General Atomics CCA drone returns to flight

WASHINGTON — A drone wingman built by General Atomics has resumed flying roughly one month after crashing in the California desert shortly after takeoff. 

In a press release Thursday, the company said its YFQ-44A aircraft “returned to flight testing following a round of safety reviews and software enhancements.” Nobody was injured in the April 6 crash, which, according to the firm, stemmed from “an autopilot miscalculation for the weight and center of gravity of the aircraft, prompting a software remediation.”

The drone is being developed for the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. According to an Air Force official overseeing the effort, the drone’s crash and the team’s subsequent response actually underscores that the program is taking the right approach. 

“The CCA program was and is set up to learn, even when the learning comes from ‘failing forward,’” said Col. Timothy Helfrich, the Air Force’s portfolio acquisition executive for fighters and advanced aircraft. On Wednesday, the Pentagon announced Helfrich has been tapped for promotion to brigadier general. 

“The USAF and General Atomics response to the YFQ-42 mishap validates our approach to accept acquisition/test risk instead of operational risk allowing us to accelerate the program towards fielding. We pushed the envelope, identified a risk, learned from the data, and have cleared the YFQ-42A to return to flight,” Helfrich said. 

General Atomics is on contract alongside Anduril for the CCA program, where the two firms are competing for a production deal. Northrop Grumman has also emerged as a dark horse contender.

The crash, however, did not set back the CCA program, Helfrich said.

“Despite the pause on one platform,” an exercise with the Air Force’s experimental operations unit continued “that same week using [Anduril’s] YFQ-44A to validate core operational and deployment concepts,” Helfrich said. “Because of this momentum and our resilient, multi-vendor approach, overall CCA progress never missed a beat as we drive toward delivering advanced capability to the fleet.”    

The Air Force is requesting roughly $1.4 billion to develop CCA drones in fiscal 2027, alongside nearly $1 billion for procurement. A production decision for the first round or “increment” of the CCA program is expected this summer.

A second CCA increment kicked off in December 2025 with the award of early design contracts to nine firms, Breaking Defense previously reported.