General Atomics

And it finally dawned on me that there's gotta be something on this planet that doesn't get cancer.

And at that time, I was working on a project in San Diego, um, for General Atomics and, um, and DARPA.

And so I queried the, it's called the ProQuest database, but I had access to that.

It wasn't a public database.

Between the Houthis and the Iranians, we've lost dozens and dozens of MQ-9s to the point where people are genuinely worried, even at the top of the Air Force, that we're going to start running out of these aircraft that we've known so well in the last 20 years.

And the kind that the Air Force flies, General Atomics doesn't make anymore.

They closed the MQ-9A production line down in December of 2024.

They continue producing the MQ-9B, but it's a much larger aircraft.

So we'll just insert ourselves into the production stream for the MQ-9B and use that to backfill some of these losses.

uh for you know at up to this point they've chosen not to do this and put all their eggs in this mma basket if you you know if we can call it that but you know that's going to take a few years to get to fruition it's going to take a while once they select the aircraft to build the prototype fly that get it qualified scale at the manufacturing start delivering these in large numbers uh now uh troy mink in his speech called for having 100 of these delivered by 2029, 500 delivered by 2032, you know, and really talking from scratch.

General Atomics is involved in this.

They want to pursue this with their wildfire UAS concept, which is, I mean, when you look at it, it looks a lot like a Predator.

The Swedish government has awarded Saab $400 million in contracts to develop next-generation combat aircraft technologies.

At the Air and Space Forces Association's annual Airspace Cyber Conference and Trade Show, U.S. Air Force leaders said they would acquire 500 collaborative combat aircraft and another 500 massed modular aircraft that would be a cheaper version of the MQ-9 Reaper by General Atomics that General Ken Cruiser Wilsbach, the chief of staff of the Air Force, has dubbed the Iran war's most valuable player.

Also at AFA, the Air Force is interested in buying new F-16 Fighting Falcon jets from Lockheed to fill out the service's aging force structure.

And startup hypersonic aircraft maker Hermias announced a deal with Pratt & Whitney to build the jetmaker's F-100 engines under license.

On collaborative combat aircraft, it's unclear, is it all three versions? At first, collaborative combat aircraft was supposed to be 1,000.

Now we're talking 500.

Increment 1 is likely to stay 100, 50 to Andral, 50 to General Atomics, with presumably the next batch to be Increment 2 airplanes, maybe.

Lockheed Martin was displaying the Vectus, which I think it thinks is going to be a good contender.

The service also announced names for its Increment 1 CCAs.

General Atomics FQ-42, which the company called Dark Merlin, will be the Vengeance.

And Anduril's FQ-44, which the company called Fury, will be the Fury.

The Navy's MQ-25A Stingray has gone into low-rate initial production, with Boeing receiving a $562 million fixed-price incentive contract for three Lot 1 Stingrays and long-lead components for three in Lot 2.

Well, the number is out, and now it's 500, and that is a manageable number.

Remember, that's including other increments.

Increment one is the 100 aircraft you talked about split in some way between General Atomics and Anduril.

That leaves 400 aircraft for the future increments.

The global military unmanned aircraft market has been valued in the tens of billions of dollars, and every major defense contractor in the world is competing for pieces of it.

Northrop Grumman, General Atomics, Textron, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, they all have programs in this space.

A startup competing against those names needs a clear differentiator, and Swarm Aero has chosen cost and range as their two.

Now, why does any of this matter to the pilot listening right now? Here is where I want to connect this to something that affects you directly, whether you are flying a Cessna 172 out of a Class Delta airport in the Midwest or a regional jet on a hundred and fifty mile milk run.

The regulatory community is working through those questions, but they are not resolved, and platforms like Gamora that operate at the extreme end of the performance envelope are going to force those conversations faster.

One more thing worth noting before I close out today.

Swarm Aero is a startup, not a Northrop Grumman, not a General Atomics.

The history of defense aviation startups producing revolutionary platforms and actually delivering on the production promise is mixed, to put it charitably.

In twenty twenty-four, the Air Force selected two designs to move into the next phase.

One from General Atomics, the company that built the Predator and the Reaper, systems that have logged millions of flight hours over two decades of real-world operations.

One from Anduril Industries, a defense technology company founded in twenty seventeen with a specific focus on autonomous systems and artificial intelligence applied to national security problems.

Those two aircraft entered the program carrying prototype designations, the YFQ-42A from General Atomics, the YFQ-44A from Anduril.

In military aircraft designation language, the Y at the front means prototype test article.

Something being evaluated, not yet committed.