Anduril officials say company can’t start on CCA production contract without FY27 budget

Anduril's Fury CCA drone flies alongside an F-35 Joint Strike Fighter during testing. (Anduril)

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — With no sight of a fiscal 2027 defense budget until December at earliest, Anduril officials are warning that production work on FQ-44 Fury drones won’t be able to commence until funding is approved by Congress.

In June, the Air Force awarded production contracts to Anduril and General Atomics to build the service’s first round of Collaborative Combat Aircraft.

But while Anduril has invested its own funds into building a new production facility and started buying item s with long lead times, it will need Congress to pass FY27 appropriations before it can start work on the FQ-44 Fury, said Erin Simpson, Anduril’s vice president for strategy execution.

“What we communicate to the Air Force is that we have invested and have gone as far as we can,” she told reporters Monday at the Association for Air and Space Forces conference. “We will not have a cold start to start production in [20]27. We will have assets rolling through. That said, even a company like ours can only do so much without procurement dollars.”

Earlier this month, Congress passed a continuing resolution (CR) that will keep the government funded when the new fiscal year starts on Oct. 1. The CR holds government spending at FY26 levels through Dec. 11, and restricts the Defense Department’s ability to start work on new programs.

However, if Congress is unable to pass a budget in December and instead opts to approve another funding stopgap to allow additional time for negotiations, Simpson raised the possibility the future CR could include an anomaly — or funding exemption — that would allow it to start work on the CCA production contract.

“We are very happy and have been working very closely with the Air Force. Whatever they need from us to help make that case, we are ready to turn dollars into airplanes, and whatever we can do to help that make that happen, we want to do,” she said.

During a Monday speech at the conference, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said the service now expects 500 CCA drones will be in service by 2032. He did not specify how many of those drones might come from the CCA program’s first “increment,” or how many may be drawn from successive development rounds.

Both the service and the companies building the first round of CCAs have declined to disclose how many aircraft will be built under the June production contracts.

Anduril’s Arsenal-1 facility outside Columbus, Ohio, can produce as many as 150 Fury aircraft per year, Jason Levin, the company’s senior vice president of engineering, said on Monday. He added that the Air Force’s current orders do not yet reach that threshold.

While Anduril awaits FY27 dollars to start producing FQ-44 drones early next year, it is currently building Fury prototypes — known as YFQ-44 — at Arsenal-1, Levin said. The company is the first of the two CCA builders to deliver a prototype to the Air Force’s Experimental Operations Unit (EOU), which is building the playbook for how the service will operate CCAs in the future.

In July, the Air Force disclosed that the YFQ-44 was the first CCA to conduct a successful live fire test of a munition, in this case an AMRAAM air-to air-missile. In the wake of that test, Anduril has begun integrating other munitions using its own internal funding, including 500-pound guided bombs, small diameter bombs and low-cost cruise missiles such as the company’s Barracuda 500, Levin said.

“We’ve also looked at other air-to-air weapons, as well as begun integration on rocket pods and targeting pods, so we can perform other missions, whether it’s counter-UAS, counter-cruise missile, or you know air-to-ground or air-to-surface strike,” he said.

Anduril has also been supporting the EOU as it conducts additional Fury tests at Creech Air Force Base, Nev., Levin said.

“We basically just like upped the ante to do more complex things,” Levin said.

“We did a hot reload,” he said. “Basically, they left the engine of YFQ-44 running [and] two EOU personnel were able to swap out the AMRAAM, the AIM-120, very quickly with the engine running. This got them down from doing sorties where you would spend hours between, where now they were down to minutes in between.”

In other tests, Air Force operators launched and recovered the aircraft on their own, and flew the aircraft using the mission autonomy software without Anduril personnel assisting.

The Fury has flown in formation with F-35s, but Anduril has also begun “quarterback integration” with manned fighter jets, where that manned fighter would be able to control the drone from a tablet, Levin said.

“We’ve already begun doing quarterback integration in our hardware-in-the-loop environments, and our software-in-the-loop environments, and even on the aircraft itself,” he said. “Most of those events will be coming up here in a matter of weeks or months, [where] you’ll see the first quarterback integration with Fury.”

