American defense giant Northrop Grumman, after losing the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) loyal wingman unmanned aircraft competition, where YFQ-42A from General Atomics and YFQ-44A from Anduril ultimately emerged as winners, presented an updated autonomous heavy drone under Project Talon.
The previous version of Northrop Grumman's loyal wingman drone, although receiving positive reviews for its technical characteristics, lost to competitors in affordability and price, so the company decided to create a new sample, and recently, together with subsidiary Scaled Composites, presented their new development, as TWZ reports.
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It states that according to information from Northrop Grumman, the company plans to participate in the second iteration (Increment II) of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, where as of September this year, over 20 manufacturers were selected with further plans to reduce the number of participants.
Whether Northrop Grumman will manage to surpass competitors this time time will tell, but they claim their new drone turned out both cheaper and better than the previous version. As of today, they worked on it for 15 months, and Project Talon drone's first flight should take place next year, approximately in nine months.
For understanding the competition Anduril and General Atomics received contracts to build a prototype in April 2024, showed prototypes in metal in spring this year, and also this year both loyal wingmen made their first flight.
Regarding the appearance of Northrop Grumman's Talon unmanned fighter, the observation that it indeed somewhat resembles the XQ-67, a demonstration sample from General Atomics that later transformed into YFQ-42, is quite valid.
The tactical and technical characteristics of the Talon loyal wingman are not yet being disclosed. It's known that Northrop Grumman and Scaled Composites worked on making the updated drone faster to produce, and it's approximately 1,000 pounds (about 453 kg) lighter than the previous version thanks to composite materials.
Though not officially reported yet, Talon most likely has an internal weapons bay. Overall, its shape is quite typical for CCA drones, and most likely adapted to ensure the unmanned aircraft's low observability.
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