On 22 May 2002, the Boeing X-45A Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle made its first flight at Edwards Air Force Base, rising to 7,500 feet over the California desert for fourteen minutes of history. It was the first aircraft designed from inception not merely for reconnaissance, but for combat—specifically, the suppression of enemy air defenses. Built by Boeing’s Phantom Works for DARPA and the U.S. Air Force, the X-45 was a swept-wing, stealthy jet with internal weapons bays and a composite skin. On 18 April 2004, it became the first autonomous UAV to release a precision-guided weapon, striking a ground target with a 250-pound inert bomb. The program’s climax came on 4 February 2005, when two X-45As flew together, autonomously determined which aircraft held the optimal position to attack a simulated threat, and executed a coordinated strike with a single pilot supervising from the ground. Though the broader Joint Unmanned Combat Air System (J-UCAS) program was eventually dissolved and the Navy selected Northrop Grumman’s X-47B for its carrier-based UCAS, the X-45 proved a foundational truth: a machine could make tactical decisions in the air, and the age of the unmanned strike fighter had begun.