June 29, 2026: The American Air Force has agreed to put two Collaborative Combat Aircraft drones into service. The FQ-42 and FQ-44 will cost a billion dollars to get them into production by the end of the decade. The Air Force has already awarded contracts for production of the FQ-42A and FQ-44A drones. The Air Force development process began in 2024 and the prototype versions of these two drones first flew between August and October 2025. The Air Force expects to put 150 of these two drones into service by the end of the decade.

Collaborative Combat Aircraft are not new. A decade ago the Air Force demonstrated that F-16s equipped to operate as drones could successfully operate in formation with manned F-16s. This was all part of the Loyal Wingman program for eventually integrating combat drones with piloted warplanes. The F-16 drone needed software that would allow it to fly in formation and execute attack missions on its own, to avoid interference from jamming. That software worked although the initial flight tests of Loyal Wingman simply confirmed that the F-16 drones could safely fly in formation with piloted F-16s and effectively receive and respond to commands from the flight leader or other piloted F-16s. Further work involved drone software and resistance to jamming. All this live software testing would eventually be used in combat drones like the ones the navy has been testing and the air force was developing. The Army has already been testing similar software control of drones by suitably equipped attack helicopters.

Loyal Wingman came about after four years of effort to develop a drone version of the F-16. This drone version was based on the QF-16, the remotely controlled target version of the F-16. Back in 2013 the air force got its first QF-16 flying and began converting over a hundred retired F-16s to QF-16s. At the time it was noted that with a little extra work the QF-16 could be turned into a combat drone for dangerous missions like SEAD/Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses or attacking ground targets guarded by heavy air defenses. The air force was already planning to use combat drones for this but those were not available yet. It was noted that QF type aircraft use GPS to help with navigation and to insure that QFs flying in formation didn’t collide with one another. The QF-16 also carried sensors to detect near misses by missiles. Out of that came modified software and some additional hardware to enable the recent flight tests.

There were several other reasons for adapting the F-16 to be a combat drone in addition to designing combat drones from scratch. For one thing, the drone version of any combat aircraft was superior in some ways to one with a pilot in it. This was mainly because pilots black out when the aircraft makes turns too sharply at high speed. QF-16s used regularly for Loyal Wingman training also makes it possible to monitor, via additional sensors in the QF-16, how extreme, for piloted aircraft, maneuvers stress the fighters. Tests of manned aircraft have always been part of the development and testing process for new and modified aircraft. But those tests were limited by the cost of losing a lot of aircraft. By the 1960s fighter aircraft design had reached the point where the aircraft could perform maneuvers, like high speed turns, that humans could not handle. The air force discovered how effective this capability was during the 1970s, when they rigged some jet fighters to fly without a pilot and had them go up against manned aircraft. The remote controlled fighters were able to outmaneuver the same aircraft carrying pilots.

The QF-16 has already demonstrated its ability to carry out acrobatic maneuvers under remote control. This would be useful in getting into heavily defended airspace. Adding more sensors and flight control software could produce a formidable combat drone. Even after all the QF-16 conversions are completed, there will be several hundred retired F-16s suitable for conversion to combat drones.