Kratos’ XQ-58 Valkyrie continues to rapidly evolve, with the company being close to final configurations of the drone for the USMC, which has been testing it extensively. This comes as the USAF also now appears to be looking for less expensive designs for the second increment of its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. Kratos has historically focused on lower-cost designs that can be manufactured quickly, which they hope will put them in a good position for breaking their way into the Air Force’s high-stakes CCA program. Currently, Anduril and General Atomics are providing aircraft for CCA’s Increment One.
TWZ talked with Kratos Defense President of Unmanned Systems Division, Steve Fendley, about Valkyrie developments, as well as some of the company’s other combat drone programs, on the show floor of the annual Modern Day Marine conference in Washington, D.C., last week.
“So we’re obviously, we’ve been doing a lot of development work for the Marines, a lot of integration of mission systems, a lot of ground and flight test of those mission systems,” Fendley said. “And that’s continued to where we’re pretty close to having a couple final versions of the aircraft.”
Fendley continued, “So we’ve been working PAACK-P [Penetrating Affordable Autonomous Collaborative Killer program] for a number of years, and like I say, we’ve got a couple mission configurations of the system that we’ve developed for that, for the Marines, for that purpose. And those exist. You know, those exist today. We’re obviously producing the aircraft in Oklahoma City on a regular basis. So we’re basically teed up to be able to accept a more substantial production-type order.”
It’s unclear what the two variants will be, but we do know Kratos has previously said it was working on at least five XQ-58 variants, including one that was optimized for electronic attack. The Marines have been testing XQ-58s with precursor electronic warfare payloads. This will likely result in an electronic warfare variant that you can read about here. The ability to conduct kinetic strikes would also be high on the list, but we cannot say for sure if that will be one of the two mission configurations. There is also the shadowy XQ-58B designation, and the exact configuration it represents remains unclear. When asked about the B model, Fendley would not address it directly.
For the USMC, the XQ-58 makes a lot of sense, especially for its ability to be launched and recovered from very austere locations that do not feature a runway. The base model Valkyrie launches via a rocket booster from a rail system and is recovered via parachute. Now the company has put forward two new capabilities that will allow the XQ-58 to be launched from traditional runways.
One is a wheeled launch trolley that can put a standard XQ-58 into the air via a runway, but the aircraft will still recover via parachute. The other and newest adaptation of the Valkyrie sees it gaining landing gear so it can operate like a normal aircraft from a fixed runway. This has certain benefits, including enhanced sortie rates, but it also has drawbacks.
Fendley says the landing gear model will sacrifice payload bay capacity for its landing gear, with the ability to carry two Small Diameter Bombs (SDB) internally instead of four on the rocket and trolley-launched models. It can still be rocket-launched, though, as it has the same gross weight as the standard version. This also opens the possibility for rocket-launched, but runway-recovered operations. Regardless, being able to more seamlessly operate alongside its manned counterparts where runways are available is a huge plus for the Valkyrie family and opens the door larger for a possible USAF CCA contract win in the future.
The landing gear-equipped version of the Valkyrie is slated to make its first flight this year. The trolley-launched configuration was first demonstrated last year.
“We’re continuing to work with the Air Force evolving different versions of the Valkyrie, and of course, not necessarily related to Valkyrie, but the Air Force’s CCA program is obviously well underway, and we’re obviously still very, very interested in that,” Fendley said. “Can’t talk much about that, of course, that’s classified, but very high level of interest from the company on that program. I think you’ve probably heard recently that there’s probably going to be a focus there on a lower-cost system. And you know, of course, we’re optimized [for that]. That’s been our focus the whole time – ‘how do we optimize performance per cost?’ … Yeah, we’re very interested in pursuing it … we are aggressively pursuing interest in that program.”
Fendley elaborated further on how the company, which is best known for its target drones, has deep roots in balancing cost against finite requirements:
“I would say the Kratos’ approach to developing systems in the first place, which is we always … pick a cost target, and then we’ll allocate that cost target across the subsystems that make up a system. And as the designers and developers are going through developing it, they keep closing a loop on that cost, so when they come up with something and say, ‘oops, this is 10% more than our cost target,’ well, we throw it out and say, ‘no, refine it. We’ve got to get to this cost.’ So it’s specifically designed to meet a certain cost level. And that’s really our major discriminator against the traditional primes.”
We also asked if Kratos put forward a proposed aircraft for CCA Increment One. Here’s what Fendley said:
“It’s a complicated question because of the stages that occurred on that, the development of that program. There are multiple configurations of CCA-type aircraft that Kratos has … We’ve made those known. However, the specific public requirements for Increment One vary a little bit from the traditional Kratos approach, which is more cost optimized … It’s a more exquisite type approach than we traditionally take.”
Finally, we also got an update on Thanatos, the company’s stealthy drone that remains largely shrouded in secrecy, from Fendley, who said:
“Thanatos is progressing well. There’s some international interest in it, too. We don’t have approval yet to do any kind of export, but we may get that … I can’t give specific details on the aircraft or the specific customers, but it’s progressing well, and it’s a unique capability, but again, tied to the high performance per cost ratio.”
The initial flight testing of the shadowy Thanatos was completed late last year, and similar testing of a fully mission-configured aircraft is now quickly approaching, Fendley continued. “So treat this as the basic aircraft, the non-fully-mission aircraft was effectively completed late last year and looked very good. And as we’re moving forward, it’s more integration of mission systems and integration of autonomy elements.”
Fendley said testing of this more production representative craft would begin in the third or fourth quarter of this year.
Howard Altman contributed to this story.
Contact the editor: Tyler@twz.com