The latest addition to General Atomics’ MQ-9B medium-altitude long-endurance drone family is set to be an airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) configured variant. The AEW&C MQ-9B is already being pitched at the Royal Navy in the United Kingdom as a possible addition to the air wings on its Queen Elizabeth class carriers. It could be attractive to other potential customers, especially those with an interest in lower-cost airborne early warning options and/or ones that could be easier to deploy to far-flung locations.
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) and Saab announced today that they are partnering on the development of the AEW&C MQ-9B, news that came around the opening of the biennial Paris Air Show. The wider MQ-9B family already includes the baseline SkyGuardian and the maritime-optimized SeaGuardian variants, as well as the United Kingdom’s Protector version. A short-takeoff-and-landing-optimized version of the MQ-9B, which could be employed from aircraft carriers and big deck amphibious assault ships, is also now in development. The MQ-9B family is an evolution of the earlier MQ-9A Reaper series.
The AEW&C sensors for the new MQ-9B version will be provided by Saab. The Swedish firm has plenty of experience in the field, including through its GlobalEye crewed AEW&C aircraft. In particular, Saab has focused recently on the development of AEW&C systems using active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar based on gallium-nitride technology.
“We are bringing our exceptional ability to detect and track challenging objects to customers looking to use MQ-9B to meet their specific needs,” said Carl-Johan Bergholm, head of Saab’s Business Area Surveillance. “This unmanned medium-altitude AEW solution, leveraging core competencies of both companies, has excellent potential to complement our existing AEW&C portfolio and provide customers with yet another cutting-edge capability.”
GA-ASI claims that the new AEW&C sensors for the MQ-9B — the main antennas for which are carried in three large pods, one slung under each wing of the drone and one on the centerline — will be able to detect tactical aircraft, guided missiles, drones, and other threats. They will do this “at a fraction of the cost of manned platforms,” the company contends. As well as a radar system, the new MQ-9B version will retain the sensor turret with electro-optical and infrared cameras below the nose as is found on other versions of the drone.
Radar and other data gathered by the aircraft will be transmitted using both line-of-sight and satellite communications links. This information can be exploited in the same way a crewed aircraft with this mission would, although its radar operators and battle managers could be sitting on a ship far below it or even in a container halfway around the world. It basically decentralizes the crew function.
An MQ-9 configured for airborne early warning would also be able to share the information it gathers with other weapon systems, providing better overall situational awareness of the battlespace and more lethality to those systems it connects with. A drone of this kind with such a sensor suite would be able to help guide air-to-air missiles and ship- and land-based surface-to-air missiles. Above all else, it has the capability to provide the critical ‘look-down’ radar coverage over pretty much any locale and do so for very long periods of time. This is becoming more important than ever due to the proliferation of cruise missile and drone threats.
GA-ASI says it plans to fly the AEW&C capability on an MQ-9B next year, and the company will offer it in land-based and ship-based solutions.
“High and low-tech air threats both pose major challenges to global air forces,” said GA-ASI President David R. Alexander in a press release from the company. “We’re developing an affordable AEW solution in cooperation with Saab, the leading provider of AEW&C systems, that will transform our customers’ operations against both sophisticated cruise missiles and simple but dangerous drone swarms. We’re also making AEW capability possible in areas where it doesn’t exist today, such as from some navy warships at sea.”
Interestingly, the first sign of the MQ-9B AEW&C actually came in the run-up to the Paris Air Show. Before the doors opened today, a concept artwork of the radar drone appeared, showing it operating from a U.K. Royal Navy Queen Elizabeth class carrier.
While we don’t know whether the MQ-9B AEW&C is only being pitched specifically for the United Kingdom at present, it would make a lot of sense in this particular context.
The Royal Navy is facing an emerging AEW&C gap when it comes to the air wings aboard its Queen Elizabeth class carriers. The service’s platform that currently fulfills this mission, the Merlin Crowsnest helicopter, is planned to be retired by the end of 2029 without a clear replacement in line. As TWZ noted in the past, the Royal Navy’s carrier-based AEW&C mission, in the future, could well be taken on by a catapult-launched fixed-wing aircraft, whether crewed or uncrewed.
In addition, the United Kingdom just recently laid out plans for what it described as “the first European hybrid air wings” for its carriers. These air wings are planned to include drones and undisclosed long-range missiles, as well as the F-35B stealth fighters that currently go aboard its two flattops.
The carrier-based drones the United Kingdom is looking at include autonomous collaborative platforms along with expendable, single-use drones. General Atomics has notably already pitched its MQ-9B STOL version, as well as a carrier-based member of its now-in-development Gambit family of highly modular drones, as possible additions to British carrier air wings.
