General Atomics used Air, Space & Cyber 2026 to discuss two unmanned aircraft efforts aimed at different U.S. Air Force priorities: its newly named FQ-42 Vengeance Collaborative Combat Aircraft offering and Wildfire, a proposed lower-cost successor to the MQ-9A Reaper. In a sponsored interview with TWZ at the event, Mike Shortsleeve of General Atomics addressed progress on the programs as the service pursues both collaborative combat aircraft and a new Massed Modular Aircraft, or MMA, fleet.
The two efforts reflect parallel Air Force demand signals. The service plans to buy 500 Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCAs, by 2032, while also seeking hundreds of aircraft to replace the Reaper early in the next decade. General Atomics developed the MQ-9A, which is now out of production, and is positioning Wildfire for the MMA competition.
FQ-42 Vengeance and the CCA push
General Atomics’ CCA offering now carries the FQ-42 Vengeance name. The company discussed the aircraft’s latest progress at the conference, where the CCA program remained a central feature of wider debate about the Air Force’s future force structure. While the concept still has much to prove, testing is accelerating, according to the primary source.
The stored material does not provide performance specifications, production milestones, or a detailed mission description for Vengeance. It does establish, however, that General Atomics is advancing the design specifically as a Collaborative Combat Aircraft, a category the Air Force intends to procure in significant numbers over the coming years.
Wildfire targets the Reaper replacement requirement
Wildfire is General Atomics’ response to the Air Force’s MMA requirement, which the service and the Defense Innovation Unit formally launched in July. The company first announced its work on the new aircraft the previous month, and later released a rendering showing an armed, medium-altitude, long-endurance uncrewed aircraft with a pusher propeller configuration.
The depicted aircraft retains clear links to the MQ-9 family. Its planform is broadly similar to the Reaper’s, and the rendering shows a sensor turret beneath the nose and a large blade antenna under the rear fuselage. But Wildfire lacks the prominent forward-fuselage hump used on the MQ-9A to house its satellite-communications antenna. The available material does not establish what communications architecture Wildfire will use, though the change points toward a smaller, lower-cost satellite terminal, greater reliance on semi-autonomous control, or both.
The rendering also showed four Joint Strike Missiles, with two apparently carried on a single pylon beneath each wing. The Joint Strike Missile can be used against ships or land targets. Its appearance on the concept underscores the potential value of stand-off weapons for a non-stealthy uncrewed aircraft, allowing it to operate farther from threats.
The Air Force has said its MMA aircraft should be able to conduct the Reaper’s broad intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and strike missions while offering a modular, open-architecture design. Stated requirements include at least 200 knots true airspeed, at least 2,800 pounds of sensor and munition payload capacity, an unrefueled combat radius of at least 2,300 nautical miles with payload, and the ability to self-deploy one-way for at least 8,000 nautical miles. The aircraft must also be able to operate from runways no longer than 6,000 feet.
Affordability remains central
Cost is a defining element of the MMA effort. The Air Force is targeting a unit cost of about $10 million per aircraft, excluding sensors and certain other systems. For comparison, the source says a fully equipped Reaper is widely reported to cost between $30 million and $50 million, with the Air Force having used $50 million as a reference figure in discussing its replacement plans.
General Atomics spokesperson C. Mark Brinkley said the company’s designers began by examining what could be retained from the Reaper model and where tradeoffs could be made. “Wildfire takes all of the known quantities of Reaper, blends them with some cutting-edge technologies and manufacturing advancements, and incorporates our more than three decades of lessons learned about large, unmanned combat aircraft to drive cost-per-effect math down,” he said.
Brinkley also said Wildfire addresses the concerns posed by the MMA solicitation and could be delivered years earlier while retaining quality, though the company has not released deep technical specifics. He previously framed the design work around questions including a 10,000-nautical-mile ferry range, carriage of four Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles, semi-autonomous control of 100 aircraft, and fusion of data into a common operating picture. Those comments describe General Atomics’ ambitions, not confirmed Wildfire specifications.
The MMA program’s initial schedule envisioned initial operational capability in 2031 after delivery of 20 aircraft, but the Air Force is now seeking to accelerate that timeline by roughly two years. The service expects eventually to acquire around 180 MMAs. For General Atomics, the FQ-42 Vengeance and Wildfire discussions at Air, Space & Cyber presented two distinct approaches to a rapidly expanding unmanned-aircraft market: one tied to the CCA initiative and another built around preserving Reaper-like mission utility at substantially lower cost.
