Anduril and General Atomics as Challenger and Incumbent on Collaborative Combat Aircraft

Anduril vs General Atomics at a Glance

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) builds the YFQ-42A, and Anduril builds the YFQ-44A Fury. The U.S. Air Force awarded both airframes collaborative combat aircraft (CCA) Increment 1 production contracts on June 17, 2026.

GA-ASI is the incumbent. Its Predator series has passed 9 million flight hours, and its Gambit series lists six CCA variants on a shared core. Anduril is the software-first challenger, building Fury around its Lattice software and developing it on internal funding.

Neither company has a ticker or an exchange listing, so this pairing compares capability and maturity rather than two shares you could hold. At Drone and Defense, we carry no share price, valuation, price target or rating for either company on this page.

Company Snapshot

Anduril and GA-ASI match on listing status and differ on catalog breadth, funding disclosure and CCA strategy. The table lines up eight attributes for each company.

For the wider program both airframes belong to, see our collaborative combat aircraft explainer. Each row below is expanded in the sections that follow it.

The Two CCA Increment 1 Airframes

The YFQ-42A and the YFQ-44A both received Air Force CCA Increment 1 production contracts on June 17, 2026. The award went to two airframes at once, so neither company lost a head-to-head decision to the other.

The YFQ-44A has a dated test record. It first flew on October 31, 2025, and in February 2026 a prototype flew carriage flights with an AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM). Fury then entered serial production at Anduril's Arsenal-1 factory in Ohio in March 2026, about three months before the award.

For the YFQ-42A, the record on file here is the June 17, 2026 production award itself. The Air Force has not released an individual unit flyaway price for the YFQ-42A or the YFQ-44A. Treat any per-aircraft price you see elsewhere as unverified, because no official figure exists to check it against.

General Atomics' Predator-Series Flight-Hour Record

GA-ASI states on its home site that its Predator series of aircraft are leaders in their class and the only ones to surpass 9 million flight hours. A second, separate figure sits on the MQ-9B SkyGuardian page, which says SkyGuardian comes from a family of systems with over 8 million flight hours over the past decade.

The two numbers measure different things. The first is a series total, and the second is a family total limited to the past ten years, so neither one corrects or replaces the other.

The MQ-9B adds certification work to the hour counts. GA-ASI designed it to meet NATO STANAG 4671 and civil airspace requirements, and calls it the world's first type-certifiable remotely piloted aircraft system (RPAS). The UK's Royal Air Force will be the first force to operate it, under the designation Protector RG Mk1.

Neither figure is a CCA figure. GA-ASI publishes no flight-hour count for the Gambit series or the YFQ-42A, and no per-aircraft or per-variant breakdown exists. The Predator record shows fielded maturity in remotely piloted aircraft without measuring anything about CCA autonomy.

The Gambit Family Against Anduril's Single CCA Airframe

GA-ASI has announced six Gambit variants on a shared core, and Anduril's catalog shows one CCA airframe, Fury. Anduril describes Fury as a high-performance multi-mission platform designed for accelerated fielding and affordable mass.

Gambit 1 is built for long-endurance intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). Gambit 2 is for air-to-air combat, with provision for air-to-air weapons and less endurance than the ISR variant. Gambit 3 is an advanced trainer and adversary air aircraft.

Gambit 4 is a stealth combat reconnaissance design with swept wings and no tail. Gambit 5 is carrier-based, and Gambit 6 is an air-to-ground variant aimed at the global market.

All six share the Gambit Core of landing gear, baseline avionics, chassis and other common functions, which GA-ASI says accounts for roughly 70% of the price across variants. Every variant is listed as in development with no published endurance, range, speed, weight or payload figures. Anduril's single airframe entered serial production at Arsenal-1 in March 2026, and its trade-off is one design rather than mission-specific variants.

Lattice and the MQ-20 Avenger Autonomy Demonstrations

Anduril sells Lattice as its autonomy and command-and-control software. The Fury page describes Fury as an autonomous air vehicle (AAV) that leverages Lattice software.

In March 2026, Anduril flew the YFQ-44A under both Shield AI's Hivemind autonomy and its own Lattice software. That flight shows the YFQ-44A airframe has flown under autonomy from two suppliers.

GA-ASI's recorded autonomy work runs with a government program office. Its MQ-20 Avenger Autonomous Collaborative Platform (ACP) test aircraft flew a collaborative autonomous mission-planning demonstration with the U.S. Navy's Strike Planning and Execution Systems program office (PMX-281) on September 10. The aircraft flew from GA-ASI's Gray Butte Flight Operations Facility near Palmdale, California, with the Mission Operations Center in Poway, California.

