US Air Force to start new experiments with Boeing’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat drone

WASHINGTON — The US Air Force is set to begin flight experiments with Boeing’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat, a combat drone developed for the Australian air force that may help its American counterpart learn how to operate unmanned aircraft alongside fighter jets.

Lt. Gen. Clint Hinote, who leads Air Force Futures, told Breaking Defense in a September 20 interview that the service is “getting ready to take delivery” of a drone prototype through the Pentagon’s research and engineering office, also known as OSD (R&E).

“It might look a lot like an Australian thing,” he joked, referring to the Ghost Bat, which first flew in 2021 at Royal Australian Air Force Base Woomera.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cdr. Tim Gorman confirmed that the research and engineering office is involved in development and experimentation efforts involving Ghost Bat, saying that “OSD (R&E) continually works with the services to validate technologies that are key to advancing and fielding next generation capabilities.”

He declined to give further details except to confirm that Ghost Bat is not being funded through the Rapid Defense Experimentation Reserve (RDER), an OSD (R&E) -led effort wherein the services propose experiments and compete for funding.

Boeing deferred comment on the matter to the Air Force. 

In recent weeks Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has hinted that the Ghost Bat could be a useful tool for the US Air Force as it seeks to understand how semi-autonomous combat drones — what the service calls Collaborative Combat Aircraft — could interface with the service’s fifth and sixth-generation fighters. Both CCA and a manned sixth-generation fighter are planned to be part of the service’s Next Generation Air Dominance family of systems, and Kendall has said a CCA competition could begin as early as fiscal 2024.

During an August trip to Australia, Kendall said he had spoken with his Australian counterparts about using the MQ-28 as a “risk reduction mechanism.” Weeks later, at the Defense News Conference, Kendall again called out Ghost Bat as a potential testbed that could help prove how to integrate combat drones in the daily operations of a fighter wing, such as mission planning, battle management and sustainment.

“You’d be integrating these [drones] with existing aircraft in a way which sort of prove out some of the tactics, techniques and procedures, as well as things like maintenance concepts …and organizational structures,” he said then.

‘The First One Sucks’

Defining the NGAD family of systems — including the exact mix of drones a human pilot of a sixth-generation fighter aircraft will need to take into battle — is one of Kendall’s top seven “operational imperatives” that will shape the Air Force’s FY24 budget.

During the interview with Breaking Defense, Hinote reiterated that the Air Force has not made a final decision on which drones it will ultimately procure as part of the CCA program, noting that Air Force Research Laboratory, Navy and OSD (R&E) all have ongoing efforts for testing new drones.

“We’re trying to learn off these prototypes to get some of that data that we need,” he said. “That will help us understand what the real buy looks like. And I think the real buy is actually … [a] family [of drones], and that family could be multiple vendors, multiple architectures.”

Hinote cautioned that the first MQ-28 Ghost Bat may not be mature enough to send into battle just yet.

“The first one sucks. Just always keep that in mind. Article one of anything we buy is not what we really want,” he said. However, CCAs are so novel that the Air Force can benefit from learning how to use the system while the technology continues to evolve.

“I don’t know yet how fast you can take one off the runway, put gas in it, put weapons on it if that’s what you want to do, put a new cartridge or new software update,” Hinote said. Even basic sustainment practices could vary between piloted fighters and CCAs: “Do you have to check the oil? Every time we fly a jet right now … we get about that much oil out of it and we go, ‘Okay, are there any particles in it?’ … I don’t think you’re going to do that [with a drone].”

Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst with AeroDynamic Advisory, said the big question that will shape the requirements of the CCA program is: How good is artificial intelligence, actually?

“If your AI doesn’t meet expectations, then you’re looking at larger Loyal Wingman planes, with a two-to-one ratio or a one-to-one ratio [to manned fighters]. If AI evolves quicker, then you’re looking at smaller systems that swarm,” he said. In other words, the more trusted and advanced an AI system is, the more drones a single human pilot will be able to manage.

However, other technical and operational questions abound, Aboulafia said. How will CCAs be deployed during conflict, and how far can they stray from manned fighters? Will the drones have to stay within visual ranges of manned fighters in order to continue to pass data back and forth using stealthy datalinks? Will CCA operate within visual ranges of adversary aircraft?

And even if AI is advanced enough that a fighter pilot can manage a large swarm of small drones, if the drones are so small that they can’t carry the weapons or sensors currently available, does it even matter?

“It’s completely unwritten at this point,” said Aboulafia, who added that the Air Force needs a “brutally honest” AI technology roadmap to help shape the CCA program.

The Air Force’s seemingly sudden interest in evaluating the MQ-28 is a good news story for Boeing, as the Ghost Bat was originally a part of AFRL’s Skyborg program. It was eventually forced to withdraw due to schedule conflicts, as the Ghost Bat prototypes were engaged in demonstrations with the Royal Australian Air Force and could not be transferred to the US in time, Brig. Gen. Dale White, the Air Force’s program executive for fighters and advanced aircraft, said in August.

The Skyborg program aims to pair low-cost drones with a government-owned autonomy core for a series of flight tests. Demonstrations with General Atomics’ MQ-20 Avenger, and Kratos’ UTAP-22 Mako and XQ-58A Valkyrie are still ongoing.