MQ-25 Stingray

The U.S. Navy's first carrier-based unmanned aircraft—a dedicated aerial refueling tanker meant to relieve Super Hornets of the buddy-tanking burden and extend the strike range of the carrier air wing in contested environments.

Overview

The MQ-25A Stingray is a fixed-wing, autonomous unmanned aerial refueling tanker developed by Boeing for the U.S. Navy. It is purpose-built to operate from aircraft carriers, using probe-and-drogue refueling pods already in fleet service to offload fuel to F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, F-35Cs, and E-2D Advanced Hawkeyes at a planned 500 nautical miles from the carrier. As the first dedicated unmanned tanker in the Navy’s inventory, it aims to reclaim strike-fighter sorties currently consumed by crewed buddy-tanking, a capability gap that has grown quantifiably urgent as the Navy designs operations in the Pacific. The Stingray also carries a secondary intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) mission, though its tanker role dominates the program of record.

Development

The MQ-25 traces its lineage to the cancelled Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) program, which sought a carrier-based stealthy strike and surveillance drone. Facing capability and cost hurdles, the Navy reoriented the effort in 2016 into the more focused Carrier-Based Aerial Refueling System (CBARS)—a simpler tanker-first design that would fill the immediate buddy-tanking gap faster and cheaper. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Atomics all submitted proposals; Boeing was awarded the $805 million engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) contract in August 2018, as detailed by Naval Technology.

Boeing’s T1 demonstrator flew in 2019 and, on 7 June 2021, became the first unmanned aircraft in history to refuel another aircraft in flight when it passed fuel to an F/A-18F Super Hornet, according to the official Boeing program page. The production-representative engineering development model (EDM) did not fly until 25 April 2026, after delays pushed the milestone from late 2025, but the two-hour autonomous sortie at MidAmerica Airport in Mascoutah, Illinois, demonstrated taxi, takeoff, flight, landing, and responsive ground-control station command, as reported by Boeing and DefenseScoop. On 19 May 2026, the Navy granted Milestone C approval, clearing the aircraft for low-rate initial production (LRIP), a decision noted by Seapower Magazine.

Initial operational capability (IOC) has slipped five years from the original 2024 target and is now set for fiscal year 2029, per the FY2027 budget submission, as reported by USNI News.

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