The United States Air Force needs a few good drones. It just doesn't need (NYSE: BA), Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), or Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) to build them. That's the surprising upshot of a new contract announcement out of the Pentagon last month, in which the government chose none of its three leading publicly traded defense contractors to do the work -- and picked privately held General Atomics and Anduril instead.

For Boeing, Lockheed, and Northrop, the damage from this decision is substantial: At least $30 billion in lost potential revenues.

The Air Force calls the contract in question its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program, in which the aircraft that will be "collaborating" are piloted fighter jets, and their armed military drone sidekicks. All five of the named companies submitted drone designs to the Air Force for consideration. These five designs have now been winnowed down to two -- General Atomics' "Gambit" drone and Anduril's "Fury" -- and those two companies will now proceed to build prototypes for further evaluation.

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Source Fool.com