U.S. Air Force F-35 Fighter Commands MQ-20 Avenger Drone in New Collaborative Combat Aircraft Test.

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and the U.S. Air Force have moved crewed-uncrewed air combat teaming closer to operational use by linking an F-35 Lightning II with the MQ-20 Avenger unmanned combat aircraft. The demonstration shows how a fifth-generation fighter can direct an unmanned combat aircraft beyond visual range while keeping the pilot in control of tactical decisions.

The exercise highlights the MQ-20 Avenger’s role as a practical surrogate for future Collaborative Combat Aircraft, giving the Air Force a testbed for command, control, and mission coordination in contested airspace. This capability could expand fighter reach, increase survivability, and accelerate the shift toward mixed formations of crewed jets and autonomous combat aircraft.

Related News: General Atomics MQ-20 Avenger Drone Completes First Live Autonomous Air-to-Air Intercept Test

The F-35 Lightning II and MQ-20 Avenger illustrate the U.S. push toward crewed and uncrewed air combat teaming. (Picture source: US DoD)

The test brings together the F-35’s sensor-fusion and mission-command role with the MQ-20’s endurance, autonomy software, and ability to operate as a forward combat asset. In practical terms, the fighter acts as the command node, while the Avenger executes assigned actions, adjusts waypoints, performs maneuvers, and passes track data through a resilient beyond-line-of-sight network.

Announced in San Diego on May 27, 2026, the joint autonomy exercise involves GA-ASI, the F-35 Joint Program Office, the 309th Software Engineering Group, the 461st and 370th Flight Test Squadrons, Lockheed Martin, and Autonodyne. The company did not disclose when the demonstration took place, but the event places the F-35 inside a test campaign that had already used the F-22 Raptor as the initial crewed aircraft for CCA command and control work.

The MQ-20 is equipped with GA-ASI’s TacACE, or Tactical Autonomy Ecosystem, developed around the Autonomy Government Reference Architecture. That architecture is central to the test, because it allows mission skills, command logic, and autonomy functions to be integrated without trapping the aircraft inside a closed software design. For the U.S. Air Force, that means future CCA aircraft can accept new mission behaviors faster and with fewer integration barriers.

During the demonstration, the F-35 pilot sends autonomy commands from a tablet-based Bashi Pilot Vehicle Interface in the cockpit. Those instructions move through a tactical proliferated low Earth orbit data link before reaching the MQ-20 through beyond-line-of-sight communications, where TacACE turns them into aircraft behavior. Notably, the F-35 was on the ground when the pilot issued the commands, and it remains unclear whether the fighter later joined the Avenger in flight.

The Bashi interface, produced by Autonodyne, is a key part of the integration story. It has already been used in F-22 and MQ-20 testing and is described as a tablet-based, aircraft-agnostic control system built on open and government architectures. This matters because cockpit integration is often one of the slowest parts of introducing new combat functions, especially when the aim is to connect several crewed fighters to several classes of uncrewed aircraft.

Shield AI completed a second Hivemind flight demonstration on GA-ASI’s MQ-20 Avenger, using a live-virtual-constructive environment to coordinate a real unmanned aircraft with its digital twin in a mission-realistic autonomy scenario. (Video Source: Shield AI)

This latest event builds on a dense series of MQ-20 trials. On July 8, 2025, in a test announced by GA-ASI on July 17, the Avenger conducted a simulated beyond-line-of-sight air-to-air engagement using one live MQ-20 and three virtual CCA surrogates. The aircraft operated in an emission control environment, received real-time situational awareness through TacACE, and used distributed-edge command nodes powered by Optix.C2 and Omniview software to close a long-range kill chain.

That July test gives useful context to the F-35 event. GA-ASI fused space-based and tactical sensing with the command node, giving the unmanned aircraft a broader real-time threat picture for autonomous decision-making. The MQ-20 patrolled a Combat Air Patrol zone, relied on off-board sensors for passive collection, then moved with the virtual CCA surrogates to investigate targets of interest. Once threats were identified, an operator issued a beyond-line-of-sight engagement command, after which the autonomous systems maneuvered, simulated missile launches, assessed battle damage, and returned to CAP without further operator input.

