Anduril's Fury Fired Its First Live AMRAAM. The Software That Ran the Shot Is the Real Contest.

The first live missile shot from a US robotic wingman came ten months after first flight and ran on Anduril's own Lattice software, in the middle of a three-way autonomy contest the Air Force decides by summer 2027.

What happened

The US Air Force put a live missile on a robotic fighter and fired it. On July 15 the service announced that an Anduril-built YFQ-44A, one of two Collaborative Combat Aircraft designs in Increment 1 of the program, launched an AIM-120 AMRAAM at a digital target in secluded airspace over the Mojave Desert, DefenseScoop reported. The aircraft flew out of Edwards Air Force Base; the 412th Test Wing's Air Dominance Combined Test Force ran the event, per the Air Force release.

It is the first weapons employment by a US CCA, TWZ noted, and it arrived faster than the program's own schedule suggested. The Air Force announced weapons integration and inert captive-carry flights in February. Data-link validation between aircraft and missile followed. The live shot came five months later.

"Moving from inert carriage earlier this year to this weapon release demonstrates program maturity," said Gen. Dale White, the Pentagon's portfolio manager for Critical Major Weapon Systems, in the service's announcement. The Air Force stressed that the aircraft never decides to fire: a human operator holds weapons authority, with the drone executing the engagement sequence "within pilot-defined parameters," in White's words.