By Brett Davis, Editor-in-Chief
Autonomous systems that will eventually be used for robotic aerial refueling and carrier takeoffs and landings won’t be limited to uncrewed systems, but will augment crewed ones as well, said Rear Admiral Stephen Tedford, the program executive officer for Unmanned Aviation and Strike Weapons.
Briefing during Sea-Air-Space 2024, Tedford said the first MQ-25 Stingray static test vehicle is in St. Louis for ground testing.
“Most people don’t realize just how big an MQ-25 actually is,” he said. It’s the length of an F-18 with the wingspan of an E-2. “It is not a small UAV,” he said, but it is “our first step to the air wing of the future.”
The idea is to take the refueling burden off the F-18 Hornet “and take those F-18s back to being tactical shooters,” Tedford said. “That’s what MQ-25 is all about. We’re still on schedule for our first flight test this time next year at Patuxent River, and driving towards an IOC at the end of FY 26.”
But the AI and autonomy that will go into making that happen won’t only stay on the uncrewed side. Eventually, once the military has figured out a standard definition of autonomy, an effort led by the Air Force, it will filter into the crewed realm as well, making those operations safer and more efficient.
The Navy wants to get to robot-to-robot tanking with airborne UAVs, where a UAV can receive fuel from an MQ-25, or even MQ-25s can refuel each other.
“How do I then take that autonomy and put it into a manned platform to give the manned aircrew the bandwidth to conduct those operations late at night, without a moon, when energies are high, and it’s been a long day?” Tedford said.
During Operation Enduring Freedom over Afghanistan, combat air patrols relied on three tankers on the way in and three on the way out to make it back to the carrier, “not an easy task. If we can take AI and autonomy and start creating more bandwidth for all our platforms, that’s where I want to take this.”
