This spring, 60 Minutes got the media’s first look at “Fury,” a jet with no cockpit and no pilot, built by the defense-tech startup Anduril.
Now, this futuristic fighter has taken a very real step forward — its first test flight. The prototype built for the U.S. military and designated YFQ-44A, made its maiden flight at the end of October, showing the Air Force’s plan for autonomous wingmen is accelerating fast.
Anduril calls Fury’s first flight semi-autonomous and says it isn’t piloted remotely. Instead, it operates by itself, carrying out mission plans and adjusting its flight without human input.
It returns to land when commanded. And the whole time, a person monitors its actions rather than directly flying it.
Fury is a Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCA. It’s powered by artificial intelligence to operate together with fighter jets that have pilots.
Anduril CEO and co-founder Brian Schimpf said the jets are intended to protecting pilots’ lives.
“These fly out ahead of manned fighters, and they’re able to find the enemy first, be able to engage the enemy well before a manned fighter has to be seen or is in range,” Schimpf said. “So, these are really about providing that deterrence by putting systems well out in front of manned fighters.”
According to Anduril, Fury has a “kill switch” that allows a human operator to abort a mission by hitting a button. Fury also requires a person to approve lethal actions, like firing missiles.
Anduril says Fury completed a successful test flight, controlling its own throttle, altitude, and navigation under supervision from the ground.
It’s a milestone the company reached in just over 18 months, from concept to flight.
The Pentagon selected Anduril as one of two companies to create a CCA prototype, choosing it over a number of prime defense contractors. Whether or not the Air Force chooses to go with Anduril, the company says it plans to mass produce the aircraft in the United States, possibly for a lot less money than a traditional fighter jet.
“The goal of these systems is to be mass producible,” Schimpf said. “And we tried to eliminate really every bottleneck we could find around what makes an aircraft hard to produce.”
Schimpf pointed to the jet’s landing gear, which was designed to be built in any machine shop, and the engine, which uses a mass-produced commercial business jet engine.
“We’ve designed nearly every part of this that could be made in hundreds of different places within the U.S. from lots of different suppliers,” Schimpf said.
Anduril isn’t the only unmanned jet in the air.
General Atomics, best known for drones like the MQ-9 Reaper, has also flown its own entry in the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program. Its combat drone, the YFQ-42A, completed its first flight this August and its second flight earlier this month.
But Anduril founder Palmer Luckey says his company doesn’t have its sights set on General Atomics.
“I think we’re racing against China,” Luckey told 60 Minutes in the spring. “We talk about this all the time internally. Our adversary is not other defense contractors. It’s hostile foreign powers that are fundamentally misaligned with the American way of life, who are trying to achieve massive economic and military overmatch and destroy our economy, destroy our military, and destroy our ability to influence people around the world.”
When asked about China’s capabilities, Luckey declined to comment in detail but warned that the U.S. faces “a very competent, very credible adversary” with significant advantages.
Luckey also addressed moral concerns raised by autonomous weapons.
“It’s a scary idea,” he acknowledged. “But that’s the world we live in. I’d say it’s a lot scarier, for example, to imagine a weapons system that doesn’t have any level of intelligence at all.”
The video above was produced by Brit McCandless Farmer and Jessica Kegu. It was edited by Scott Rosann.
