General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. (GA-ASI) has selected Spirit Defense, a Boeing company, as a fuselage design-and-build partner for its FQ-42 Vengeance Collaborative Combat Aircraft.
The agreement will see Spirit Defense support airframe work from design through to production, GA-ASI said.
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Financial terms and production quantities were not disclosed.
GA-ASI received a US Air Force contract in June to produce the FQ-42, an uncrewed fighter aircraft developed for the service’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) programme.
The company said the partnership is intended to add manufacturing capacity and reduce reliance on a single production source as the CCA programme moves towards higher-rate production.
GA-ASI president David Alexander said: “We’re excited to be working with Spirit Defense. We’ve established our proven design, development, and manufacturing capability for the FQ-42. 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 War are looking for from industry.”
GA-ASI described the FQ-42 as a semi-autonomous, modular aircraft designed to accommodate mission systems and autonomy software. Its software architecture has been flight-tested on multiple airframes and is intended to support human-machine teaming.
The company has previously manufactured its uncrewed aircraft systems internally, including the MQ-9A Reaper, MQ-1C Gray Eagle, MQ-20 Avenger and MQ-9B SkyGuardian and SeaGuardian.
GA-ASI said it is also discussing potential production arrangements with international military customers interested in its Gambit family of collaborative combat aircraft.
The Gambit Series is a family of uncrewed combat aircraft derived from the FQ-42, XQ-67A and MQ-20 Avenger for electronic warfare and precision-strike missions.
The company said customers could incorporate domestic manufacturing and their own sensors, weapons and other systems into those programmes.
