MQ-25 Stingray: Second Navy Tanker Drone Moves to Assembly

Boeing has moved the second MQ-25A Stingray unmanned carrier-based tanker from its St. Louis plant to MidAmerica St. Louis Airport in Mascoutah, Illinois, where it will undergo final assembly before ground testing for the U.S. Navy. The company’s defence division announced the transfer on October 26 with video showing the aircraft, wings folded and fuselage wrapped in protective covering, leaving the factory for the 40 kilometre trip by flatbed truck. No date was given for ground testing or a first flight, and The Aviationist noted that the airframe still lacked the nose-mounted air data probes and the Cobham aerial refuelling store fitted to the first test aircraft. A second airframe is significant for a flight test campaign that has so far rested on a single aircraft, in a program running years behind the Navy’s original schedule.

The first Navy MQ-25A, bureau number 170662, made its maiden flight from MidAmerica on April 25 in a sortie of around two hours, roughly a year later than the service had planned. The first production order followed on September 14, when the Navy awarded Boeing a $562 million fixed-price incentive contract for three Lot 1 low-rate initial production aircraft along with long-lead components for three Lot 2 aircraft, bringing the number of Stingrays under contract to 14 with deliveries from Lot 1 expected to begin in 2029. The Pentagon’s Modernized Selected Acquisition Report published in April placed initial operational capability in 2029, four years later than originally planned, and cited technical risk and a strike by Boeing’s unionised workforce among the causes, while a June reprogramming request reported by Inside Defense indicated that the milestone would not come before the second quarter of fiscal year 2030.

Preparations aboard the fleet’s carriers have meanwhile advanced considerably faster than the flight test program itself. The Navy announced on September 30 that an Unmanned Air Warfare Center had been completed aboard the USS Ronald Reagan in August after 11 ship modifications carried out concurrently over 17 months. On October 19 an MD-5C ground control station aboard the carrier, then underway in the Pacific, established a beyond line of sight command link through a low Earth orbit satellite network with the first MQ-25A at MidAmerica, around 3,400 kilometres away, with the aircraft remaining on the ground and Boeing stating that the link had “demonstrated command latency and link integrity consistent with operational requirements.” The same station is intended to control future unmanned carrier aircraft, including the Navy’s planned collaborative combat aircraft.

The Stingray is designed to take over the aerial refuelling mission now flown by F/A-18E/F Super Hornets carrying buddy tanking stores, freeing those fighters for strike and air defence missions and extending the reach of air wings increasingly built around the F-35C stealth fighter. An August report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office stated that the aircraft must deliver at least 14,000 pounds of fuel at 500 nautical miles from the carrier, roughly matching what a Super Hornet tanker can offer, and the program of record calls for 76 aircraft, 67 of them for operational squadrons and nine for testing. Powered by a single Rolls-Royce AE 3007N turbofan, the design was first proven by Boeing’s T1 demonstrator, which transferred fuel in flight to a Super Hornet, an E-2D Advanced Hawkeye and an F-35C during 2021.