The Royal Navy has already tested the General Atomics Mojave short takeoff and landing (STOL) drone aboard the carrier HMS Prince of Wales, as you can read about here. The Mojave’s impressive STOL capabilities mean that no launch and recovery systems were required for these tests. An MQ-9B STOL equipped with the Saab AEW&C package might be able to do the same.
Even if using an AEW&C configured MQ-9B STOL is not feasible, due to weight considerations, the United Kingdom has a ‘cat and trap’ plan for drone operations aboard its carriers, also known as Project Ark Royal. Back in 2023, the Royal Navy first revealed details of its intention to fit its two Queen Elizabeth class carriers with assisted launch systems and recovery gear, which could enable operations by a variety of fixed-wing uncrewed aircraft and, potentially, also certain crewed types configured for conventional takeoff and landing. If realized, Project Ark Royal could at least see HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales start to operate increasingly heavier, complex, and higher-performance drones able to undertake a variety of missions.
An AEW&C drone that can operate from a big deck amphibious assault ship, or even just an expanded number of locations on land, could also catch the eye of other potential customers, including the U.S. Marine Corps.
U.S. Marine interest in this kind of capability extends all the way back to 2018 and the original vision for a Marine Air Ground Task Force Unmanned Aircraft System Expeditionary drone capability, or MUX. Among seven potential mission sets originally put forward for MUX drones, which were also envisioned as being able to take off from and land vertically on the deck of an amphibious assault ship, airborne early warning was described as the highest priority.
Speaking at the time, U.S. Marine Corps Brig. Gen. James Adams, who was then in charge of the capabilities development directorate at Marine Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C., made the following observation about a Marine AEW&C capability:
“Think about the ESG [Expeditionary Strike Group], the Amphibious Ready Group, the large-deck amphib: even if it’s up-gunned with a set of [other surface warfare] assets with Aegis radars, we are still missing an airborne early warning capability. And therefore, in the fight of the future, we are going to be tied to the carrier strike group.”
Now a lieutenant general, Adams is currently Deputy Commandant for Programs and Resources.
However, the original MUX requirements, with their multiple tiers and various different platforms, proved too ambitious, and the Marines subsequently scaled back their near-term uncrewed aviation plans significantly. The service has since acquired a fleet of MQ-9As as the initial MUX platform. You can read all about the aircraft and their operations here.
While the Marines acquired the MQ-9A for land-based operations, especially in an expeditionary context in the Pacific, the availability of the STOL and AEW&C packages for the same drone could provide the service with another chance of fielding a drone that can carry out this mission from assault ships.
At present, the U.S. Navy’s AEW&C capabilities come from E-2 Hawkeye radar planes, which can only fly from the big deck of a full-sized carrier or bases on land. We have detailed how a drone capability just like this could also be very useful for augmenting the E-2D Hawkeye in carrier air wings. You can read all about this here.
Even a land-based AEW&C drone could be of interest to the Marines, especially if the AEW&C package is available as a ‘bolt-on’ solution. We have approached GA-ASI to ask whether the same sensors can be retrofitted on earlier MQ-9 iterations.
In particular, an AEW&C drone conducts an increasingly high-threat mission without exposing any aircrew to the hazards of combat.
Moreover, whether operating from a warship or from a remote island airstrip, for example, an MQ-9 with an AEW&C capability would greatly extend the sensor range available to the Marine Corps, allowing its components to operate across a broader area more detached from other surface task forces. This would be especially valuable for operations in constrained environments, where enemies might quickly appear and disappear, as well as distributed operations across a wider front. Just the kinds of scenarios, in fact, that the Marines are increasingly training to fight in.
As the threat posed by low-flying threats, specifically cruise missiles and drones, continues to grow, there’s also a greater need for an airborne early warning platform. Having a high-endurance elevated sensor capability with highly-capable ‘look-down’ air-to-air radar abilities of this kind would make the Marines better able to counter threats that can rapidly materialize and potentially evade ship-based sensors that are limited by line-of-sight to the horizon.
It’s also interesting to note that the original requirement for an early-warning MUX drone specified a secondary electro-optical and infrared camera suite to monitor and investigate potential surface threats. As noted earlier, the MQ-9B AEW&C would retain just such a sensor.
While a drone-based AEW&C platform would offer clear advantages for the Royal Navy in the United Kingdom and the U.S. Marine Corps, many other air arms might find a place for this kind of capability. In particular, it would offer a way to field a type of platform that is traditionally very expensive and manpower intensive.
Crewed fixed-wing AEW&C aircraft remain a niche asset, available mainly to operators with deeper pockets.
