US Navy MQ-25 Stingray Unmanned Aerial Tanker

Brother thanks for your opinions
Sorry we disappoint you Master Jura, but to be honest you post some very misleading links/articles by dishonest people who love to hate the F-35, or F-22?? and we don't call you a troll??
LOL not my posts adhere to the Pentagon narrative

but that's not the point
I realize I sometimes like posts by people who have a different perspective, and occasionally they return the favor...

I'm a Christian, I'm far from perfect, I try not to "keep score" or hold grudges...

to say I admire your intellect and value your friendship would be an understatement, but every weapon system seems to have its flaws, and things that will require a work-around...

I do hope I didn't "like the above post about Putin",,, I think its terribly ignorant for the Russians or the Chinese to embrace either of their present leaders as DFL??? but sadly neither the Russians nor our Chinese friends are free to publicly criticize their current leadership, so I guess they'll have to try to live with it???
the point is individuals come here to violate
"Politics and ideology are not a part of "off topic" posts, they are not what SD is about and we discourage them heavily.." SINODEFENCE FORUM
RULES OF BEHAVIOR https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/sd-forum-rules-of-behavior.t7851/#post-486470


I'll move on now
 
so
Is Boeing working on a second MQ-25 drone prototype?
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Boeing is confident it can win the Navy’s
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. In fact, it’s so bullish that it may already be on a path to building a second prototype.

During a March 6 visit to St. Louis, Defense News got to be the first media outlet to see the company’s MQ-25 offering up close and personal.

Asked if Boeing Phantom Works was working on a second MQ-25 prototype after having revealed the first one in December, its program director Don “BD” Gaddis and capture lead Dave Thieman laughed and pointedly steered the conversation in a different direction.

But another source indicated that another MQ-25 prototype could be revealed in short order.

It wouldn’t be the first time that Boeing has poured its investment dollars into creating not only one, but two test versions of an aircraft while a competition still rages on. In 2016, the company
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in a glitzy ceremony, and then 15 minutes later took reporters to a nearby hanger to reveal a second aircraft going through tests.

If a second Boeing MQ-25 exists, it’s evidence of how badly the company wants to win the competition, which has been narrowed down to three vendors — Boeing, General Atomics and Lockheed Martin — after
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.

“This is a high-priority program,” said Phil Finnegan, a unmanned system analyst at the Teal Group. “They’re really intent on strengthening their position in unmanned systems.”

Boeing has poured its own money into maturing its carrier-based drone concept and is the first of the three vendors to make its MQ-25 air vehicle public.

Its Phantom Works division conducted the initial design review for what became its MQ-25 prototype in October 2012, back when the U.S. Navy was still pursuing an unmanned aircraft that could fly on and off the carrier to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance as well as strike missions, under a program called Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike, or UCLASS, Gaddis said.

The company quietly rolled out the prototype within the company in November 2014, just a month before the Navy announced it was pausing the UCLASS program.

“You can imagine how upset we were,” laughed Thieman.

Then, in 2016, the Navy killed UCLASS and began a new carrier drone program called Carrier-Based Aerial-Refueling System, or CBARS, which later became the MQ-25. Instead of an ISR and strike mission, the MQ-25 would act as an autonomous, unmanned tanker and relieve F/A-18E/F Super Hornets from refueling duties that take away from the fighters’ core mission set.

But Boeing found that its UCLASS design was already a good fit for the tanking mission. Unlike Northrop, which invested heavily in a stealthy, flying-wing design aimed at a precision-strike mission, Boeing opted for a wing-body-tail air vehicle with limited low-observable features and a large payload bay.

“One of the things that people should be reminded of is that in UCLASS, tanking was one of the missions for UCLASS, and the company designed the airplane around that mission area as well as all of the other UCLASS mission areas,” Gaddis said. “So the other UCLASS missions are gone, but the tanking still remains, and we feel that this aircraft is right in the wheelhouse of that tanking requirement.”

Externally, Boeing’s MQ-25 prototype, also known as T1, is still the same as its UCLASS design. However, the company had to do significant rework on the mission systems side as the requirement shifted from surveillance to refueling.

