- Boeing, the maker of the MQ-25 Stingray, recently displayed a model of an armed variant of the refueling drone.
- The model depicted a Stingray armed with two LRASM anti-ship missiles.
- If folded into the Navy’s drones, the potential would drastically increase a carrier’s firepower.
The Navy’s carrier-based refueling drone could possibly be about to get loads more lethal. A model of the MQ-25 Stingray was spotted last week at a defense industry conference armed with two LRASM missiles. The concept could finally give the Stingray its sting, allowing it to hit targets with the AI-powered anti-ship missiles at as much as 800 miles.
Missed Opportunity?
When the US Navy made the choice to make its first operational, carrier-based drone a refueling one, it was a controversial decision. Many naval experts thought that the Navy must have gone with a protracted range strike drone, to make up for the F/A-18 Super Hornet and F-35’s relatively short range. Such a drone could have allowed carriers to conduct strikes a secure distance from land-based missiles, particularly those equivalent to China’s DF-26 anti-ship ballistic missiles.
Still, there was logic within the Navy’s decision. For many years, carriers have relied on Super Hornet strike fighters using underwing refueling tanks to refuel other carrier-based aircraft. A Super Hornet configured as a flying gas station, nevertheless, can’t fulfill its assigned role of air-to-air and air-to-ground missions. The refueling sorties were also adding hours to the Super Hornet fleet, increasing maintenance and operating costs.
The addition of a dedicated refueling tanker to the carrier frees up Super Hornets to do Super Hornet things. It might also refuel any fixed-wing aircraft within the carrier’s air wing, including F/A-18s, F-35s, E-2D Hawkeyes, and CMV-22 Ospreys. A MQ-25 can carry as much as 16,000 kilos of fuel, enough to spice up the range of a flight of 4 Super Hornet fighters by 100-150 miles. Alternatively, one MQ-25 can double the range of a single Super Hornet to about 1,000 miles. Refueled by a Stingray and armed with standoff anti-ship missiles, a Super Hornet could theoretically sink ships at as much as 1,300 miles, the gap from Recent Orleans to Recent York City.
A Stingray With no Stinger
The MQ-25 was an satirically named aircraft: although named after a fish with a dangerous stinger, the aircraft was completely unarmed. The Navy and Boeing made vague comments a couple of secondary strike and intelligence/surveillance/reconnaissance capabilities however it was clear aerial refueling was the principal mission anyone had in mind.
Last week, on the Navy League’s Sea Air Space convention Boeing displayed a model of a MQ-25 that for once had a stinger. Two, in truth: a pair of AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles, or LRASM. LRASM is a variant of the highly successful Joint air to Surface Standoff Missile, or JASSM. JASSM, utilized by the Navy and the Air Force, is a subsonic, air-launched land attack cruise missile designed to penetrate enemy air defense networks and strike hardened targets. JASSM missiles have been used twice in combat, once against Syrian chemical weapons sites in 2018 and the 2019 operation to kill ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
LRASM takes the JASSM frame and adds a passive ship homing system. As a substitute of using an onboard radar to detect ships, LRASM passively listens for enemy ship radars, identifying their owners to determine which ship is the goal. The missile may even discover which ships are defending the goal, flying around them, and zeroing in on their goal. It might even pick particular locations on the ship to strike, a handy capability to have since China’s recent Fujian aircraft carrier has each of its plane-lifting elevators on the starboard (right) side. The missile is armed with a half ton high explosive blast fragmentation warhead to penetrate ship hulls and do maximum damage.
More, Please?
Each Nimitz and Ford-class carrier will embark 4-5 of the drones as a part of its aircraft complement, the primary recent addition to the carrier air wing because the F-35C. The service plans to purchase just 72 of the drones, an additional disappointment after the initial concentrate on midair refueling over strike. Boeing’s recent armed model, nevertheless, may upend that.
Currently each MQ-25 Stingray drone will cost $136 million each, making each costlier than even the carrier-based version of the F-35. While quite a lot of the associated fee comes all the way down to developing a brand new airframe, it’s also likely resulting from the proven fact that, as the primary operational carrier-based drone, it would be pioneering technology, equipment, and procedures that will probably be utilized by subsequent drones. The Navy believes that drones might account for as much as 60 percent of carrier air wing’s 80+ aircraft by 2040.
The flexibility to arm the MQ-25 creates an argument for increasing the variety of Stingrays per deployed carrier. If a Stingray can carry a LRASM anti-ship missile, it may possibly carry almost another kind of Navy air-to-ground ordnance as well, including GPS-guided JDAM bombs, the Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW), and others. The shortage of a pilot makes them particularly suited to high risk missions. And there’s also the proven fact that if you happen to don’t mind losing a drone, a drone with a 500 mile range can fly 1000 miles before it runs out of fuel, making long range, high risk missions viable.
Buying more will lower the per unit cost, as economies of scale take hold. Roughly doubling the buy would allow the service so as to add as many as 10 of the drones per carrier. If a variant comes out that features the flexibility to conduct reconnaissance missions, that might expand the requirement further. What’s more, the usage of F-15E Strike Eagles to shoot down Iranian drones sure for Israel could lead on to a requirement for a drone with an air-to-air capability, not for dogfighting or fighting modern fighters but for downing swarms of enemy kamikaze drones.
Unmanned military drones have proliferated at a brisk clip, with robotic combat vehicles quickly filling every possible area of interest. A drone just like the MQ-25 could fill several niches even before the second generation of carrier-based robotic craft enters the image. The entire point of military drones is to perform dull and dangerous tasks, and the MQ-25 can now do each.