The U.S. Air Force is integrating and testing its Autonomy Government Reference Architecture, or A-GRA, across multiple vendor platforms as part of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCA, program.
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The Air Force said Thursday the effort supports the National Defense Strategy and marks a key step in the service’s acquisition reform strategy that seeks to advance the use of modular open systems, promote competition and accelerate the delivery of capabilities to warfighters.
Mission autonomy vendors—RTX subsidiary Collins Aerospace and Shield AI—are integrating A-GRA and have begun semi-autonomous flight testing with General Atomics and Anduril on YFQ-42 and YFQ-44 CCA platforms.
What Is Autonomy Government Reference Architecture?
A-GRA is a government-owned modular open systems framework designed to establish a universal standard for mission autonomy across platforms to prevent “vendor lock” and enable the service to rapidly integrate autonomy algorithms from traditional and nontraditional defense contractors.
“Verifying A-GRA across multiple partners is critical to our acquisition strategy,” said Col. Timothy Helfrich, portfolio acquisition executive for fighters and advanced aircraft. “It proves that we are not locked into a single solution or a single vendor. We are instead building a competitive ecosystem where the best algorithms can be deployed rapidly to the warfighter on any A-GRA compliant platform, regardless of the vendor providing the algorithm.”
According to the Agile Development Office director, integrating A-GRA onto multiple platforms in a short timeframe demonstrates that the Air Force’s open-systems approach is functioning as intended and enables the service to iterate tactics and capabilities across the fleet at an accelerated pace.
What Is the Collaborative Combat Aircraft Program?
CCA is the Air Force’s initiative to develop semi-autonomous aircraft designed to operate alongside crewed platforms, complement major weapons systems and serve as force multipliers for the joint force. As part of the Next Generation Air Dominance Family of Systems, the program seeks to integrate open-systems architectures to facilitate the continuous iteration of autonomy and mission systems capabilities.
In April 2024, the Air Force selected General Atomics and Anduril to build production-representative prototypes under the CCA program.
In August 2025, the service announced that the YFQ-42A prototype, developed with General Atomics, completed its inaugural flight as the platform transitioned into flight testing.