“There will be some touches in the airplanes between T1 and [the first engineering and manufacturing development, or EMD, aircraft], but not many. The biggest change are in the mission systems,” Gaddis said. “The UCLASS requirements are quite different than the MQ-25 requirements for mission systems. And so when you go from big ISR to little ISR, that’s really the biggest change for MQ-25.”

Jerry Hendrix, a retired Navy captain and defense analyst at the Center for a New American Security, said Boeing’s prototype shows its UCLASS origins, with a large, robust fuselage “boat” that could carry fuel or — as originally developed — advanced sensor systems and ordnance.

“One area of concern, however, is the thin wing design, which is clearly influenced by the previous high-altitude ISR mission,” he said.

“I would expect, as the MQ-25 mission tanker program goes forward, that this prototype would evolve the wings to make them wider from their front leading edge to back and also thicker. This would make the platform more robust for sustained tanking missions as well as add additional fuel capacity to the design.”

As
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has noted, Boeing’s design features a flush dorsal jet intake that supplies air to the engine, which as of yet has not been specified by the company. According to Gaddis, the company’s MQ-25 stores its fuel in tanks surrounding the engine, and the inner section of its fold-up wings are “wet,” meaning the fuel moves freely within that part of the wing.

According to the Navy’s requirements, the MQ-25 must be able to deliver 14,000 pounds of fuel at distances of 500 nautical miles from an aircraft carrier.

Gaddis said Boeing’s design meets that requirement with margin to spare, telling Defense News that it “carries a ton of gas.” But with a competition still ongoing, he declined to detail exactly how much the air vehicle can carry.

The Navy will decide the MQ-25 competition in August, choosing a single vendor and awarding a contract for the four EMD aircraft, with an option for three more test assets.

In its fiscal 2019 budget request, the Navy announced that it would begin production in FY23 with a procurement of four drones, ahead of an initial operational capability in FY26. It plans to buy 72 aircraft over the course of the program.

Boeing should be ready for the first flight of its MQ-25 shortly after the Navy makes its downselect decision in August, but it still has a lot of work to do before then, Gaddis said.

Besides moving its prototype through the standard testing process that all aircraft go through before first flight, it also needs to finish its statement of work. Boeing — like the other competitors — was awarded a contract to refine its MQ-25 concept, which includes activities such as software integration and improving its open-systems architecture.

It also includes providing data about how to handle the drone aboard the deck of an aircraft carrier, which Boeing is demonstrating through a series of drills in St. Louis, Missouri. The company mapped out the deck of an aircraft carrier on the tarmac at Lambert Field, and Boeing employees have practiced how to safely and efficiently move its MQ-25 around the ship by taxiing it around, tested the arresting gear and hooking it into a catapult.
 
now
Concept for Lockheed MQ-25A Stingray Unmanned Tanker Bid Revealed
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Lockheed Martin unveiled its concept for the Navy’s MQ-25A Stingray unmanned aerial tanker in a series of images provided to USNI News on Monday by the company.

Skunk Works’ answer to the service’s requirement for a new carrier-based tanker is a tailless flying wing design that sets it apart from the other competitors in the program.

The series of four images shows the Lockheed Martin Stingray equipped with what appears to be a single D-704 buddy tank just to the left of the centerline of the airframe and a collection of sensors in the nose of the aircraft.

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first reported on the concept imagery on Monday.

A flying wing concept is a break from the other competitors. Boeing and General Atomics Stingray designs – both revealed late last year – feature a wing-body-tail design for the MQ-25A.

Last year, then-Skunk Works head Rob Weiss told reporters the Navy’s revision of the requirements were pushing competitors away from flying wing designs that weren’t as inherently efficient for a long-distance tanking mission as wing-body-tail platforms. And yet, the company has chosen to retain its flying wing design anyway, possibly indicating the company could foresee additional growth in the MQ-25A concept of operations to include missions that could benefit from the inherent low observability of a tailless design.

The service’s basic requirements will have the Stingray deliver about 15,000 pounds of fuel 500 nautical miles from the carrier, and Weiss
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that “the requirements have been defined to be a tanker, so you really don’t want to go with a tailless design if your primary requirement is associated tanking,”

After the Navy focused its requirement to be solely on tanking, Northrop Grumman, who was expected to offer a bid for Stingray based on its X-47B tailless cranked kite design, dropped out of the competition.

