Northrop Grumman’s YFQ-48A Talon Blue completes first fully autonomous flight

Reduced part count and weight underpin an aircraft designed for faster production to meet growing demand for autonomous systems among US and allied partners.

Northrop Grumman’s YFQ-48A Talon Blue has completed its first fully autonomous flight, including taxi, take-off, in-flight manoeuvres 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. Manufacturing and design changes cut part count and overall weight, allowing the aircraft to meet growing demand for autonomous systems.

Talon Blue has been designed with flexible operational concepts in mind. Its high air intake, wide wheelbase and integrated weapons bay are intended to meet a wide variety of mission needs for US and allied partners.

Craig Woolston, vice president and general manager, research and advanced design at Northrop Grumman, says: “Our customers made it clear they need autonomous systems that can be fielded faster and more affordably without sacrificing mission effectiveness. Talon Blue’s first flight is one step toward a new generation of autonomous capabilities.”

The flight also carried Skydweller Aero’s VECTA actuator suite, which completed manoeuvres during the sortie. VECTA is a low-maintenance, dual-redundant, safety-critical electromechanical actuator suite. Its compact size and high output torque suit collaborative combat aircraft (CCA), business jets and upgrades of cable-controlled aircraft to optionally piloted or autonomous capability.

Dr Robert Miller, CEO and co-founder of Skydweller Aero, adds: “We are proud to see VECTA fly on Talon Blue and grateful to Northrop Grumman for the collaboration that made it possible.”

The flight draws on Skydweller’s experience developing redundant safety-critical fly-by-wire autonomous systems and takes its technology onto advanced platforms beyond its own aircraft.

Talon Blue is part of Northrop Grumman’s internally funded Project Talon portfolio, focused on accelerating the development of mission-ready autonomous airpower capabilities. The portfolio also includes Talon IQ, an autonomous testbed operating on the Scaled Composites Model 437 aircraft. Powered by Northrop Grumman’s Prism Mission Autonomy software, Talon IQ offers a government reference architecture intended to speed autonomy maturation while reducing the time and cost of bringing mission capabilities forward.

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