Shield AI’s artificially intelligent pilots have flown one of the U.S. Air Force’s next-generation unmanned aircraft candidates for the first time, the company announced this week.
Shield AI’s Hivemind, the same AI program that previously faced off against manned fighters in dogfights, was selected for autonomy testing as part of the Air Force’s Cooperative Combat Aircraft (CCA) effort earlier this month. Currently, it is flying Anduril’s CCA competitors, a feat of software that can pilot future unmanned aerial vehicles built to fly and fight alongside manned U.S. fighters.
The US defense company announced that Hivemind, which operates Anduril’s Fury drone, also known as YFQ-44A, has completed its first flight test over the Mojave Desert. According to the company, the AI pilot has passed all necessary test points, including mid-mission updates and basic operational controls.
According to Shield AI, the success of this test opens the door to expanded mission autonomy testing with Hivemind.
“This flight test demonstrates the potential of an air force built on mission autonomy,” said Christian Gutierrez, vice president of Hivemind Solutions.
“Regardless of platform, domain, or environment, Hivemind provides resilient mission autonomy, proving that software is central to the future of airpower,” Gutierrez said, adding, “Our collaboration with Anduril reflects a new era in defense acquisition where autonomy is treated as a fundamental combat capability, on par with the aircraft itself.”
Shield AI has spent more than a decade developing Hivemind’s AI software, which is designed to perform many of the tasks of human pilots. Unlike autopilot and other autonomous features, Hivemind is built to make real-time decisions and can adjust flight routes depending on conditions and obstacles to continue the mission, the company said.
The same AI software was also used in the Air Force’s AI-enabled X-62A VISTA, an improved version of the F-16, which flew a simulated dogfight with a manned fighter in 2024. The service does not publicly state which aircraft won these battles.
Mr. Hivemind is also the AI pilot of the new shield AI fighter “X-BAT” that the company announced in October. Shield AI says X-BAT can operate without human intervention and take off without a runway, as well as in conflict environments where GPS or reliable communications may not be available.
Anduril’s Fury aircraft is one of the competitors in the CCA program, an Air Force priority that envisions unmanned aircraft operating alongside manned aircraft with some degree of mixture of autonomy and human direction. A test flight earlier this month showed a CCA stand-in aircraft communicating and flying with the Air Force’s F-22 Raptor, marking another step forward for the CCA program.
On Wednesday, Col. Timothy Helfrich, the Air Force’s fighter and advanced aircraft portfolio acquisition officer, praised the speed of work on autonomous pilots flying CCA. “It’s quite an accomplishment that we’re making progress this quickly,” he said during a panel discussion, “but we still have a lot more to come.”