In 2016, Weiss told reporters that if the Navy was interested in growing the capabilities of the Stingray to more than just a tanker, it would need to start with a basic design that could grow into more missions that would require low observable characteristics.

“If you start with a vehicle shape that will allow it to penetrate into a contested environment, you can get a low-cost tanking capability upfront without putting all the capability into that vehicle. … You can do it at low cost but stay on that same path to use that vehicle design to operate in a penetrating environment,”
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.

The current competition for Stingray is the latest in a 12-year effort for the Navy to develop its first fixed-wing carrier unmanned aerial vehicle since the service broke with the Air Force in developing a joint UAV in 2006.

Instead of creating a deep-strike stealth platform – at the Office of the Secretary of Defense’s direction – the Navy crafted requirements to have the unmanned system act as a carrier tanker. Currently, F/A-18E/F Super Hornets fill the carrier air wing’s tanking requirements. Up to 20 to 30 percent of in-demand Super Hornet sorties are tanking missions. The service would rather use that service life for strike and other missions.

The Navy set aside $719 million for Stingray in the Fiscal Year 2019 budget and plans on buying the first four in 2023
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.
 

timepass

Brigadier
Lockheed Martin Unveils MQ-25 'Stingray' Tanker Drone Design for the Navy...

refueling-sec-2-2-4-fig2b-jpg-1522094814.jpg


"Lockheed Martin's Advanced Development Programs, better known as Skunk Works, has released concept images of its MQ-25 'Stingray' design, an unmanned carrier-launched tanker plane. The refueling drone will compete against designs from Boeing and General Atomics for a Navy contract to build a fleet of the aircraft.

The Navy's MQ-25 program seeks a refueling drone that can perform catapult-launched takeoffs and arrested landings on aircraft carriers. The tanker should be capable of passing 14,000 lbs. of fuel to other planes at a range of 500 nautical miles from the carrier.

Such a tanker could significantly extend the operating range of carrier-based fighter jets like the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet and F-35C Joint Strike Fighter. A Super Hornet, for example, has a strike range of about 450 nautical miles. The Stingray could extend that range to more than 700 nmi."

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TerraN_EmpirE

Tyrant King
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DZyUJJNW4AMU4yO.jpg:large

General Atomics Isn't Building A Flyable Prototype Of Their MQ-25 Tanker Drone
The famed drone manufacturer has come out with an impressive, no-nonsense flying gas truck. But will the lack of a prototype hurt its chances?
BY TYLER ROGOWAYAPRIL 2, 2018
General Atomics, purveyor of the iconic Predator and Reaper drones, has officially released more concept art and new details about its carrier-based tanker drone to our friend and Aviation Week reporter James Drew. One main revelation in Drew's report is that the company doesn't plan on actually building a full-scale prototype of its design, at least not until they win the competition.
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Mar 17, 2018
so
Is Boeing working on a second MQ-25 drone prototype?
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well
Phantom Works selects Rolls-Royce turbofan to power MQ-25 bid
  • 05 April, 2018
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Boeing Phantom Works’ MQ-25 unmanned aerial vehicle prototype is powered by a single, 9,000lb-thrust Rolls-Royce AE3007N turbofan, Boeing disclosed on 5 April.

The aerospace manufacturer said the engine has powered its prototype on tarmac manoeuvres meant to simulate the sort of taxiing the drone would be expected to perform on an aircraft carrier deck, such as lining up to be rigged for a catapult launch. The aircraft hasn’t flown yet; a feat Boeing said it will not attempt until after the US Navy awards the programme contract in September.

Boeing touted the AE3007N as a proven powerplant for its MQ-25 tanker drone, pointing out the engine’s use on the Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton and RQ-4 Global Hawk.

The engine disclosure comes as Boeing attempts to make its case that its reliance on the proven turbofan and the investment the company has made in developing a functional prototype makes its unmanned aerial vehicle a less risky bet for the US Navy compared to rivals Lockheed Martin and General Atomics Aeronauticall Systems, each which have opted to not build physical aircraft before the programme is awarded.

“I think what makes it unique is it is built. We’ve already demonstrated a lot of the functionality,” said Don Gaddis, Boeing Phantom Works MQ-25 programme director. “The deck handling, the software, the mission computer, the vehicle management system, the Rolls-Royce engine, we’ve already demonstrated a lot of this stuff. We’ve done almost everything short of flying.”

