General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI), a builder of uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS), announced a partnership with Spirit Defense, a Boeing Company, to support airframe production of the new FQ-42 Vengeance Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA).
In June, GA-ASI won a contract from the U.S. Air Force (USAF) to produce FQ-42. Spirit Defense’s role as a fuselage design-build partner brings together the company’s engineering and advanced manufacturing capabilities to support the program from design through production.
Based in California, GA-ASI has been the sole manufacturer of its line of UAS, which includes MQ-9A Reaper, MQ-1C Gray Eagle, MQ-20 Avenger and MQ-9B SkyGuardian/SeaGuardian, since the company’s inception in 1992. The company stated that partnering with Spirit Defense would offer manufacturing capacity and industrial depth to scale CCA production faster, while strengthening production resilience and reducing the risk of single points of failure.
“We’ve established our proven design, development and manufacturing capability for the FQ-42,” GA-ASI President David Alexander said. “With Spirit Defense, we add capacity, which is exactly the kind of production resilience our U.S. Air Force customer is looking for with its CCA ramp-up.”
FQ-42 is a purpose-built, uncrewed fighter, developed with the Air Force as part of ongoing investment in next-generation semi-autonomous combat aircraft. The jet’s modular design enables rapid integration of mission systems and mission autonomy software. GA-ASI’s software architecture, demonstrated through live flight tests on multiple airframes, provides the foundation for human-machine teaming in complex combat scenarios.
