Breaking: U.S. Navy’s MQ-25 Stingray Completes First Flight - The Aviationist
MQ-25 Finally Flies — But At What Cost, And What Was The Alternative?
Stephen L. Pendergast April 26, 2026
BLUF
Boeing's first production-representative MQ-25A Stingray made its maiden flight from MidAmerica St. Louis Airport on April 25, 2026 — nearly seven years after the company-funded T1 demonstrator first flew, four years behind the original Initial Operational Capability (IOC) date of 2024, and on the back of more than $900 million in fixed-price losses Boeing has already absorbed on the program. The pattern fits standard prime-contractor behavior: lock out a non-traditional intruder (General Atomics) on established turf (carrier-based fixed-wing aviation, a near-century Boeing/McDonnell Douglas franchise) by lowballing the fixed-price development bid, then recover margin through engineering change proposals and production-phase scope expansion against an unstable requirements baseline — a baseline that, in CBARS, was actively descoped from stealthy strike to tanker between 2014 and 2018 and is now visibly evolving in the opposite direction, with publicly displayed LRASM anti-ship hardpoints, a retractable EO/IR turret with laser-designation provisions, and BLOS-linked manned-unmanned teaming software all added since contract award. The Navy now plans an IOC of FY2027 against a program-of-record of 76 aircraft, with the latest Selected Acquisition Report and FY2027 budget justification pegging flyaway unit cost at $181.6 million — up from $136.2 million in the FY2024 estimate and $166 million one year ago. Total program cost has migrated from a December 2022 SAR estimate of $16.5 billion toward the GAO's mid-2025 figure of approximately $15.9 billion in then-year dollars at a 4 percent acquisition-unit-cost increase to $209 million, even as the Navy delivered no aircraft against the original schedule. The DOD Inspector General (DODIG-2024-026) and the GAO have both flagged the Navy's plan to begin Low-Rate Initial Production before completing developmental and operational test as a concurrency risk likely to drive further cost growth. Meanwhile, the unsuccessful 2018 CBARS bidder — General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) — has, in roughly the same calendar interval, designed, built, and flown the YFQ-42A Collaborative Combat Aircraft for the Air Force in 16 months from contract award; demonstrated the company-funded Mojave STOL UAS landing on and taking off from HMS Prince of Wales — a non-CATOBAR Royal Navy carrier — in November 2023 without ski-jump assist, catapult, or arresting gear; and logged more than five years of jet-CCA autonomy work on the company-funded MQ-20 Avenger that the Navy itself now uses as its UMCS surrogate. The counterfactual is no longer hypothetical: GA-ASI's actual delivery cadence on adjacent Navy and Air Force unmanned-jet programs, combined with demonstrated carrier deck operations, strongly suggests that a Sea Avenger–derived MQ-25 would have flown earlier, cost the taxpayer less, and avoided the fixed-price contracting trap that has cratered Boeing Defense, Space & Security earnings for four straight years. The MQ-25 program is best understood as the last hurrah of an industrial-base structure — five primes inherited from the 1990s "Last Supper" consolidation, controlling roughly 65 percent of DOD procurement — that the Pentagon (through its 2022 State of Competition report and 2024 National Defense Industrial Strategy) and Congress (through the FoRGED Act) are now consciously trying to dismantle.
A Long-Delayed First Flight
The MQ-25A took off at MidAmerica St. Louis Airport in Mascoutah, Illinois — co-located with Scott Air Force Base — accompanied by a Boeing-owned TA-4J Skyhawk and a U.S. Navy UC-12M Huron acting as chase aircraft. A first attempt on April 22 was aborted on the takeoff roll for undisclosed reasons before the successful sortie three days later. The aircraft is one of nine production-representative airframes Boeing is building for static, fatigue, and flight test under the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) and System Demonstration Test Article (SDTA) phases of the program. Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 23 (VX-23) and Unmanned Aviation Test Squadron 24 (UX-24) jointly conducted the preceding low- and high-speed taxi trials and will continue the flight-test campaign.
