Boeing’s MQ-25 Stingray is behind schedule and over budget, but it is still set to up the carrier air wing’s (CVW) aerial refueling game dramatically. According to the Navy, the service is basically getting a flying unmanned gas can that is optimized for cruising efficiently at subsonic jet speeds and loitering for extended periods. While there have been fragmented hints that it could execute other roles in the future, and it is already built with a secondary reconnaissance function via its under-nose sensor ball, its potential far beyond a tanker seems significantly underplayed. This appears to be by design, at least at this time. Simply put, the range and endurance, specifically, that the MQ-25 will give the carrier air wing is totally unprecedented and it could have huge impacts well outside of the scope of transferring gas.
This little-discussed, but glaring added value should help with justifying the Stingray’s huge cost. Currently, the MQ-25 is coming in at a price of around $130 million per copy with 76 on order. To its credit, the Navy also highlights that MQ-25 is a ‘pathfinder’ platform that will establish the critical procedures, supporting technologies and tactics, as well as onboard infrastructure, for operating all types of future higher-end drones from a carrier. Navy leadership has promised the production-representative MQ-25 will finally fly this year and be operating from a carrier in 2026 in a testing capacity.
Exploiting the MQ-25’s latent potential could also go a long way to help quell dissatisfaction after the Navy stepped away from its highly-promising multi-role unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) program, the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) aircraft, in the mid 2010s to procure what seemed like ‘just a tanker.’
The Navy has confirmed to us that the MQ-25’s core design requirement of being able to fly 500 miles from the carrier, offload 15,000 pounds of gas, and then come back to the boat is still in place. This will offer a lot of flexibility over the F/A-18E/F Super Hornets that reluctantly serve in the carrier-based tanker role today.
The F/A-18E/F has a combat radius of around the same distance — 500 miles — that the MQ-25 is designed to go before, dispensing more than a Super Hornet’s entire internal fuel load to the thirsty fighters. As such, Stingrays will extend the organic reach of the air wing’s tactical jets by an estimated 300 to 400 miles at a time when it needs it more than ever. The vastness of the Pacific theater has left the current range of the Navy’s CVWs sorely lacking. The MQ-25 will also keep fighter aircraft patrolling on station far from the ship for longer and while carrying heavier weapons loads. This is an especially important aspect when executing fleet defense duties.
The MQ-25’s more mundane work orbiting over the carrier as a recovery tanker, which the Super Hornet fulfills today, will be their daily ‘bread and butter’ and will free up strike fighters to perform their primary mission sets and save precious airframe life on these high-performance aircraft. Roughly one-third of the Super Hornet’s current utilization aboard the carrier is in the tanking role. So, the four squadrons of strike fighters aboard a supercarrier will have their core mission capacity expanded without adding more of the jets.
The MQ-25s were intended to be able to remain aloft for at least three launch-recovery cycles, dropping down to provide fuel and then loitering up high between cycles. As such, they will also be far more flexible in this role as they have a lot of gas to give for a far longer period of time. They also won’t have to regularly recover with the rest of the aircraft on every cycle like the Super Hornets generally do.
All the attributes of the MQ-25s, along with their two stores pylons, offer huge additional opportunities. The fact that this aircraft can hold so much gas and runs on the efficient and proven Rolls-Royce AE 3007 turbofan, a variant of which also powers the RQ-4 Global Hawk, means it can stay aloft a long, long time when operating outside of the tanker mission set. This could include slowly loitering for maximum endurance while at a particular station far from the ship or over it. It can also include traversing huge distances at jet speeds and altitudes.
While arming the MQ-25 with standoff cruise missiles has already been hinted at, and doing the same for additional sensor and networking systems in underwing pods is a future possibility, the big question is just how far and how long can an MQ-25 fly while not required to give away its own gas on a tanker mission?
This is very important as the MQ-25 could be used to carry out missions very far from the carrier — thousands of miles away. On the other hand, it could also be used to loiter high above the carrier strike group for long periods, working as a critical sensor and networking platform. This endurance drastically exceeds that of the aerial refueling-capable E-2D Hawkeye and its crew, which fly now for up to seven hours on a sortie.
The MQ-25, fitted with the right sensor and networking package, could potentially take on some of the Hawkeye’s role and do it more efficiently and persistently. ‘Look-down’ radar data collected would be fed to air defense crews on Navy ships below for exploitation. It could also provide an elevated data-sharing gateway to keep the carrier strike group and other assets connected over extended distances without the use of beyond-line-of-sight satellite communications. While the MQ-25 wouldn’t really be a replacement for the E-2, it could pick up the slack when its manned counterpart is not available and/or augment the E-2’s sensor and networking reach during certain periods.
We have reached out to Boeing, Rolls Royce, and the U.S. Navy in regards to the MQ-25’s actual range, endurance, and fuel load. None were willing or authorized to provide us with that information. This may seem odd as it is just a basic specification, but, as noted earlier, it appears the powers that be are laser-focused on keeping the MQ-25 branded as an essential tanker, one that does not threaten any other mission sets that manned Navy aircraft communities want to retain. But the potential is glaringly there, and so is the demand. The Navy wants its carrier air wings made up of more drones than manned aircraft in the coming decade.
Regardless, we can do some simple and very rough estimates on what the MQ-25 could provide in terms of range.
Based on the 15,000 pounds of gas offload figure at 500 miles, it seems that the MQ-25 would have at least a similar internal fuel load as the RQ-4 Global Hawk, or around 17,300 pounds, and probably a bit more. Let’s call it 18,500 pounds. The RQ-4, which is optimized for efficient high-altitude flight, can stay aloft for nearly a day and a half. The MQ-25 is not as well optimized for endurance and high-altitude operations, but its slender straight wing and streamlined fuselage certainly should be no slouch in this department.