An AEW&C aircraft based on an MQ-9 series drone promises to be much more affordable, even if it lacks the overall spectrum of performance offered by a crewed platform based on an airliner or bizjet platform. Of course, the MQ-9 also comes with a higher degree of vulnerability in future high-end fights, such as one between the United States and China in the Pacific, although a traditional crewed platform would also face significant challenges here, too.
The lower cost of an AEW&C MQ-9B, combined with the added operational flexibility it offers, could also be an interest to larger operators as a supplement to other current and future airborne early warning capabilities. The U.S. Air Force, in particular, is currently at something of a crossroads as it looks at its future AEW&C requirements.
As we reportedly recently, the Trump administration’s new defense spending plan is calling for the cancellation of planned purchases of E-7 Wedgetail AEW&C aircraft, which were to partially replace the service’s aging E-3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) jets. The E-7, in turn, was expected to be an interim solution pending the full arrival of space-based distributed satellite constellations, something you can read about here.
In addition to the proposed cancellation of the E-7 plan, the Trump administration also wants to acquire additional E-2D Hawkeyes that would be operated on a joint service basis to meet near-term Air Force AEW&C needs.
As we observed at the time, the E-2D does offer some specific advantages:
“Above all else, joint service E-2Ds could be absolutely critical to the USAF’s Agile Combat Employment (ACE) combat doctrine that will see its forces distributed to remote forward locales and constantly in motion. The E-2D’s turboprop performance, robust landing gear, and arrested landing capabilities mean it can be pushed far forward to very austere operating locations with limited runway length. And it can do this without sacrificing the quality of the data it collects or the efficacy of its use as a battle manager. This is something a 707 or 737 platform simply cannot match and could prove decisive in a major peer-state contingency.“
While the sensors it carries won’t be as powerful as those aboard the E-2D, the MQ-9B AEW&C is very suitable for ACE scenarios and, as mentioned before, doesn’t expose any flight crew to threats.
Already, the E-2D represents a significant capability tradeoff compared to the E-7, with less range, shorter endurance, lower speed, more limited operating altitudes, and a smaller mission crew. Then there are the sensor, communications and processing hardware differences. For the MQ-9B AEW&C, the differences compared to the E-7 would be even greater, but the drone is cheaper to procure and could potentially be fielded in much greater numbers, even if only as a ‘gap-filler.’ The endurance is also a huge advantage, too. MQ-9s can stay up for more than a day, providing continuous coverage. The data it collects would be a major force multiplier for surface-to-air missile and other air defenses down below, allowing them to detect low-flying targets over much longer distances and engage them using the MQ-9’s targeting data, if need be.
There is also the possibility that this variant of the MQ-9 could be attractive for U.S. homeland defense. The threat of low-flying cruise missiles and now, especially drones, is glaring. The U.S. military has been highly concerned with this dating back decades. It is a primary reason F-15Cs received AESA radars two decades ago. At the time, the possibility of a rogue cruise missile attack emanating from the sea was palpable. These kinds of threats have since exploded in scope and scale, and they have diversified deeply. Acquiring a look-down radar capability for homeland defense that can watch for these weapons and can persist while being efficient has been a vexing requirement for the Pentagon. Something like this could provide that capability with efficiency and be rapidly relocated as needed. It could cover a presidential visit one day and provide surveillance over a base experiencing drone incursions the next. It could also fold into the Golden Dome initiative, which is set to receive tens of billions of dollars in funding.
While the MQ-9B AEW&C wouldn’t be the final answer to the U.S. Air Force’s requirements, it could at least be part of the puzzle, with the added benefit of commonality and a proven airframe that’s already in production for the U.S. military. That would likely help reduce costs and accelerate the entry into service, should it be ordered.
Should the U.S. Air Force not get the E-7s it had been expecting, that could also have a knock-on effect for other customers, including NATO. The alliance had already chosen the Wedgetail to replace its own E-3 AWACS fleet, but that decision might well be revisited if the United States decides against procuring the same platform.
All of this remains very hypothetical for now, of course. The MQ-9B AEW&C is still very much in development and may still face any number of problems. Significantly, though, it appears to offer a balance of capabilities that could be highly relevant to a wide range of potential customers.
With a large and expanding operator base, there are countries already flying or having ordered the MQ-9B that might choose an AEW&C package, even if only for some of their airframes. The MQ-9B has been ordered by the United Kingdom, Belgium, Canada, Poland, Japan, Taiwan, India, and the U.S. Air Force in support of the Special Operations Command. Potentially, the same or similar AEW&C sensors could be offered for other MQ-9 derivatives, too.
As the United Kingdom, the United States, and other countries increasingly look to find the best way to meet their developing AEW&C needs, the appearance of the MQ-9B AEW&C at this point is, at the least, very timely.
Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com