The Air Force Wants 500 Autonomous Fighters by 2032

Named 'Vengeance' and 'Fury,' two new CCAs headline an ambitious autonomous push—while 70-year-old tankers remain on the flight line.

By The Defense Desk

The U.S. [2] Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink made the announcement during a keynote at the Air & Space Forces Association's 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference. [2]

The FQ-42A, built by General Atomics, took its first test flight in August 2025. [2] Both went from contract award to first flight in fewer than 18 months. [2]

The fiscal 2027 budget request allocated $996.5 million in CCA procurement funding, plus $1.37 billion in research and development—a total program ask of $2.37 billion. [2] Beyond the CCAs, the service is developing Massed Modular Aircraft, low-cost multi-role strike platforms intended to succeed the MQ-9 Reaper, with 100 planned for 2029 and tens of thousands in inventory by 2030. [2]

While the autonomous fleet scales up, the Air Force's tanker backbone faces a different kind of reckoning. The service uses two tanker types: the legacy KC-135 Stratotanker and the next-generation KC-46A Pegasus. [1] Once KC-46 acquisition is complete, hundreds of KC-135s will still be active. [1] Air Mobility Command Deputy Commander Maj. Gen. Gerald Donohue put it plainly: 'We can never walk away from the idea that our young airmen out there on the line today and for decades still will have to sustain 70-year-old-plus airframes.' [1]

Two timelines are running in parallel—one racing toward autonomy at scale, another anchored to metal older than most of the people maintaining it. The Air Force is betting it can manage both.

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