The new airframe differs materially from the T1 demonstrator that first flew on September 19, 2019 and accumulated approximately 125 flight hours conducting unmanned aerial refueling demonstrations with an F/A-18F Super Hornet (June 4, 2021), an E-2D Hawkeye (August 19, 2021), and an F-35C Lightning II (September 14, 2021). The production configuration introduces a retractable electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor turret under the chin, a redesigned exhaust, structural and avionics changes for fleet airworthiness certification, and integration with the Navy/Lockheed Martin Unmanned Carrier Aviation Mission Control System (UMCS) and its MD-5 Ground Control Station family.
Vice Adm. Daniel Cheever, Commander, Naval Air Forces, told reporters in January 2025 that "we will fly MQ-25 in '25 — you can quote me on that." The aircraft did not fly in 2025. Then–NAVAIR commander Vice Adm. Carl Chebi acknowledged in April 2025 that meeting that schedule would require "a ton of work," noting that "70 percent of the capability that industry delivers to us is late." After a federal government shutdown and what the Navy described as a need to "complete deliberate systems-level testing and review and approve the final airworthiness artifacts needed for a flight clearance," the milestone slipped formally into early 2026.
The Cost Trajectory
Three independent figures tell the story of MQ-25 cost growth.
1. First, the flyaway unit cost has migrated from $136.2 million in the Navy's FY2024 budget estimate to $166 million in FY2026 and $181.6 million in the FY2027 budget justification documents. The FY2027 request totals $852 million for three Low-Rate Initial Production (LRIP) aircraft plus advance procurement of long-lead materials for a five-aircraft LRIP Lot 3, following $1.04 billion in combined procurement and RDT&E funding in FY2026.
2. Second, the total program cost stood at $16.5 billion in the December 2022 Selected Acquisition Report — the most recent SAR publicly released — against an acquisition unit cost (AUC) of $209 million, itself a 4 percent increase from the prior estimate. The GAO's 2025 Weapon Systems Annual Assessment, published June 11, 2025, found total cost of approximately $15.9 billion in then-year dollars across the 76-aircraft program of record. Procurement quantity restructuring across President's Budget cycles has masked some of the unit-cost growth — PB2024 alone shifted four aircraft out of the first two production lots into a new third lot.
3. Third, Boeing's contractor losses on the fixed-price MQ-25 EMD contract — originally an $805 million award for four aircraft in August 2018, later expanded to seven aircraft for $890 million in April 2020 — now exceed $900 million in cumulative pre-tax charges. Boeing logged a $147 million MQ-25 charge in Q2 2022 (its first), a $217 million charge in Q3 2024, and an additional $339 million across 2024 calendar-year reporting, with further losses booked through 2025. The MQ-25 is one of five fixed-price Boeing Defense programs — alongside KC-46A, T-7A, VC-25B, and Commercial Crew (Starliner) — that have together driven Boeing Defense, Space & Security to record annual losses, including $4.9 billion in 2024.
The pattern is the one Hudson Institute analyst Bryan Clark identified bluntly in early 2024: "Boeing wanted to win the work, so they went for these fixed-price R&D contracts and lowballed it, and now they're suffering." Lockheed Martin's then-CEO Marillyn Hewson told investors that matching Boeing's 2018 MQ-25, T-7A, and VC-25B bids would have cost Lockheed more than $5 billion in losses.
The Capability — When It Arrives
The MQ-25's primary mission remains aerial refueling using the same Cobham Aerial Refueling Store (ARS) pod carried by the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. The Navy told Congress in its August 2025 update that the aircraft is designed to deliver 14,000 to 16,000 pounds of fuel at 500 nautical miles. That capability would relieve the Super Hornet fleet of the buddy-tanker mission, which the service estimates accounts for between 20 and 30 percent of F/A-18E/F sorties — wear-and-tear that has accelerated airframe fatigue across an aging strike-fighter inventory.
