SAN DIEGO — The Navy’s first unmanned tanker is set to come to an aircraft carrier in 2026, according to the commander of Naval Air Forces.
The first low-rate production version of Boeing’s MQ-25A Stingray will do its first flight tests aboard a carrier in 2026, Vice Adm. Daniel Cheever, the commander of Naval Air Forces, said this week at the WEST 2025 conference co-hosted by the U.S. Naval Institute and AFCEA.
The air boss said he’s focused on the platform’s tanking mission and acknowledged it has the potential to do other jobs, but declined to provide details.
“I’m just going to turn the weapons tactics instructors loose and they will exactly figure out how to operate this thing seamlessly in a manned unmanned teaming thing,” he said about integrating MQ-25A with manned platforms. “And that will open up the future for us.”
“We will fly MQ-25 in ‘25. You can quote me on that,” Cheever said. “We will fly that platform in ‘25 and get that thing on a carrier in ‘26 and start integrating that thing.”
The carrier tests in 2026 will come 13 years after the Northrop Grumman X-47B made the first arrested carrier landing and the Navy stopped testing the platform.
Since the $805 million initial contract award in 2018, Boeing has been working through quality control issues on the first production models of the aircraft that will enable aircraft to fly 500 nautical miles from the carrier and carry up to 15,000 pounds of fuel.
The initial design of Boeing’s Stingray was not optimized for tanking but instead for a long-range reconnaissance aircraft with light strike capabilities as part of the Navy’ scuttled Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS). Boeing built a prototype UCLASS, the T-1, that was used for early flight envelope and refueling tests originating from MidAmerica Airport in Illinois. Following flight tests, the Navy put the T-1 aboard USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) for additional deck testing and finalized the early testing in late 2021.
Production delays for the first production MQ-25A aircraft have hampered the Navy’s plans to integrate the unmanned tanker into carrier flight decks, the service announced in 2023. Since then, the Navy said little about plans to integrate the platform on the carrier. The service plans to buy 76 Stingrays at an estimated cost of $1.3 billion.
This week, Navy leaders highlighted the integration of the MQ-25 onto the carrier as the major hurdle to bringing unmanned aviation to the carrier.
Aside from the airframe, the Navy started plumbing carriers in the fleet with the ground stations to operate the aircraft that is the length of a F/A-18F Super Hornet and has the wingspan of an E-2D Hawkeye.
“MQ 25 is absolutely the Navy’s push to make sure that we have demonstrated you can take an unmanned platform and put them on a carrier,” Rear Adm. Keith Hash, the commander of the Naval Air Warfare Center’s weapons division,said this week at WEST.
That includes how the aircraft will operate in the air wing. What systems will go on the aircraft in the future and what new roles they could play as they become part of the air wing, Hash said.
Aviation leaders said this week that the integration work for MQ-25A unlocks other types of carrier aircraft like collaborative combat aircraft that can provide adjunct magazines to fighter aircraft.
“[MQ-25A] unlocks the future of manned-unmanned teaming,” Cheever said.
