Anduril’s first Ohio-made unmanned, semi-autonomous aircraft rolled off the production line Monday, just four months after its beginning.
The defense company’s first YFQ-44A was built in its Pickaway County, Ohio, manufacturing facility, dubbed Arsenal-1, according to a social media post. Anduril first announced the facility’s construction in January 2025 and slated its first products manufacturing to begin July 2026.
In January 2026, Anduril declared that its first product would be the YFQ-44A, a missionized variant of the company’s FQ-44, or “Fury,” autonomous fighter jet, for the U.S. Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program.
The $1 billion, 5 million-square-foot facility is located near Rickenbacker International Airport and plans to add 4,000 jobs to the area.
The aircraft’s production comes two weeks after the Air Force conducted its first-ever live-fire test with its CCA. The YFQ-44A executed an end-to-end, beyond-line-of-sight strike against a simulated target using an inert AIM-120, which is an advanced medium-range air-to-air missile.
As Anduril announced the aircraft’s production, the Air Force also revealed on Monday the completion of a recent Agile Combat Employment exercise that showcased CCA operations at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada.
“Air superiority in today’s increasingly contested environments requires the rapid fielding of affordable mass,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ken Wilsbach said in the release. “CCA are essential to this effort. By integrating uncrewed systems to fly alongside our Airmen, we extend reach and increase lethality.”
The multi-day exercise was conducted by the CCA Experimental Operations Unit and was meant to build foundational tactics, techniques and procedures that will shape how the aircraft are integrated into the force, the release says.
The EOU completed multiple sorties, integrated with manned platforms in the local airspace and simulated scenarios.
“Our test teams can continuously use these warfighter-run exercises to gather and analyze data that aids in informed CCA fielding decisions well ahead of the normal process to deliver combat capability when needed by our Air Force and the Nation,” said Brig. Gen. Jesse Friedel, Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center commander, whose team members observed the event.
Air Force officials have continuously asserted that any decision to deploy munitions still lies in the human operator’s hands, as they have control and command of the platform at all times, even though the aircraft are unmanned and semi-autonomous.
In a recent roundtable, former Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said that building trust between human operators and autonomous systems begins with computerized, man-in-the-loop simulations and training exercises, such as Red Flag at Nellis.
The Air Force awarded the CCA contracts last month to Anduril and General Atomics for their YFQ-44A and YFQ-42A, respectively.
The service has eyed 100 to 150 aircraft in its program’s first increment, with a longer-term goal of fielding 1,000 CCAs.
Anduril had not yet announced Tuesday the number of YFQ-44As the facility will produce, but the production line has the capacity to build 150 each year.
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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