Secondary missions include intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) via the new EO/IR turret, plus signals intelligence (SIGINT) and Automatic Identification System (AIS) receivers for organic maritime surveillance. Boeing has separately demonstrated software allowing an F/A-18F backseat operator to command the MQ-25 directly during refueling — an early manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) capability the Navy regards as a building block for its broader vision of a carrier air wing in which 60 percent or more of the aircraft are uncrewed.
The UMCS — the Navy/Lockheed Martin "system-of-systems" that will command not only the MQ-25 but also future carrier-based unmanned aircraft — is further along than the air vehicle itself. The first operational MD-5E Ground Control Station was installed aboard USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) in August 2024, with installations on USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70), USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71), and USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) phased through FY2025–FY2026. In November 2024, Navy Air Vehicle Pilots at NAS Patuxent River used the UMCS to command a GA-ASI MQ-20 Avenger flying from California — over a proliferated low-Earth-orbit satellite link — establishing that the architecture can control air vehicles other than the MQ-25, a critical proof point for future Collaborative Combat Aircraft on carriers. Unmanned Carrier-Launched Multi-Role Squadron 10 (VUQ-10), the Fleet Replacement Squadron, was established at NAS Patuxent River on October 1, 2022; operational squadrons VUQ-11 and VUQ-12 are planned.
The Lowball-And-Recover Thesis
The pattern of cost growth, requirements instability, and Boeing's own public posture suggests something more deliberate than execution failure. The CBARS program was, by the Navy's own admission, a program in flux at the time of the 2018 award. Originating as the Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) program in the early 2010s — itself an outgrowth of the X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstration (UCAS-D) — it was descoped in February 2016 from a stealthy strike/ISR platform to a tanker "with a little ISR," then formally redesignated MQ-25A in July 2016. The Joint Requirements Oversight Council did not validate the two primary requirements (carrier-capable, refuels other carrier aircraft) until July 2017, and the final RFP did not drop until October 2017. Northrop Grumman's CEO Wes Bush withdrew the X-47B in October 2017 specifically citing the requirements set, telling investors that "if you can't really execute on it and deliver on it to your customer and your shareholders, then you've done the wrong thing." Boeing's own design — secretly completed in 2014 during the UCLASS pause as a stealthy strike platform — was, in the words of one observer, faced with "an unpleasant choice" of either redesigning a clean-sheet tanker or "keep their UCLASS design and just de-emphasize stealth in the construction process." Boeing chose the latter, betting that "the potential to restore LO features later will be worth something." That bet has aged poorly for Boeing's shareholders. It may yet pay off through the production-phase revenue stream.
The mechanism is the engineering change proposal (ECP). Under firm-fixed-price development contracts, the contractor absorbs cost overruns within the original scope of work — but any change in scope, requirements, or specifications triggers a contract modification, billed at cost-plus margins back to the government. The thinner the original requirements baseline, the larger the ECP funnel. The MQ-25 baseline, as Boeing won it, included only the two JROC-validated primary requirements plus a "limited" ISR capability for "permissive" environments. Almost everything else — secondary mission systems, integration with the Navy's evolving UMCS architecture, manned-unmanned teaming software, signals intelligence and Automatic Identification System payloads, and ultimately combat capability — was either undefined or designated for future increments at the time of the 2018 fixed-price award.
The trajectory since shows the funnel filling. Boeing publicly displayed an MQ-25 model in April 2024 with AGM-158C LRASM anti-ship missiles on underwing hardpoints — a stealthy long-range strike weapon, currently fielded on the F/A-18E/F and B-1B and being integrated on F-35B/C, P-8A, F-15E, and F-15EX, that has reportedly seen first combat use against Houthi targets in 2025. A subsonic long-range anti-ship missile bolted under the wings of a "tanker with limited ISR" represents a substantial expansion of the original mission set, almost certainly handled through engineering changes or follow-on contract action rather than the original EMD scope. The retractable EO/IR sensor turret confirmed in January 2026 taxi-trial photography — including the option for laser rangefinders, designators, and trackers consistent with weapons employment — is the same story. So is the BLOS satellite link integration with UMCS demonstrated in November 2024. So is the manned-unmanned teaming software allowing F/A-18 backseaters to command the MQ-25 directly during refueling. None of these capabilities was fully scoped in the 2018 baseline.
