Kratos has released a rendering offering the first look at a version of its stealthy XQ-58A Valkyrie drone with built-in landing gear. The company first announced that this new version, which might present certain advantages over the original runway-independent design, was in the works last year.
A social media post from Kratos’ official X account included the rendering of the tricycle landing gear-equipped XQ-58, seen at the top of this story. This is the third launch and recovery method the company has developed for the Valkyrie and follows the unveiling of a special launch trolley last year that allows existing versions to take off from traditional runways. The uncrewed aircraft was originally designed for completely runway-independent operation, using expendable rocket boosters to get into the air via ground-based launchers and a parachute recovery system to get back down after a sortie. The company has also shown a concept for a containerized launch system in the past.
“A conventional take-off and landing (CTOL), also referred to as horizontal take-off and landing (HTOL), is the method by which fixed-wing aircraft take off and land using runways,” Kratos’ post on X about the new XQ-58 with landing gear also reads. “Being runway flexible/runway independent delivers maximum operational utility to the warfighter.”
The rendering shows the single wheel nose and main landing gear units. The nose gear appears to be designed to retract forward into a bay covered by two trapezoidal-shaped doors, while the two main gear units retract into bays on either side of the fuselage that are each covered by a single door.
As depicted, the overall design of the CTOL/HTOL version of the XQ-58 otherwise looks largely unchanged from the standard type. Kratos has not yet released more specific details about how the new configuration differs from the runway-independent one, especially when it comes to its gross and maximum takeoff weights, speed, and endurance.
When asked for more information about how the CTOL/HTOL differs from existing XQ-58 variants, Kratos told TWZ today it could not currently provide any additional details. Runway-independent versions of the drone could “technically” be converted into landing gear-equipped ones, “but the intent is that there are multiple Valkyrie configurations to support different mission requirements,” a company representative said.
“You’ll be able to do a conventional takeoff and land with retractable gear,” Steve Fendley, president of the Unmanned Systems Division at Kratos, told Aviation Week, according to a recent report from that outlet. “You give up a proportion of your payload volume of your internal payload, but you can still maintain all the external.”
Existing XQ-58s can carry weapons and other stores in an internal bay, as well as a single hardpoint under each wing. Kratos has previously disclosed that there are at least five different Valkyrie variants, including a “Block 2” runway-independent version with improved performance and a heavier overall weight than the original design.
The company has also said in the past that it is working on a version tailored to U.S. Marine Corps operational needs, tentatively referred to as the MQ-58B, with a focus on being able to launch electronic attacks to suppress enemy air defenses while operating in cooperation with crewed F-35B Joint Strike Fighters. The Marines and the U.S. Air Force, the latter of which is the XQ-58’s first known operator, currently fly Valkyries for research and development and test and evaluation use.
TWZ has previously highlighted the benefits of the XQ-58’s runway-independent configuration. This capability could be especially valuable in a future high-end fight in the Pacific against China, where large established airbases would be prime targets, and other available traditional runways could be few and far between. The Valkyrie aligns particularly well with the Marine Corps’ vision for future island-hopping scenarios that already heavily feature the short takeoff and vertical landing capabilities of its F-35Bs.
At the same time, a runway-independent configuration can present limits on maximum takeoff weight, which, in turn, have impacts on range and payload capacity. Kratos previously told The War Zone that the launch trolley configuration offers an increase that “is in the 10s of % for both fuel and payload capacity” and “enables quite an advantage for amount of payload and range / endurance of the system.”
Landing gear presents additional benefits over the static launcher/parachute recovery combination when it comes to sortie generation, as well as making it easier to integrate the drones with normal runway-centric tactical air operations. Kratos has previously pointed out that the trolley-launched configuration would also not be dependent on the availability of rocket motors, which would also be true for operations with CTOL/HTOL types.
The emergence of the landing gear-equipped XQ-58 does follow Kratos’ pronounced absence from the competition to build the first tranche of drones for the U.S. Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. General Atomics and Anduril were subsequently selected to build flying prototypes of their designs, now designated YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A, respectively, under CCA’s Increment 1. Both of these drones are designed to operate from traditional runways.
Kratos has previously expressed interest in participating in the forthcoming CCA Increment 2 competition, the requirements for which are still being finalized. The Air Force has indicated that it could ask for more performance and capability-wise from the Increment 2 drones than it did with Increment 1, which could lead to higher unit costs.
The XQ-58 has historically been presented as a lower-cost and at least somewhat attritable design, which stands in significant contrast to what has emerged from the Air Force’s CCA program so far.
A CTOL/HTOL XQ-58 might also be of interest to the U.S. Navy for operations from carriers and other big-deck ships. The service has its own CCA program that is directly intertwined with the Air Force’s effort, but is very much still in the process of defining its particular requirements. In the past, the Navy has also expressed explicit interest in cheaper carrier-based drones that could be ‘consumed’ as weapons or targets at the end of service lives measured in hundreds of flight hours rather than years.
The Navy did just recently confirm to TWZ that it has a particular interest in the MQ-28 Ghost Bat that Boeing’s subsidiary in Australia has been developing for that country’s air force. The Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force have been actively collaborating on the ongoing development of the MQ-28. Boeing has also already been pitching a carrier-based version of the Ghost Bat with a tail hook, including to the Royal Navy in the United Kingdom.
Interestingly, back in 2021, the Navy also put out a call for ideas about how to recover runway-independent XQ-58s aboard its then-new Expeditionary Sea Base ships. That notice also raised the possibility of employing similarly-sized drones with landing gear and tail hooks from those vessels.
The XQ-58 family could present an option for the Navy that could be acquired in multiple configurations for operations from carriers and other ships using different launch and recovery methods, including via containerized launchers.
The possibility of foreign sales of variants and derivatives of the XQ-58, as well as other operationalized designs in the company’s “tactical” portfolio, has come up in the past. Kratos has already secured overseas sales of target drones designed for use in training, as well as in support of research and development and test and evaluation activities.
When Kratos’ CEO Eric DeMarco first confirmed his company was working on the CTOL/HTOL version of the XQ-58 in August 2024, he indicated that it would be flying “very soon.” Kratos told TWZ it could not provide a timeline for when that first flight might occur.
More information about this version and its capabilities may begin to emerge once it is confirmed to have taken to the skies for the first time.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com