A further January 2026 trial sharpened the air-to-air picture. GA-ASI announced that the MQ-20 had completed a live autonomous aerial intercept from San Diego against a crewed aggressor aircraft, using a government reference autonomy stack and an Infrared Search and Track sensor supplied by Anduril. The Avenger built a passive track, calculated intercept geometry, and executed a simulated weapons solution that GA-ASI assessed as lethal had live weapons been carried.

The MQ-20 is well suited to these experiments because it is a jet-powered Group 5 unmanned combat aircraft, not a small training drone. It is roughly 13 meters long, has a wingspan of about 20 meters, and uses a Pratt & Whitney PW545B turbofan, giving it cruise speeds near 740 km/h and operations above 15,000 meters. Its internal weapons bay, reduced-signature shaping, and payload capacity of well over a tonne allow it to carry sensors, mission equipment, or weapons while preserving a cleaner radar profile when required.

Endurance gives the Avenger another advantage. With more than 20 hours of persistence, it can remain forward as a sensor, decoy, relay, or weapons carrier while a crewed fighter enters and leaves the battlespace on a tighter timeline. That creates options for combat air patrol, air denial, suppression of enemy air defenses, and long-range surveillance from secure bases.

The F-35 pairing also follows an earlier F-22 event. GA-ASI revealed on November 17, 2025, that an F-22 pilot had directly commanded an MQ-20 during an October 21 flight over the Nevada Test and Training Range, using BANSHEE Advanced Tactical Datalinks, Pantera software-defined radios, Lockheed Martin’s GRACE module, and a cockpit Pilot Vehicle Interface tablet. The Raptor remains the U.S. Air Force’s initial CCA threshold aircraft, while the service is also examining future integration with F-35A, F-16, F-15E, and F-15EX fighters.

An MQ-20-type unmanned aircraft can move ahead of a crewed fighter to stimulate enemy sensors, widen passive detection, relay tracks, or force air defense crews to reveal their positions. Passive IRST tracking reduces dependence on active radar emissions, making detection by hostile electronic support systems harder. In offensive counter-air missions, this shortens the engagement cycle and complicates the adversary’s decision-making.

A single F-35 pilot may eventually direct several uncrewed aircraft without flying them manually, assigning search sectors, intercept tasks, decoy profiles, or strike support actions as the tactical picture changes. That reduces pilot workload while increasing distributed sensing and weapons capacity. It also gives commanders more freedom to send uncrewed aircraft into threat envelopes where risking a crewed fighter would be difficult to justify.

For the U.S. Air Force, these trials support the broader effort to field Collaborative Combat Aircraft under next-generation air dominance planning. GA-ASI has used the MQ-20 as a surrogate for more than five years while producing and testing the YFQ-42A for Increment 1 of the CCA program. In parallel, Anduril’s YFQ-44A gives the service a second dedicated CCA design path, while the XQ-67A Off-Board Sensing Station keeps the focus on distributed sensing and mission separation.

The United States is signaling that future air superiority will depend on distributed, software-defined teams of crewed fighters and uncrewed combat aircraft rather than on crewed fleets alone. For NATO allies and Indo-Pacific partners, this opens a path to interoperable CCA formations integrated into F-35 operations. For China, Russia, and other competitors, it confirms that the contest for airpower is shifting toward resilient networks, passive sensing, autonomous mission execution, and the ability to generate combat mass without placing every decision-maker inside the same threat envelope.

Written By Erwan Halna du Fretay - Defense Analyst, Army Recognition Group
Erwan Halna du Fretay holds a Master’s degree in International Relations and has experience studying conflicts and global arms transfers. His research interests lie in security and strategic studies, particularly the dynamics of the defense industry, the evolution of military technologies, and the strategic transformation of armed forces.