The Pentagon has confirmed that it will likely be utilizing a Boeing MQ-28 Ghost Bat drone, a sophisticated uncrewed design developed and produced by the corporate’s division in Australia, for analysis and improvement functions in cooperation with the U.S. Air Force. The Air Force additionally just lately introduced that Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown and his Royal Australian Air Force counterpart Air Marshal Robert Chipman had signed a brand new settlement to strengthen the already vital relationship that exists between the 2 companies.
Breaking Defense was the primary to report on the U.S. navy’s deliberate use of the MQ-28 earlier at the moment. The acquisition got here by way of the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, or OUSD (R&E). Heidi Shyu, the present Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, additionally serves because the Department of Defense’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO).
OUSD (R&E) “continually works with the services to validate technologies that are key to advancing and fielding next generation capabilities,” Navy Lt. Cdr. Tim Gorman, a Pentagon spokesperson, instructed Breaking Defense.
The outlet mentioned it had been tipped off to this improvement by Air Force Lt. Gen. Clint Hinote, that service’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategy, Integration, and Requirements, an workplace additionally known as Air Force Futures, in an interview in September. Hinote mentioned that the Air Force was “getting ready to take delivery” of an uncrewed plane by way of OUSD (R&E) and that “it might look a lot like an Australian thing.”
It’s not instantly clear if the OUSD (R&E) and the Air Fore have solely acquired one MQ-28 or a single ghost bat “system” that features a number of airframes. In August, the Air Force did disclose that Boeing had introduced no less than one MQ-28 Ghost Bat into the United States for unspecified causes. Whether or not this is identical drone that might be used to help U.S. navy analysis and improvement efforts is unclear, however the timing of the assorted official statements makes it attainable, if not very possible.
It’s additionally unclear how particularly the Department of Defense and the Air Force will make the most of the MQ-28. However, Breaking Defense mentioned that Lt. Gen. Hinote had indicated that the drone would assist his service get a firmer grasp on what it desires out of a deliberate household of future uncrewed plane, presently referred to collectively as Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA), that are meant to work carefully with, however not essentially be intricately managed by crewed platforms.
“We’re trying to learn off these prototypes to get some of that data that we need,” Hinote defined, in response to Breaking Defense. “That will help us understand what the real buy looks like. And I think the real buy is actually … [a] family [of drones], and that family could be multiple vendors, multiple architectures.”
“The first one sucks. Just at all times preserve that in thoughts,” he added. “Article one among something we purchase just isn’t what we actually need.”
This is all in line with remarks from Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall earlier this year, where he said that the Ghost Bat might be a useful “risk-reduction mechanism” to support work related to the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program. CCA is one of many components of the overarching NGAD effort, which also includes the development of a sixth-generation stealthy crewed combat jet, along with new weapons, sensors, networking and battle management capabilities, jet propulsion technologies, and more, as you can read more about here. Future CCAs would likely operate cooperatively with legacy 4th and 5th-generation Air Force fighters, as well.
Ghost Bat, which Boeing originally developed for Royal Australian Air Force’s (RAAF) Airpower Teaming System (ATS) loyal wingman drone program and made its first flight last year, has long appeared to be its most obvious path into the CCA arena. The MQ-28 is designed to be highly adaptable, leveraging a modular physical structure, including an interchangeable nose, and open-architecture systems. The RAAF is actively conducting ground and flight testing with examples it has already acquired, and earlier this year publicly showed one of the drones fitted with an infrared search and track system (IRST) in the nose, as seen in the picture below.
Boeing had planned to provide at least one example of this drone, or a variant or derivative thereof, to support the Air Force’s Skyborg program. The Air Force disclosed earlier this year that Boeing’s involvement had come to an end without the delivery of any aircraft. Skyborg, which is still ongoing, has been focused on the development of an artificial intelligence (AI) driven “laptop mind” and other associated systems intended that could be used to operate various types of highly autonomous uncrewed aircraft, and will feed into the CCA program.
More details about how the MQ-28 is being used may emerge as Air Force gets closer to kicking off a formal CCA competition, which the service has said it expects to come in the 2024 Fiscal Year, which begins on October 1, 2023. At the same time, Secretary Kendall has indicated that this will likely be a highly classified program. That being said, General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman have all already laid out plans for families of uncrewed aircraft and related technology developments that are explicitly or implicitly aimed at meeting the Air Force’s still-evolving CCA requirements.
Given OUSD (R&E)’s involvement, it is possible that the MQ-28 could support other research and development or test and evaluation efforts within the Air Force or other services. The U.S. Navy, for instance, has its own NGAD program, which is technically separate, but still understood to be heavily intertwined with the Air Force’s effort.
The acquisition of the MQ-28 also underscores deep relationships between the U.S. Air Force and RAAF, as well as the U.S. and Australian militaries more generally. A number of unusual and still largely unexplained flights in recent years by RAAF C-17A Globemaster III cargo planes to the secretive Tonopah Test Range Airport is an example of this existing cooperation, and has already prompted questions about possible work the two countries may be conducting together on advanced aviation programs. At least some of the RAAF C-17 flights originated at RAAF Amberly, a base that is home to the country’s Globemaster III and is a hub for ATS/MQ-28 testing.
“The goal within the Joint Vision Statement is to generate airpower that helps mutual nationwide safety approaches to discourage aggression and confront threats to a free, steady, and open worldwide system,” according to an Air Force release. “This might be achieved by way of regional engagement; efficient data sharing; shared approaches to safety challenges; and credible, sustainable, and interoperable air forces throughout the Indo-Pacific area.”
“The relationship between the U.S. and Australia dates again greater than 100 years,” Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Brown said in a statement. “Signing the Joint Vision Statement represents one other step within the long-term, enduring dedication we’ve got to the longer term and to the safety of our two international locations.”
“Our growing ranges of interoperability are primarily based on a wealthy historical past of working collectively,” RAAF Air Marshal Chipman added in his own statement. “We will proceed to design our forces to outlive and succeed by quickly constructing the capability, ideas, and capabilities vital for tomorrow’s rising threats, whereas enhancing mixed operations experience for at the moment’s challenges.”
With regards to the MQ-28, it very much remains to be seen how the Air Force, together with the Pentagon, will now put the drone to work. What is clear is that they are making use of an advanced design that is available and flyable now as the Air Force moves ahead with its broader uncrewed aircraft plans.
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