If we use a 1,200 pounds-per-hour fuel burn in cruise for the MQ-25, which is in line with commercial variants of the Rolls-Royce AE 3007 found on multiple aircraft, like the Citation X and Embraer-145, that equates to an endurance of nearly 16 hours while in cruise. Flying at 375 miles-per-hour, that turns into an unrefueled range of nearly 6,000-miles. Factoring in reserves and terminal operations, we can call it 5,500 miles. If it is sent to loiter on station at altitude, where lower power settings would be used, its endurance would be significantly longer.
Once again, these are all rough, speculative numbers, but what should be clear is that the MQ-25 is an adaptable medium-altitude, long-endurance (MALE) jet-powered drone and this can be exploited dramatically by the Navy.
There are also lingering questions of where the MQ-25’s low observable (stealthy) features come from, as these elements were not in any way a requirement of the aforementioned Carrier-Based Aerial Refueling Systems (CBARS) program that gave birth to the MQ-25 Stingray. They were part of the aborted Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) program that came before it. Boeing’s MQ-25 did at least find very heavy influence from work done on that program, it would seem. Whether or not the company’s T-1 MQ-25 demonstrator was reworked from a UCLASS configuration for CBARS remains unclear.
We recently inquired with Boeing about the connective tissue between the MQ-25 and UCLASS or a similar carrier-borne UCAV concept. They said the following:
“The MQ-25 Stingray was influenced by the Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) program. During the MQ-25’s development, we built upon the design elements and lessons learned from the UCLASS program to fit U.S. Navy’s requirement for a carrier-based unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that can provide aerial refueling and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities.”
At least in broad strokes, the unrealized Multi-Role Endurance (MRE) initiative of the late 1990s seems to have some requirements commonality, as well. Minus the MQ-25’s exotic blended inlet design, the concept art below from Lockheed Martin looks remarkably similar to the MQ-25 we know today. It is unknown if there is any relation, and it’s unlikely that is the case. Lockheed Martin ended up pitching a flying wing design for CBARS.
Regardless, these low-observable features, although not really capitalized on now for the tanker-optimized configuration, could come in very handy for future roles, particularly when operating against foes with increasingly advanced anti-access capabilities and especially extremely long-range air defenses.
So, what does this all mean? It means the Navy can integrate the MQ-25 into its CVWs and, in doing so, blaze a trail for all unmanned operations from carriers in the future. In the process, it will also gain a platform that can be readily adopted for many other highly critical missions. This includes ones that can range across vast distances without putting a pilot at risk.
While an advanced Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) may have a combat radius of 1,000 to 1,500 miles, the MQ-25 could act as the long arm of the air wing. Not just in terms of drone capabilities, but in general. Just using bolt-on stores, it could be used to surveil vast areas. It could deliver standoff weapons — such as cruise missiles and air-launched drones — thousands of miles from the carrier strike group. Paired with JASSM/LRASM, the MQ-25 could fly continental distances before releasing their standoff weapons, which would only add to the total strike range. They could also deploy swarms of smaller drones that could wreak havoc on naval groups from outside their air defense engagement ranges. They could act as remote sensor and relay platforms for airborne early warning and networking duties, or provide persistent electronic surveillance and warfare support, as well. The networking part could play a particularly key role for future CCA operations. The MQ-25 could also potentially act as a direct striker to provide surveillance and close air support in uncontested airspace. There is also the possibility that it could work in an anti-submarine/anti-surface warfare/sea control role.
The latter concept of distributing aerial anti-submarine warfare duties across a broader set of carrier-based aircraft and centralizing the processing and decision-making part of the mission dates back deep into the Cold War, which you can read about here. Now, with sonobuoy pods available for MALE drones and work already being done on creating the networking scheme to enable these kinds of activities, MQ-25 could play a central anti-submarine role in the future. Providing such a capability would help fill the vast hole left by the retirement of the S-3 Viking in an age of growing submarine threats. Today, nearly all organic aerial anti-submarine warfare duties the carrier strike group executes are done by MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopters.
Finally, the Stingray could even work in a cargo-carrying capacity, to deliver small time-sensitive parts and other cargoes to the carrier from destinations thousands of miles away in a pinch — much farther than what the troubled CMV-22 Osprey could accomplish. CCAs are also being eyed for this role, but they wouldn’t have the range or payload capacity that an MQ-25 could offer. This could prove essential during a conflict in the Pacific, where keeping the air wing and ships in the strike group running under extreme circumstances will become more challenging over time.
Beyond bolt-on stores for adding capabilities, the MQ-25 airframe is clearly adaptable. It has a large internal volume for fuel. Sacrificing some of that gas could allow sensors to be embedded within its form factor. Conformal radar arrays could give the aircraft even more powerful sensor capabilities than what podded systems can provide and without the drag penalty from an external system. These arrays could provide traditional radar functions, as well as electronic attack and long-range communications.
A weapons bay could also be very useful, if a variant of the MQ-25 were built to take on more significant kinetic roles. It isn’t clear if the aircraft has a weapons bay now — possibly a latent capability that was ported over from UCLASS — or at least if its design could have one easily added. It clearly has the volume for one.
In the end, the MQ-25’s range, which comes as a byproduct of its refueling mission genesis, could and should make it extremely valuable in a Pacific fight. It gives the carrier its own platform that can really reach out very far to do a whole slew of things. This potential, as well as the aforementioned work it will do to blaze an unmanned carrier operations trail for other drones to follow it, could make it the most important naval aircraft of an era — one far more important than a tanker alone.
Contact the author: Tyler@TWZ.com