The Navy's FY2026 budget submission language is telling: it describes "implementing an evolutionary acquisition strategy to develop, fly, deploy, and evolve" the MQ-25. "Evolve" is the key word. An evolutionary acquisition strategy on a fixed-price baseline is, in practice, a contracting structure that converts every evolution into a billable change order. The DOD Office of Inspector General's audit (DODIG-2024-026, released November 20, 2023) identified the most concrete near-term risk: the Navy's plan to begin Low-Rate Initial Production before completing developmental and operational test of the production-representative aircraft. The DODIG recommended either delaying the LRIP decision "until the Program Office conducts sufficient tests and evaluations" or updating the program's risk management documentation to reflect the concurrency exposure. The Navy chose option two, updated its risk assessment, and proceeded toward LRIP regardless. The GAO's June 2025 Weapon Systems Annual Assessment repeated the warning, citing the LRIP-before-test decision as a potential driver of "cost increases and further delays." The April 2025 Senate Appropriations Committee–reported version of the FY2025 defense bill (S. 4921) would have eliminated the first three LRIP aircraft entirely — a $473.4 million reduction. Congress ultimately funded the program through a continuing resolution and the One Beautiful Bill Act ($100 million in FY2025 reconciliation funding), with the FY2026 request restoring the LRIP buy.
This is the textbook environment for ECP-driven cost recovery: an unstable requirements baseline, a contractor with $900 million in pre-tax losses to amortize, a Navy customer publicly committed to evolving the platform's capabilities, an LRIP decision being made before flight test maturity, and a program of record (76 aircraft) large enough to absorb substantial per-unit cost growth across full-rate production lots. Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute identified the dynamic in early 2024 in plain language: Boeing "lowballed it" on a fixed-price R&D contract assuming "they would take a financial hit during development but make up profits later in the production and sustainment phases of the program." That is the playbook. The question is no longer whether it is being executed on MQ-25, but what the final acquisition unit cost will be when Boeing's production-and-sustainment recovery has run its course. The current $209 million AUC figure in the 2025 GAO assessment — already a 4 percent increase from the prior estimate, against a 76-aircraft program — is unlikely to be the last word.
The GA-ASI Counterfactual
When the Navy released the final CBARS RFP in October 2017 to Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and General Atomics, the latter offered a Sea Avenger derivative — an enlarged, navalized variant of its company-funded MQ-20 Avenger that had first flown in April 2009. Northrop Grumman withdrew its X-47B-derived offering in October 2017, citing inability to execute under the RFP terms. Boeing won on August 30, 2018 with a fixed-price bid that — as Lockheed's Hewson later acknowledged — implied losses for any competitor pricing to actual cost.
The intervening eight years are instructive.
GA-ASI flew the company-funded MQ-20 Avenger in 2009 and has continuously matured it as a jet-powered autonomy testbed. By 2025, the Avenger had served as the surrogate platform for more than five years of CCA-relevant autonomy development, hosting both GA-ASI's TacACE software and Shield AI's Hivemind — switching between AI pilots in flight — and demonstrating manned-unmanned teaming with a Lockheed Martin/L3Harris-equipped F-22 Raptor. In 2024 the company first flew the XQ-67A Off-Board Sensing Station for AFRL, validating the "genus/species" common-core airframe concept under the Low-Cost Attritable Aircraft Platform Sharing program.