Weight Anduril's side if you want an autonomy layer that the airframe maker owns and sells as a product. Weight GA-ASI's side if you want autonomy evidence from demonstrations flown alongside a Navy program office.

What Each Company Sells That the Other Does Not

Anduril's catalog reaches into counter-drone, undersea and manufacturing work that does not appear in GA-ASI's air vehicle catalog. Anduril presents Lattice, Fury, Roadrunner, Barracuda, Menace, Dive-XL, Steelfin and ArsenalOS, alongside the Arsenal-1 and Arsenal-2 manufacturing programs. In March 2025 the U.S. Marine Corps awarded Anduril a 10-year IDIQ worth up to $642.2 million for installation counter-small unmanned aircraft systems (counter-small-UAS).

The U.S. Army awarded Anduril an enterprise IT and software contract in March 2026 with a ceiling of up to $20 billion, which is the most the Army may order and is not money committed or spent. The Royal Australian Navy's Ghost Shark undersea vehicle moved into an A$1.7 billion program of record in September 2025.

On October 6, 2026, Anduril's newsroom announced that Anduril and the U.S. Navy are investing $6.6 billion to expand America's submarine industrial base.

GA-ASI's catalog is built around remotely piloted aircraft: the MQ-9B SkyGuardian, the maritime MQ-9B SeaGuardian, the MQ-9B short takeoff and landing (STOL) variant in development, the MQ-9A Reaper, the jet-powered Avenger, the Mojave STOL and the Gray Eagle 25M. SkyGuardian is designed to fly over the horizon via satellite for 40+ hours in all weather, with a 79 ft (24 m) wingspan.

It carries the Lynx Multi-mode Radar, an electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor, automatic takeoff and landing, and nine hardpoints with a maximum 4,750 lb (2,155 kg) external payload.

On October 15, 2026, GA-ASI announced it had completed flight testing of the SNC Electronic Support Measures (ESM) system on the MQ-1C Gray Eagle Extended Range (ER). On October 12, 2026, GA-ASI announced that the Arizona Army National Guard will become the first Gray Eagle company in the Army National Guard. Eight Gray Eagle 25Ms are due to arrive there in September 2027.

Neither Company Is Investable Directly

Neither Anduril nor GA-ASI can be bought on a stock exchange. Anduril is private and has not filed for an IPO, and GA-ASI is a private affiliate of General Atomics with no ticker.

GA-ASI lists its affiliated companies on its site as General Atomics, General Atomics Europe GmbH, General Atomics Integrated Intelligence Inc., General Atomics Synopta GmbH and Systems Integration LLC. Anduril confirmed a $5 billion Series H in May 2026, and that newsroom release gave no listing date and no valuation figure.

Neither company files financial statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). There is no revenue, margin or backlog figure for either, so no like-for-like financial comparison is possible, and any estimate of relative size you see elsewhere has no filing behind it.

This comparison does not serve a reader looking for a buy or sell call, because neither company has a share to rate. For listed exposure to the drone category, start with the drone stocks hub. For a wider set of companies measured against Anduril, see Anduril alternatives.

What Would Change the Anduril vs General Atomics Comparison

Four events would change this comparison. An Anduril IPO filing would put SEC-filed financial statements on record and turn one side of the pairing into a company you could research as a stock.

A CCA Increment 2 decision would show whether the Air Force again picks both companies or picks one of them. A funded customer for any Gambit variant would move part of GA-ASI's CCA family out of the in-development column.

Published Gambit endurance, range, speed, weight or payload figures would give researchers performance data for a family that has none on record today. Each of these events can be checked against the company sources named in the next section.

Until one of them happens, GA-ASI fits the reader who values a long flight-hour record and a certification track, and its limit is that the Gambit family has no published figures. Anduril fits the reader who values a software-first model with an airframe in serial production, and its limit is that a single CCA design carries every mission.

How to Research Anduril vs General Atomics From Primary Sources

For Anduril, open the Anduril newsroom first, because the Series H and the submarine investment were announced there. Then read the Fury page for the airframe's stated build qualities, and the Anduril home page for the full product line.

For GA-ASI, open the Gambit series page first for the six variants and the Gambit Core pricing statement. Then read the MQ-9B SkyGuardian page for the specifications and the 8-million-hour family figure, and the GA-ASI home page for the 9-million-hour Predator-series statement.

Start your Anduril vs General Atomics research with the Gambit series page and the Fury page open side by side. Note the mission of each Gambit variant. Then set those missions against the build qualities Anduril lists for Fury.