US developing drones for aircraft carriers PHOTO/VIDEO

Several new unmanned aerial vehicles are under development as part of the Navy’s air wing of the future concept in addition to the unmanned aerial tanker set to deploy in 2026, Navy officials said on July 13.

The new aircraft are being designed to meet growing requirements for range for carrier air wings, Rear Adm. Andrew Loiselle, the Navy’s air warfare director (OPNAV N98), said during a naval aviation panel at the Naval Institute, co-hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

“As we go to the air wing of the future, we will be operating at ranges off of the aircraft carrier that vastly exceeds what we’re doing today,” Loiselle said.

“In order to do that the unmanned portfolio really needs to be part of that system, because it’s the easiest way for us to keep a normally sized aircraft, but then have all of that extra space for fuel that gets us the range that we require to be able to get out there.”

With the F-35C Lighting II Joint Strike Fighter, the current air wing has an effective combat range of about 700 nautical miles from the carrier, USNI News previously reported. Prior to the F-35C inclusion on the carrier, the service relied on F/A-18E/F Super Hornets for a strike and air-to-air missions with even shorter ranges.

In order to be effective in the vast distances in the increasingly dangerous Western Pacific, aircraft would notionally have to operate more than 1,000 nautical miles from the carrier to keep out of range of Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles like the DF-21 and DF-26, analyst Bryan Clark told USNI News in 2020.

The next step for the Navy is to bring an unmanned aerial refuelling aircraft to operate further from the carrier to extend the range of the existing airwing. The first operational MQ-25A Stingray aerial refuelling UAVs are set to deploy aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-73) by 2026, Vice Adm. Kevin Whitesell said in April.

Carrying 15,000 pounds of gas up to 500 nautical miles from the carrier, the Stingrays would take over the tanking mission from the existing fleet of F/A-18F Super Hornets.

“We have the MQ-25, which is first envisioned as a tanker. And so that’s its primary role in its initial instantiation, Loiselle said.
“And there are several other things under development right now that I’m very excited about.”

MQ-25A was initially conceived as a more capable unmanned aircraft as part of the Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) program that was pared back to the unmanned carrier tanker.