Anduril Isn't the Only One Building Air Force Drones

TL;DR: The U.S. Air Force is building two drone fleets worth roughly $15 billion combined: 500 Collaborative Combat Aircraft from General Atomics and Anduril, plus 500 cheaper Massed Modular Aircraft to replace the MQ-9A Reaper, according to Yahoo Finance. Both prime contractors are privately held. There is no public stock to buy on this program directly.

What the Air Force just ordered

I spent years as a submarine QA officer where nothing got signed off until it was verified, not before. That habit is exactly what a story like this needs, because the headline number is rarely the whole story. Here it is anyway, checked. General Atomics and Anduril Industries split roughly $10 billion in production contracts for 500 Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), autonomous strike drones built to fly alongside piloted F-35s, according to the Motley Fool. Split evenly, that's roughly $5 billion in contract value for each company.

Behind that first order sits a second, cheaper one. The Air Force wants another 500 reconnaissance-and-strike drones under a program called Massed Modular Aircraft, meant to take over the missions the aging MQ-9A Reaper flies today, per the same report. General Atomics and a smaller firm, Swarm Aero, are the named candidates to build it, and total production could top 500 units if Congress funds the program, according to AllMind News, citing Air Force budget documents.

Stack the two programs and the Air Force is on pace to contract for roughly 1,000 lower-cost combat drones by 2032, worth close to $15 billion in hardware before software and sustainment work gets added on.

The two numbers that actually matter

Skip the rest of the arithmetic and hold onto these two numbers, because I've seen enough procurement stories bury the real trade under the big top-line figure. The Reaper drones being replaced cost about $30 million apiece, and the Air Force has already lost 45 of them, a quarter of the fleet, in combat operations over Iran, Yahoo Finance reports. The replacement drone is priced to come in around $10 million apiece, per the same reporting. That is the entire investment case for this program in one sentence: the Air Force is trying to buy three drones for what it used to pay for one.

Everything else in this story (the $10 billion CCA figure, the 500-unit MMA order, the Swarm Aero mention) sits on top of that one trade.

Can you actually invest in this?

Here is the part the headline doesn't say plainly: no, not directly. Neither prime contractor trades on a public exchange. General Atomics is privately held by the Blue family. Anduril is venture-backed and privately held. It last raised $5 billion in a round that valued the company at $61 billion, Resilience Media reported, after revenue reportedly doubled to $2.2 billion in 2025. That round is bigger than most defense-tech raises get; for a sense of scale against another one this year, see Shield AI's $1.5B Series G.

Lockheed Martin has an indirect stake in the outcome, since its F-35s are the manned aircraft these drones are built to escort, but Lockheed is not a prime contractor on either program. If you are looking for a ticker that captures this specific order book, there isn't one. The access sits in venture rounds, and eventually in private-market secondaries, not in a brokerage account.

Downside first, always: the order book is real, but the ownership isn't for sale to you. Due diligence here just means separating what the Air Force is buying from what you can actually own.

What's already gone wrong

The program isn't clean. Reuters reported that an early version of Anduril's Ghost drone struggled against Russian electronic warfare in Ukraine, and two of the company's Altius drones crashed in separate Air Force tests in November 2025, per Resilience Media. Prototypes for programs this size rarely ship clean on the first try, and this one hasn't. That instinct to verify doesn't turn off for a defense contract: a prototype failure isn't a red flag by itself, but it's a fact you check before you believe the sales pitch, whether the pitch is a sponsor's or a headline's. The same discipline is in this 12-point checklist for evaluating a private fund — it wasn't built for a drone program, but the logic transfers.

None of that has slowed the contract award, but the timeline is where the sourcing itself disagrees, and that disagreement is exactly what a sign-off is supposed to catch. The order stands at roughly $10 billion for CCA and $5 billion for MMA. The Motley Fool's coverage has the MMA fleet arriving in force by 2032 with no interim date given. AllMind News, citing the same Air Force budget documents, says the service expects its first 100 aircraft by 2029. Both figures can be true, an early batch in 2029 and full scale in 2032, but no single source states that combination outright. Verify before you trust the headline number. The setbacks are the part of the story a sponsor doesn't lead with, and the timeline is the part two outlets don't fully agree on.

Program	Drones ordered	Estimated total value	Target unit cost	Named contractors	Timeline
CCA (Collaborative Combat Aircraft)	500	~$10B	~$20M	General Atomics, Anduril	Contracts already awarded
MMA (Massed Modular Aircraft)	500	~$5B	~$10M	General Atomics, Swarm Aero (named candidate)	First 100 by 2029, full scale by 2032

Common mistakes

Reading this as "Anduril stock" news. There isn't one. Anduril and General Atomics are both private, and the only way in is a venture round most individual investors never see.

Treating a contract award as a finished product. Both companies have had public prototype setbacks. A signed contract is not a delivered fleet.

Confusing indirect exposure with direct exposure. Lockheed Martin benefits if these drones extend the F-35's usefulness, but owning LMT is not the same as owning the drone programs themselves.

FAQ

Who builds Anduril's drones? Anduril builds its own hardware in-house rather than subcontracting it out. Its Ghost and Altius drone families are developed internally, and the company is a named contractor on the Air Force's CCA program, per Resilience Media.

How is Anduril different from other defense contractors? Anduril is venture-backed and privately held, competing directly for prime Air Force contracts alongside legacy players like General Atomics rather than supplying parts to them, per Yahoo Finance's reporting on the contract split.

Is Anduril a defense contractor? Yes. It holds a production contract for one of the two drones in the Air Force's CCA program, alongside General Atomics, according to that same reporting.

Who buys Anduril's drones? The U.S. Air Force is the buyer named in this reporting, under the CCA production award covering 500 autonomous strike drones, per the Motley Fool.

One thing to do this week

Subscribe to the free AIN briefing. The next $10 billion contract with no ticker attached will land in your inbox before the headline does, with the same downside-first read this one got.

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