Shield AI’s artificial intelligence pilot has flown one of the US Air Force’s next-generation drone wingman contenders for the first time, the company announced this week.
Shield AI’s Hivemind, the same AI program that previously went head-to-head with a crewed fighter aircraft in aerial combat, was picked by the Air Force for autonomy testing as part of its Collaborative Combat Aircraft, or CCA, effort earlier this month. Now, it has flown Anduril’s CCA competitor, an achievement for the software that could pilot future uncrewed aircraft built to fly and fight alongside crewed US combat aircraft.
The US defense company said Hivemind, piloting Anduril’s Fury drone, also known as YFQ-44A, completed its first flight test over the Mojave Desert. The AI pilot met all required test points, including mid-mission updates and basic operational maneuvers, the company said.
The successful test opens the door for expanded mission autonomy testing with Hivemind, Shield AI said.
“This flight test showcases the potential of airpower built on mission autonomy,” Christian Gutierrez, vice president of Hivemind Solutions, said.
“Across platforms, domains, and environments, Hivemind provides resilient mission autonomy, proving that software is central to the future of airpower,” Gutierrez said, adding that “our collaboration with Anduril reflects a new era of defense acquisition, where autonomy is treated as a foundational warfighting 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 a human pilot. Unlike autopilot or other autonomous features, Hivemind is built to make real-time decisions, adjusting flight routes depending on conditions or obstacles to continue a mission, the company says.
The same AI software was used in the Air Force’s AI-enabled X-62A VISTA, a modified F-16 that flew simulated dogfights against a crewed fighter aircraft in 2024. The service has not publicly revealed which aircraft emerged victorious in those engagements.
Hivemind is also the AI pilot behind Shield AI’s new X-BAT fighter aircraft, which the company unveiled in October. Shield AI says that the X-BAT can operate without human intervention and take off without runways, as well as in contested environments where GPS and reliable communications might not be available.
Anduril’s Fury aircraft is one of the competitors for the CCA program, a priority of the Air Force that envisions uncrewed aircraft operating alongside crewed aircraft with some mixture of autonomy and human direction. Earlier this month, a test flight saw a CCA stand-in aircraft communicate and fly with an Air Force F-22 Raptor, marking another step forward in the CCA program.
On Wednesday, Col. Timothy Helfrich, the Air Force’s portfolio acquisition executive in fighters and advanced aircraft, commended the speed of work being done on autonomous pilots flying CCAs. “Quite an accomplishment going so quickly,” he said at a panel, “but we’ve got a lot ahead of us though.”
