General Atomics Resumes Drone-Wingman Flights After Mishap

General Atomics CCA drone returns to flight

Air Force Col. Timothy Helfrich said the response to the drone’s April 6 crash “validates our approach to accept acquisition/test risk instead of operational risk allowing us to accelerate the program towards fielding.”

General Atomics resumes drone-wingman flights after mishap

Nearly seven weeks after an autopilot problem crashed a General Atomics collaborative combat aircraft, the company announced Thursday that its drone wingmen are back in the skies. On April 6, a  YFQ-42A “Dark Merlin" crashed at the company airport in California, prompting a joint investigation by the company and the Air Force. General Atomics spokesperson C. Mark Brinkley said flight testing resumed on Wednesday. The company continued ground tes…

GA-ASI CCA prototype returns to flight testing after April mishap

General Atomics Aeronautical Solutions' entrant for the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program has re-entered flight testing -- with some new software enhancements -- following an April 6 crash, the company announced today. While the program’s flight-testing procedures on the YFQ-42A were paused in the immediate aftermath of the incident, other activities like ground testing and technology maturation and risk reduction experiments, continued with…

YFQ-42A CCA Returns to Flight with Software Fix After Crash

The YFQ-42A Collaborative Combat Aircraft has resumed flight testing after a six-week pause that began when one of the drones crashed in early April.  General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, which builds the YFQ-42A, announced the return to flight May 21 and said a safety review conducted by the Air Force and GA determined the crash was caused by an “autopilot miscalculation for the weight and center of gravity of the aircraft.”  The aircraft wa…

GA-ASI resumes YFQ-42A flight tests after software fix

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) has returned its YFQ-42A Collaborative Combat Aircraft prototype to flight testing, roughly six weeks after a mishap that destroyed one of the airframes built for the US Air Force’s drone-wingman competition.  The company announced the resumption in a statement dated May 21, 2026. Flight operations had been paused since April 6, 2026, when a YFQ-42A crashed shortly after takeoff at a GA-ASI airport i…