GA-ASI partners with Spirit Defense on FQ-42 airframe production
A GA-ASI GQ-42 flies alongside a McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle and Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II. (GA-ASI)
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) announced a partnership with Spirit Defense, a Boeing company, on 23 October 2026 to support airframe production as a “fuselage design-build partner” of the FQ-42 Vengeance Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA).
GA-ASI said that the partnership would “[offer] manufacturing capacity and industrial depth to scale CCA production faster, while strengthening production resilience, and reducing the risk of single points of failure”.
“With Spirit Defense we add capacity, which is exactly the kind of production resilience our U.S. Air Force customer is looking for with its CCA ramp-up. This kind of partnership represents the scalable industrial base the Air Force and the U.S. Department of War are looking for from industry,” GA-ASI president David Alexander said in a company statement.
The company said that beyond its partnership with Spirit Defense, GA-ASI is “in discussions” with a number of international militaries interested in acquiring its line of Gambit Series modular CCAs.
GA-ASI said interested nations would have the opportunity to integrate their domestic manufacturing into the programme and their sensors, weapons, and other technology into the aircraft.
For more, please see: USAF awards CCA production contracts to GA-ASI, Anduril
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