Northrop Grumman Advances Autonomous Airpower with First Talon Blue Flight

Northrop Grumman’s YFQ-48A Talon Blue completed its first fully autonomous flight, including taxi, takeoff, in-flight maneuvers, and landing. Developed through company investment, Talon Blue combines modular design and advanced manufacturing to lower cost and support faster production without compromising mission capability.

The flight builds on Northrop Grumman’s seven decades of autonomy experience and more than 500,000 autonomous flight hours, with lessons from Talon Blue informing future autonomous systems.

Details on YFQ-48A Talon Blue: 

• Talon Blue is part of Northrop Grumman’s internally-funded Project Talon portfolio focused on accelerating the development of mission-ready autonomous airpower capabilities. 
• Manufacturing and design innovations cut part count and overall weight, lowering cost and enabling faster production to meet growing demand for autonomous systems. 
• Designed with flexible operational concepts in mind, Talon Blue’s high air intake, wide wheelbase and integrated weapons bay support a wide variety of mission needs for U.S. and allied partners.

Expert: 

Craig Woolston, vice president and general manager, research and advanced design, Northrop Grumman:

“Our customers made it clear they need autonomous systems that can be fielded faster and more affordably without sacrificing mission effectiveness. We listened. Talon Blue’s first flight is one step toward a new generation of autonomous capabilities. Every flight and lesson strengthens our broader autonomy work and sharpens what comes next.”

Details on the Project Talon Portfolio: 

The Project Talon portfolio includes Talon IQ, a cutting-edge autonomous testbed operating on the Scaled Composites Model 437 aircraft. Powered by Northrop Grumman’s Prism Mission Autonomy software, Talon IQ offers an accessible government reference architecture that accelerates autonomy maturation while reducing the time and cost to bring new mission capabilities forward. 

Together, Talon Blue and Talon IQ allow Northrop Grumman and its partners to rapidly develop, test and field autonomous capabilities tailored to meet emerging threats and operational requirements.

Along with Anduril, Boeing, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, and Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman was one of five companies contracted to design and build a CCA concept. However, in April 2024, the Air Force decided to only continue funding for Anduril and General Atomics to design, manufacture and test production conforming prototypes. 

Still in CCA Contention

At that point, the USAF said that

“the companies not selected to build these production representative CCA vehicles, and execute the flight program, will continue to be part of the broader industry vendor pool consisting of more than 20 companies to compete for future efforts, including future production contracts.” 

On this basis, Northrop Grumman and its subsidiary Scaled Composites continued to develop another variant, which it said would be a lighter, lower-cost platform designed to be faster to build. Work began under codename Project Lotus, later formally renamed as Project Talon. Nine currently undisclosed vendors are in the running for potential contracts under Increment II of the USAF CCA program.

Although Northrop Grumman has not formally confirmed it is pitching the Talon Blue for Increment II, the aircraft has become the third to receive a USAF designation: formally named YFQ-48A in December 2025. The first two—General Atomics Aeronautical Systems’ FQ-42 Fury and Anduril’s FQ-44 Vengeance—were awarded engineering and manufacturing development and production contracts under Increment I. 

At the time, the USAF stated that

“the MDS [mission design series] designation highlights the ongoing partnership between the Air Force and Northrop Grumman and acknowledges the continued progress of the YFQ-48A as a contender in the CCA program”.

It added it was

“encouraged by Northrop Grumman’s continued investment in developing advanced semi-autonomous capabilities.” 

Sources: Northrop Grumman; AIN