<\/p>\n
Audio of this article is brought to you by the Air & Space Forces Association, honoring and supporting our Airmen, Guardians, and their families. Find out more at afa.org<\/p>\n
One of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems\u2019 prototype Collaborative Combat Aircraft drones<\/a> crashed shortly after takeoff April 6, and the company has paused its test flights while it investigates the incident.<\/p>\n The YFQ-42A drone took off from an airport in the California desert<\/a> owned by General Atomics at about 1 p.m. Pacific time, the company said in a statement. It crashed shortly afterward.\t\t<\/p>\n General Atomics said it is evaluating the condition of the crashed CCA and investigating what caused the crash. The company said it is too soon to speculate about the possible root cause.<\/p>\n \u201cSafety is our top priority, for our people and the public,\u201d General Atomics spokesman C. Mark Brinkley said. \u201cIn this case, established procedures and safeguards worked as intended, and there were no injuries. We\u2019re going to take a close look at what happened, gather all the data, and allow the investigation to guide us moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n General Atomics said several production-representative YFQ-42As are in low-rate initial production for the Air Force and fly regularly under the CCA\u2019s operational test and evaluation program.<\/p>\n The company said those test flights will resume \u201cwhen deemed appropriate.\u201d Brinkley declined to estimate how long flight tests might be on hold.<\/p>\n The Air Force wants to create a fleet of lower-cost, semi-autonomous CCA drones to carry out strike, reconnaissance, electronic warfare, or other missions, sometimes alongside fighters such as the F-35 or F-47.\t\t<\/p>\n General Atomics\u2019 YFQ-42A and Anduril Industries\u2019 YFQ-44A are competing for what the Air Force is calling Increment 1 of the CCA program. The service has said it expects to make a production decision for Increment 1 by the end of fiscal 2026, on Sept. 30.<\/p>\n General Atomics achieved first flight with the YFQ-42A in August<\/a> and started flying it with third-party \u201cmission software\u201d in February.<\/a> Mission software is artificial intelligence-powered autonomy software that controls the aircraft in flight based on basic instructions from a human\n<\/p>\n Audio of this article is brought to you by the Air & Space Forces Association, honoring and supporting our Airmen, Guardians, and their families. Find out more at afa.org<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio of this article is brought to you by the Air & Space Forces Association, honoring and supporting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,44924,350,33016,15551,22643,112949],"class_list":{"0":"post-254959","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-cca","12":"tag-crash","13":"tag-general-atomics","14":"tag-palmdale","15":"tag-test-flight","16":"tag-yfq-42a"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}