February 11, 2026 at 1:23 PM
US Marine Corps advances plans for drone wingman
The Marine Corps released its 2026 Aviation Plan on Tuesday, outlining its strategy to maintain and develop its aviation fleets.
The YFQ-42A has been selected by the Marine Corps as a candidate for the MUX TACAIR program. (Air Force)The Marine Corps has big plans in 2026 to advance toward fielding a drone wingman to collaborate with the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.On Tuesday, the Corps released its 2026 Aviation Plan, outlining its strategy to maintain and develop its aviation fleets. A top priority: testing and developing Marine Air-Ground Task Force Unmanned Expeditionary (MUX) TACAIR, an unmanned “collaborative combat aircraft” intended to “increase the survivability and lethality of F-35 and enable the successful execution of the [strike fighter] mission across a wide range of developing threat environments,” according to the document.The relatively low-cost MUX TACAIR will do that by assuming some of the risk that would otherwise fall to the manned aircraft in aerial combat operations, according to the Corps’ vision for the program.Also on Tuesday, major defense contractor General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc.
announced its uncrewed jet, YFQ-42A, had been selected by the Marine Corps as a candidate for the MUX TACAIR program.“The agreement integrates GA-ASI’s expertise in autonomy and uncrewed aircraft systems with a government-provided mission package, using the YFQ-42A platform as a surrogate to evaluate integration with crewed fighters,” the company said in a release.Next steps include installing a Marine Corps mission kit onto the drone jet for follow-on assessment and rapid development of autonomy for the mission kit, described as “a cost-effective, sensor-rich, software-defined suite capable of delivering kinetic and non-kinetic effects,” so the system can then be put through its paces in expeditionary conditions.The announcement follows the successful maiden flight of YFQ-42A in August. The same platform has also been selected by the Air Force for testing in its CCA program.Recent months have been eventful for the MUX TACAIR program. After demonstrating manned-unmanned teaming between the F-35 and Kratos’ XQ-58 Valkyrie drone through four experimentation flights beginning in 2024, the Marine Corps last month selected the Valkyrie for mission development as part of the program, granting a Northrop Grumman-Kratos team a $231.5 million contract for the work.