How Loyal Wingman UCAVs Are Evolving Into Collaborative Combat Aircraft Pro

On 17 June 2026, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) signed its first production contracts for more than 150 ‘loyal wingman’ unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) – the aircraft it designates collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) – divided across the Anduril Industries FQ-44A Fury and General Atomics FQ-42A Dark Merlin, at a target unit cost of USD $30 million. Though lower in cost than the F-35A stealth fighter, the pricing of these first production-ready loyal wingman drones is significantly higher than what was originally imagined for this category of uncrewed combat aircraft – i.e., less than $2 million.

When reviewing the loyal wingman UCAVs under development around the world, the sharp vertical cost increase could be attributed to two factors: First, the actual collaborative combat aircraft becoming larger, more capable, and more complex than originally ideated for an attritable loyal wingman drone. Second, the ‘attritable’ aspects of these UCAVs – i.e., affordability and disposability – are being shifted to a new category of smaller, expendable drones, such as decoys, loitering munitions, and dual cruise-missile/decoy drones.

That said, the upward shift in cost and complexity has not dissuaded countries from pursuing their respective loyal wingman UCAVs – to the contrary, that list of collaborative combat aircraft programs is growing. However, it is worth exploring why the ostensibly lower-cost, attritable loyal wingman drone is not emerging.

The Origins of Loyal Wingman UCAVs

The loyal wingman concept emerged in 2019 under the USAF’s Low Cost Attritable Strike Demonstrator (LCASD) program, which sought a new jet-powered combat drone capable of air-to-air and air-to-surface missions, but with an aggressive focus on simplicity and cost control.

Under LCASD, these new UCAVs would fly alongside manned fighters in a manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) construct, assuming the roles of carrying additional air-to-air missiles (AAM) and air-to-ground munitions (AGM), serving as decoys to absorb the enemy’s AAMs, and executing specialized tasks like electronic attack (EA) jamming. These roles would, by necessity, force these uncrewed combat aircraft to absorb losses, hence the ‘attritability’ requirement where they should be cheap enough to buy and replace in large numbers.

Kratos, which was known for designing and producing target drones, led LCASD development through its XQ-58 Valkyrie. Kratos designed the Valkyrie to be a low-cost, runway-independent combat drone with a cost of less than $2 million per unit. However, looking back at the LCASD, that aggressive cost figure would only have been possible by omitting many subsystems and inputs – some of which would be necessary for the air-to-air and air-to-surface roles – and, at most, leveraging purely an airframe with basic systems. And, in turn, if the UCAVs start taking on systems like active electronically scanned array (AESA) radars, avionics, electronic warfare (EW) systems, and other inputs (e.g., to enable autonomous operations), then the idea of ‘attritability’ falls as well, since those are all high-value inputs.

USAF Programs

Moving forward to today, the first production-ready collaborative combat aircraft for the USAF – i.e., the Anduril FQ-44A Fury and General Atomics FQ-42A Dark Merlin – remain within the 2-ton to 4-ton maximum take-off weight (MTOW) class of the Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie, but are larger and place greater emphasis on retrieval and reusability. In this loyal wingman space, the emphasis has shifted more towards the ‘autonomy layer’ – i.e., the hardware and software inputs that would enable these UCAVs to operate independently of a human operator – to manage these drones.

In this respect, USAF selected Shield AI’s Hivemind platform, with RTX serving as the second/supporting vendor. It is worth noting that Shield AI is also working on its own UCAV – i.e., X-BAT – that is larger than the Fury and Dark Merlin and capable of using a fighter-class engine such as the Pratt & Whitney F100 or General Electric F110 turbofan. However, besides being a larger UCAV (Group 5), the lambda-wing X-BAT will also be capable of runway-independent operation via a vertical-launch-and-recovery system.

Overall, USAF’s loyal wingman UCAV programs are rising in their costs and complexities, with the then-Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall stating in January 2025 that a 20-30% cost increase for Increment 2 orders “would not be out of order.” That said, while UCAV costs are increasing, they are still well below the pricing of next-generation crewed aircraft, while still providing many (potentially most if the autonomy layer factors into the picture) of the operational outcomes. One would imagine force planners preferring to send and, in turn, potentially lose, UCAVs in operations ahead of crewed fighters. Thus, in a way, the lower cost as well as attritability and replaceability aspects are there, but not to the same degree as LCASD imagined. But it should be noted that the rapid iterative cycles are present, with Increment 2 units (e.g., potentially X-BAT) providing a clear capability jump compared to the Increment 1 systems (Fury and Dark Merlin). So, while costs and complexities have moved up, the iterative cycle has not slowed.

Türkiye

Türkiye started its programs at the heavier MTOW tier, with the Baykar Bayraktar Kızılelma (‘Red Apple’) and Turkish Aerospace (TAI) Anka-3 sitting at 6 tons and 6.5 tons, respectively. Both UCAVs are designed to offer payloads in excess of 1,000 kg, with the Anka-3 providing 1,200 kg and the Kızılelma 1,500 kg, as well as advanced onboard sensors and subsystems. Tusaş Engine Industries (TEI) is in the final stages of developing the indigenous TF6000 turbofan engine, which will power these UCAVs, thereby providing the Turkish drone stack a largely homegrown, sovereign-controlled chain of inputs.