MQ-25 Stingray

The MQ-25 Stingray is the world's first operational carrier-based uncrewed aircraft, designed to extend the strike radius of Nimitz- and Ford-class air wings by offloading roughly 15,000 pounds of fuel at a range of 500 nautical miles. It frees F/A-18E/F Super Hornets from the buddy-tanker mission that has consumed nearly a third of their sortie hours and restores the long-range strike reach the carrier air wing lost with the retirement of the S-3 Viking.

Boeing won the engineering and manufacturing development contract in 2018 and flew the T1 prototype from USS George H.W. Bush in 2021, the first uncrewed aircraft ever to refuel another aircraft in flight. Initial operational capability on the USS Theodore Roosevelt is planned for the second half of the decade, with the Stingray also serving as a testbed for wider integration of uncrewed systems into the carrier air wing.

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