Boeing started building its MQ-25 in 2012 and finished its first iteration in 2014 under US Navy’s Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike programme, Gaddis added.

The aircraft retains long thin wings meant originally for the long-endurance requirements of the UCLASS programme. The company found it unnecessary to change the design after studying the issue, Gaddis said. The wingspan of the Boeing MQ-25 remains undisclosed, though Gaddis said when the wings are folded the plane shrinks to the size of a Super Hornet.
 
Mar 27, 2018
now
Concept for Lockheed MQ-25A Stingray Unmanned Tanker Bid Revealed
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and
Lockheed announces industry partners on Navy’s MQ-25 tanker drone offering
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Lockheed Martin’s unmanned
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proposal for the Navy will incorporate some familiar equipment, including the General Electric F404 turbofan engine that powers the
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and the F-35C landing gear made by United Technologies Corp., company executives announced Monday.

Triumph Aerostructures, which will manufacture the internal structure of the drone, rounds out the list of suppliers disclosed by Rob Weiss, outgoing head of Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, and Jeff Babione,
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.

“We’ve done a great job of pulling together a real proven set of aerospace technology providers,” Babione told reporters during a briefing at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space conference.

Triumph has manufactured structures for a wide range of aircraft including Northrop Grumman’s E-2D Hawkeye, the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey and Lockheed’s F-35 joint strike fighter, he said. Meanwhile UTC’s landing gear has proven its utility in a “difficult use environment,” and the F404 has clocked more than 13 million flight hours.

“That engine is already on the carrier and they would have everything they would need to support the MQ-25, no innovation required — extremely important in reducing the risk and overall cost,” Babione said.

Although Lockheed’s MQ-25 offering is re-using equipment from legacy airframes, Skunk Works is arguably taken the most risk in its design, putting out a tanker drone concept that doesn’t look much like its competitors.

For one, the company ditched its previous design after the Navy ended its program for an surveillance and strike drone and began an
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, whereas competitors General Atomics and
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heavily reused their MQ-25 designs.

But perhaps even more noticeably, Lockheed is the only competitor offering a flying wing aircraft after
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. Both General Atomics and Boeing have notably put forward wing-body-tail aircraft.

“We did a number of trade studies,” but found its previous design “was a compromise, as frankly most derivatives end up being,” explained Weiss. The company viewed wing-body-tail configurations as “big, heavy, expensive” and “not as high performing an airplane as we would like,” and returned to a flying wing configuration.

Lockheed liked the higher range and low fuel consumption of a flying wing design, Weiss said. Another Lockheed official on the program added that most tankers store fuel in its wings, “but all we are is a wing,” potentially allowing it to carry more fuel.

Another big departure from its competitors is Lockheed’s sales approach, which has showcased the aircraft’s room to grow into other applications, including a penetrating strike mission.

A video revealed during the briefing Monday showed Lockheed’s MQ-25 launching two AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapons from the hard points that would usually carry its drop tank and refueling pod.

Meanwhile, while the MQ-25 is not a stealth aircraft, it’s a “a plane form that would lend itself to a low observable design,” Weiss said, and could be modified to be LO in the future if the Navy wishes.

The Navy plans to pick an MQ-25 vendor this summer, and will award a contract for the four engineering and manufacturing development aircraft, with an option for three more test assets.

Unlike
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, Skunk Works has not unveiled a prototype yet, but Weiss said he didn’t believe there was a benefit to creating a flyable prototype before a contract award.

“We are prepared to move into an accelerated program for the development phase,” he said.

A Navy-required deck handling demo is coming up “in the very near future,” Weiss said, but he would not disclose whether Lockheed would use a surrogate aircraft during the tests except to note that the company will not use its X-44 flying wing demonstrator during tests.
 
cross-posting from
Aircraft Carriers III
:

I dug out Aug 21, 2016
until now I thought a tanker aircraft couldn't be a surveillance aircraft but
Navy, Industry Looking for Design ‘Sweet Spot’ for MQ-25A Stingray
source:
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after I had read
Navy Prioritizing Speed to Field Over Price for MQ-25A Stingray Program
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After years of requirements churn and program uncertainty, the signal to companies vying to build the Navy’s first operational unmanned carrier aircraft is crystal clear: the Navy wants the MQ-25A Stingray as soon as possible.