在测试期间，安杜里尔公司的“狂怒”CCA无人机与一架F-35联合攻击战斗机并排飞行。（安杜里尔公司）

马里兰州国家港——由于最早也要到 12 月才能看到 2027 财年国防预算，Anduril 公司官员警告说，在国会批准拨款之前，FQ-44 Fury 无人机的生产工作将无法开始。

6 月，美国空军授予 Anduril 和通用原子公司生产合同，建造该军种的首批协同作战飞机。

但安杜里尔公司战略执行副总裁艾琳·辛普森表示，尽管安杜里尔公司已投入自有资金建造新的生产设施，并开始采购交货周期较长的物品，但该公司仍需国会通过 2027 财年拨款才能开始研发 FQ-44 Fury 战斗机。

“我们向空军传达的信息是，我们已经投入了足够的资源，也尽了全力，”她周一在空军和太空部队协会会议上告诉记者。“我们不会在2027年启动生产时遇到任何困难。我们的设备将陆续投入使用。话虽如此，即使像我们这样的公司，如果没有采购资金，也只能做到这么多。”

本月初，国会通过了一项持续拨款决议（CR），以确保政府在10月1日新财年开始时获得资金。该决议将政府支出维持在2026财年的水平，直至12月11日，并限制国防部启动新项目的能力。

然而，如果国会在 12 月份无法通过预算，而是选择批准另一项临时拨款，以便为谈判争取更多时间，辛普森提出，未来的 CR 可能会包含一项例外条款——或资金豁免——允许其开始着手 CCA 生产合同的工作。

“我们非常高兴，并且一直与空军密切合作。无论他们需要我们提供什么来帮助促成此事，我们都准备好将资金转化为飞机，只要能帮助他们实现目标，我们都愿意去做，”她说。

空军部长特洛伊·梅因克周一在会议上发表讲话时表示，空军预计到2032年将有500架CCA无人机投入使用。他没有具体说明这些无人机中有多少架可能来自CCA计划的第一批“增量”，也没有具体说明有多少架可能来自后续的研发阶段。

无论是该机构还是建造首批CCA飞机的公司，都拒绝透露根据6月份的生产合同将建造多少架飞机。

安杜里尔公司位于俄亥俄州哥伦布市郊外的Arsenal-1工厂每年最多可生产150架“狂怒”战斗机。该公司工程高级副总裁杰森·莱文周一表示，空军目前的订单量尚未达到这一水平。

莱文表示，安杜里尔公司正在等待2027财年拨款，以便明年初开始生产FQ-44无人机。目前，该公司正在阿森纳-1工厂建造“狂怒”无人机原型机——代号YFQ-44。安杜里尔是两家CCA无人机制造商中首家向空军实验作战部队（EOU）交付原型机的公司。EOU正在制定空军未来如何操作CCA无人机的方案。

今年7月，美国空军披露，YFQ-44是首个成功完成弹药实弹测试的CCA（作战能力评估中心），此次测试的弹药为AMRAAM空空导弹。莱文表示，测试成功后，安杜里尔公司已开始利用自有资金整合其他弹药，包括500磅制导炸弹、小直径炸弹以及低成本巡航导弹，例如该公司的“梭鱼500”导弹。

“我们也研究了其他空对空武器，并开始将其集成到火箭发射器和瞄准吊舱中，以便我们能够执行其他任务，无论是反无人机系统、反巡航导弹，还是空对地或空对地打击，”他说。

莱文表示，安杜里尔公司也一直在为美国国防经济大学 (EOU) 提供支持，因为该大学正在内华达州克里奇空军基地进行额外的“狂怒”导弹测试。

“我们基本上只是提高了门槛，去做更复杂的事情，”莱文说。

“我们进行了一次快速换弹，”他说。“基本上，他们让YFQ-44的发动机保持运转，两名EOU人员在发动机运转的情况下迅速更换了AMRAAM导弹，也就是AIM-120。这使得他们从每次出击间隔数小时缩短到了每次出击间隔几分钟。”

在其他测试中，空军操作员自行起飞和回收了飞机，并使用任务自主软件驾驶飞机，而无需 Anduril 人员协助。

莱文表示，Fury无人机已经与F-35战斗机进行过编队飞行，但Anduril公司也已经开始与有人驾驶战斗机进行“四分卫整合”，即有人驾驶战斗机可以通过平板电脑控制无人机。

他说：“我们已经在硬件在环环境、软件在环环境，甚至飞机本身上开始进行四分卫系统的集成。大多数此类活动将在几周或几个月内举行，届时您将看到Fury战机首次进行四分卫系统集成。”