Shield AI, the deep‑tech company building state‑of‑the‑art autonomy software products and aircraft, today announced its mission autonomy software, Hivemind, successfully completed its first flight test aboard Anduril’s YFQ-44A aircraft. The flight test builds on the U.S. Air Force’s recent selection of Shield AI as a mission autonomy provider for its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program after a competitive evaluation to support Technology Maturity and Risk Reduction (TMRR) efforts.

During the flight test over the Mojave Desert, Shield AI’s Hivemind successfully completed all test points required to demonstrate full integration and mission autonomy aboard Anduril’s YFQ-44A aircraft, including handling mid-mission updates and initial operational behaviors. The rapid achievement of these objectives opens the door to expanded testing of mission autonomy behaviors with Hivemind and YFQ-44A in support of the CCA program.

“This flight test showcases the potential of airpower built on mission autonomy,” said Christian Gutierrez, vice president of Hivemind Solutions. “Across platforms, domains, and environments, Hivemind provides resilient mission autonomy, proving that software is central to the future of airpower. 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.”

By independently selecting mission autonomy software and aircraft for the first time, the Air Force’s selection of Hivemind marks a historic shift in defense acquisition towards software-led autonomy. The program also seeks to establish a universal standard for mission autonomy through implementing the Autonomy Government Reference Architecture (A-GRA), a modular, open-systems approach, to prioritize speed, innovation and a software-first mindset.

Hivemind is Shield AI’s platform-agnostic, A-GRA compliant software that assumes the role of a human pilot or operator, enabling unmanned systems to sense, decide, and act. Unlike traditional autopilots that simply follow preplanned routes, Hivemind can reroute around or engage dynamic obstacles, execute collaborative tactics with peer systems and piloted aircraft, respond to unexpected conditions, and complete missions safely and effectively as part of a human-machine team.