On Jan. 3, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Atomics all submitted their responses to the Navy’s final request for proposal for the airframe of the Stingray and are expecting the service to select a final design as soon as this summer.

The procurement schedule was accelerated at the behest of Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson, Boeing MQ-25A program manager and former program executive officer for Navy tactical aircraft B.D. Gaddis told reporters on Thursday.

“His number-one priority is the schedule. Price is number two. He wants this airplane out there quickly. The request for proposals and the source selection criteria reflect those priorities really, really well in terms of accelerating the schedule,” Gaddis said.
“He’s putting the pedal to the floor. Normally it takes NAVAIR about 18 months to do a source selection like this. They’re going to do it six months. When the CNO said he wanted to accelerate the schedule, he meant it.”

Outside of the requirements to industry, the service signaled it was bent on moving quickly on the program by including $719 million for the program development and the first four production airframes as part of its Fiscal Year 2019 budget submission.

The program has been moving quickly since the Office of the Secreatary of the Defense watered down the requirements of the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) concept and pushed companies to focus on the tanking requirement.

The decision to focus on tanking was the result of a strategic review of the UCLASS program led by then-Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work as Congress and the Navy struggled with how to define the role of UCLASS in the fleet.

“Going back to the UCLASS days, there’s a lot of… not everyone was aligned — to say it nicely — between Congress, OSD and the Navy and the fleet on the requirements,” Gaddis said.

A major driver of the program shift was to provide much-needed relief to the fleet’s already overworked F/A-18E/F Super Hornets that are burning up to 20 to 30 percent of their flight hours as tankers for deployed air wings.

The Navy has been vague about the requirements, but USNI News understands the service’s basic requirements will have the Stingray deliver about 15,000 pounds of fuel up to 500 nautical miles from the carrier.

As part of an earlier risk-reduction contract that also included Northrop Grumman, all the competitors were required to conduct a tanking trade study to best configure their offering for the MQ-25A work.

Based on those findings, Boeing and Lockheed Martin both determined modified versions of their UCLASS pitches would fit the bill for the service.

From 2012 to 2014, Boeing’s Phantom Works quietly built a flying prototype of its UCLASS design, built around a Rolls-Royce AE 3007 engine.

As the competition moves forward, Boeing is the only current competitor to have revealed a working prototype for its Stingray bid, since Northrop Grumman dropped its X-47B design out of the competition late last year.

“We had to go through that entire study, just like we did with UCLASS, to make sure that we had the right engine, we had the right design to see if we had to change anything substantial, and the answer that came out of that study was that we no we didn’t,” Gaddis said.
“Now that it’s just a tanker with little [information, surveillance and reconnaissance], we’re still in the wheelhouse with this requirement.”

Likewise, Lockheed Martin based its bid on its original UCLASS design. Lockheed had pushed a flying-wing design for its UCLASS offering that could grow into a stealthier platform more easily, Lockheed Martin’s MQ-25A program manager John Vinson told USNI News last week.

“We spent a lot of time at looking at what I would call conventional winged aircraft, but we also continued to look at our old UCLASS design, which has been designed as a stealthy first-day unfettered-access kind of ISR asset,” Vinson said.
“What can we do with the flying wing if we relax that stealthy, unfettered access requirement?”

In September, representatives from General Atomics said their bid was going to borrow heavily from the company’s experience in developing its MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft for the Air Force, in addition to the company’s Sea Avenger concept design.

Ahead of the final selection, the competitors will have to prove a deck handling demonstration for their airframes as part of the ongoing risk-reduction contracts.

While the companies are vying for the airframe, the Navy is responsible for designing and developing the data links and the ground control station and acting as the lead systems integrator for the effort. Much of that work was part of the Navy’s X-47B carrier launch and recovery tests in 2013 and 2014.

Moving ahead, the real challenge isn’t launching a UAV on and off the carrier but how the aircraft will fit into the airwing and the strike group.

“What’s the breakthrough that’s going to occur with the MQ-25? It’s not frankly the ability to operate an unmanned air system off a carrier. We know how to do that,” outgoing Skunk Works head Rob Weiss told reporters on Monday.
“The learning opportunity is going to be manned, unmanned teaming.”
 
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