Vanguard
The loyal wingman that does not wait for 2032. Vanguard is a production-rate combat jet sized for F-22, F-35, and F-47 quarterbacks, with enough range to hunt from Guam and enough cheapness to be spent on a door-kicking raid.
Vanguard
XQ-26A
Meridian design bureau
Conceptual · not a program of record
- Unit cost
- $18.0M
- Combat radius
- 850 nm
- Endurance
- 6.5 h
- Speed
- 920 kt
- Ceiling
- 50,000 ft
- Payload
- 900 kg
- FY26 buy
- 48
- Rate / year
- 180
Launch / recover
Launch. Conventional runway / expeditionary 2,000 ft strip
Recover. Autoland, hook optional, road-base capable
C2. Human-on-the-loop from F-22 / F-35 / F-47 or ground node; government-owned autonomy bus
Why it is better
- Dual-role A2A/A2G in the first production lot instead of waiting for Increment 2
- Combat radius 850 nm vs the publicly stated 700 nm Inc 1 floor
- Designed optionally attritable: fly for years or spend the jet on a SEAD raid
- Open autonomy government reference architecture — software sold separately
- Road-base autoland so a cratered runway does not ground the fleet
Nav (GNSS optional)
- vision-inertial
- celestial
- terrain-referenced
- GNSS-optional
Sense
- passive IRST
- AESA (low-probability intercept)
- ESM suite
- MADL-class mesh
Effect
- AMRAAM-class A2A
- SDB-class A2G
- active decoy towed
- cooperative jamming
Against the public program
FQ-42A Vengeance / FQ-44A Fury (CCA Inc 1)
Public. Inc 1 is air-to-air; 700 nm combat radius goal; ~$20–30M; 150 by 2029, 500 by 2032
Gap. No A2G in first increment; buying power lags production; Inc 2 attributes still open
Meridian. Dual-role from first lot, 850 nm, $18M, common bus so Inc 2 is a software load not a new airframe