General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and the U.S. Navy’s Strike Planning and Execution Systems office have demonstrated collaborative autonomous mission planning with the MQ-20 Avenger during Gray Flag 2026. The test, conducted on 10 September near Palmdale, California, linked the Navy’s planning tools to GA-ASI’s TacACE autonomy stack and showed the aircraft adapting a mission plan in real time within human-defined limits.
The trial used A-GRA-compliant mission context so autonomy software could interpret commander’s intent, weigh objectives, constraints and threats, and coordinate across a mixed force. GA-ASI ran the demonstration from its Gray Butte Flight Operations Facility and Mission Operations Center in Poway, California, using live, virtual and constructive elements in an operationally representative environment.
The MQ-20 Avenger served as a test platform for the Navy’s Collaborative Autonomy Mission Planning effort, which is aimed at fitting autonomy into existing workflow rather than creating separate planning systems for each uncrewed aircraft. The demonstration included multiple Group 5 uncrewed aircraft and simulated land, air and maritime threats, while TacACE provided command-and-control, autonomy configuration, simulation and post-mission analysis functions.
GA-ASI framed the event as part of an ongoing campaign of progressively more complex flight tests for collaborative uncrewed operations. The release did not give performance data, funding details or any indication of an operational deployment.