General Atomics partners with Spirit Defence to strengthen FQ-42 production
The partnership highlights a growing need for industry collaboration.
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) has named Spirit Defence as a collaborator on airframe production for the new FQ-42 Vengeance collaborative combat aircraft (CCA). It marks the first time General Atomics has partnered with another manufacturer on a UAS since the company’s inception in 1992.
Boeing subsidiary Spirit will serve as a fuselage partner from design through to production, as announced on 23 October. The company is a contributor to other major aircraft programmes, including the Boeing B-52, Northrop Grumman B-21 and Sikorsky CH-53K programmes.
“With Spirit Defense, we add capacity, which is exactly the kind of production resilience our US Air Force customer is looking for with its CCA ramp-up. This kind of partnership represents the scalable industrial base the air force and the US Department of Defense are looking for from industry,” says General Atomics president David Alexander.
This follows air force secretary Troy Meink saying in September 2026 that the USAF aims to field 500 CCAs by 2032, along with hundreds more low-cost strike aircraft meant to replace the General Atomics MQ-9A Reaper.
That fleet target includes both the FQ-42 and Anduril Industries’ FQ-44 Fury, with both aircraft already under production contracts awarded in June 2026. The contract announcement came four months ahead of schedule under the USAF’s CCA Increment 1 competition. Previously, the USAF had said that a winner would be selected by the end of 2026.
Scaling partnerships for demand
The rapid increase in the scale of CCA production lines could see manufacturing partnerships expand further to meet demand.
General Atomics says it is in discussions with several other international militaries interested in its Gambit Series of modular CCAs. The Gambit family comprises uncrewed combat aircraft optimised for roles including electronic warfare, suppression of enemy air defences (SEAD), destruction of enemy air defences (DEAD), and stand-off precision strike.
Alongside its Gambit family, GA-ASI must also meet production demands for its MQ-9B drones, which build on the MQ-9 Reaper UAS. The US Coast Guard ordered four of the MQ-9B remotely piloted aircraft in October 2026, via an existing contract with US Customs and Border Protection. That buy marked the service’s first purchase of large uncrewed aircraft.
The US Coast Guard will use its new General Atomics MQ-9B remotely piloted aircraft to support long-range surveillance at sea for a variety of missions. Source: US Coast Guard
Current projections place the cost of the new CCA fighters at $20-30 million per aircraft; however, Anduril says the price tag for the Fury will come in well below that level.
“Our Fury is much less than $20 million,” Jason Levin, senior vice-president of air dominance and strike, told FlightGlobal at AFA on 14 September.
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