, but it would not expose a pilot to death or capture, allowing commanders to consider tactical positions and mission profiles that may carry unacceptable human risk for crewed aircraft.

The current expansion from one prototype to a planned fleet of five is consequently more important than simply increasing the number of test aircraft. Collaborative combat concepts require experimentation involving several aircraft simultaneously. A larger fleet could allow Skunk Works to evaluate autonomous coordination, formation tactics, communications, sensor sharing, and eventually weapons integration in scenarios that cannot be reproduced with a single demonstrator. Lockheed Martin says the first aircraft remains on schedule to fly by the end of 2027, following a development process in which the company moved from the first drawing to a wind-tunnel fly-off in less than two months and completed its first digital build within six months.

Vectis should also be understood within the broader shift toward collaborative combat aircraft across U.S. airpower. The objective is not simply to place an unmanned aircraft beside a fighter, but to distribute combat functions across a network of crewed and autonomous aircraft. In that context, Vectis represents Lockheed Martin’s effort to combine relatively high survivability, internal weapons, useful endurance, and autonomous integration in an aircraft that can contribute directly to high-intensity air operations rather than remaining outside the most contested areas.

For defense aerospace analysts, this combination is more revealing than any individual specification. A relatively large autonomous aircraft with internal weapons, low-observable shaping, long-range ambitions, and the ability to cooperate with F-35s points toward a combat concept in which unmanned aircraft become integral elements of the fighter formation. Instead of functioning primarily as reconnaissance drones or remotely controlled auxiliaries, aircraft such as Vectis could become distributed sensors, weapon carriers and electronic-warfare nodes positioned throughout the battlespace.

Whether Vectis can achieve that role remains an open question. The aircraft has not yet flown, and Lockheed Martin’s claims concerning survivability, autonomy, affordability and combat effectiveness remain developmental objectives rather than demonstrated operational performance. Flight testing and subsequent demonstrations will need to show whether Vectis can combine useful payload, range, dependable autonomy, and low observability at a cost that allows procurement in meaningful numbers. What the design already reveals, however, is the direction Skunk Works is pursuing: not simply an autonomous aircraft flying next to a fighter, but an unmanned combat aircraft intended to become a distributed and survivable component of the fighter force itself.

Explore More Defense News

• Land Defense News
• Naval Defense News
• Defense Aerospace News

Written by Alain Servaes – Chief Editor, Army Recognition Group
Alain Servaes is a former infantry non-commissioned officer and the founder of Army Recognition. With over 20 years in defense journalism, he provides expert analysis on military equipment, NATO operations, and the global defense industry.