Most pointedly: GA-ASI's YFQ-42A Collaborative Combat Aircraft, derived from the XQ-67A baseline under the Air Force's Increment 1 CCA contract awarded in early 2024, flew on August 27, 2025 — 16 months after contract award, and only 18 months after its XQ-67A predecessor. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink stated that the aircraft "went from concept to flight in just 16 months — proving that we can deliver combat capability at speed." By February 2026, GA-ASI had built and flown multiple YFQ-42As, integrated push-button autonomous takeoff and landing, and conducted a four-hour semi-autonomous mission flight using Collins Aerospace's Sidekick autonomy software via the Autonomy Government Reference Architecture standard.
The contrast with the MQ-25 timeline is stark. Boeing took 13 months from August 2018 contract award to T1 first flight in September 2019 — a respectable showing for the demonstrator. But it then took an additional six years and seven months to fly the first production-representative aircraft. GA-ASI, by comparison, took 16 months from CCA contract award to flight of a production-representative jet-powered uncrewed fighter, and the company has delivered more than 1,200 unmanned aircraft to customers worldwide and accumulated nearly 9 million flight hours across the Predator/Reaper/Avenger/SkyGuardian family.
GA-ASI's Poway, California, facility produces more than 100 aircraft per year — a production rate Boeing's MidAmerica MQ-25 line, which opened a $200 million expansion in 2024, has yet to demonstrate at any meaningful tempo.
The counterfactual would still have required real navalization work — salt-fog hardening, deck-handling integration, catapult and arresting-gear hardpoints, folding wings — that Boeing's wing-body-tail design, secretly completed during the UCLASS pause in 2014 and revived for CBARS, already incorporated. But the assumption that GA-ASI lacked carrier credentials does not survive contact with the record. On November 15, 2023, GA-ASI's company-funded Mojave short-takeoff-and-landing UAS — a STOL-winged derivative sharing systems and components with the MQ-1C Gray Eagle line — took off from, conducted circuits and approaches around, and landed back aboard HMS Prince of Wales (R09) underway off the U.S. East Coast. The Royal Navy carrier is fitted with neither catapults nor arresting gear; Mojave used neither the ski-jump nor the standard launch axis, instead running at an angle from the stern toward the port side of the deck. Royal Navy Director Develop Rear Adm. James Parkin called it "a European first… the first time a Remotely Piloted Air System of this size has operated to and from an aircraft carrier outside of the United States." The demonstration was followed by GA-ASI's planned MQ-9B STOL — a STOL wing set on the larger SkyGuardian/SeaGuardian/Protector airframe — pitched directly at navies operating large flat-deck warships without cats and traps.
Add to this Northrop Grumman's X-47B, which demonstrated full CATOBAR launch and recovery aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt in 2013. The engineering pathway to a navalized Avenger or Sea Avenger derivative was not speculative — it was, by 2018, a well-understood problem with company-funded flight test data on the books. GA-ASI's broader contracting posture is also worth noting: the company has consistently built company-funded prototypes (Avenger 2009, Mojave 2021, XQ-67A 2024) and competed for production with mature hardware, avoiding the fixed-price-development trap that has now cost Boeing more than $7 billion on KC-46, $2 billion on Starliner, $1.77 billion on T-7A, and approaching $1 billion on MQ-25.
The Bigger Pattern: Incumbent Moats On Established Turf
Stepping back, the MQ-25 story is not a one-off contracting failure. It is a textbook example of standard prime-contractor behavior: lock out intruders on established turf. Carrier-based fixed-wing aviation has been Boeing/McDonnell Douglas territory for nearly a century — F4F Wildcat, F4U Corsair, F-4 Phantom II, F/A-18 Hornet, F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, EA-18G Growler. The MQ-25 was, from the prime's perspective, the next iteration of a franchise. A General Atomics win in 2018 would have planted a non-traditional flag on the carrier deck for the first time in living memory and opened the door — through UMCS architecture commonality and demonstrated production rates — to General Atomics taking the lead on every subsequent carrier-based unmanned program, including the CCAs the Navy intends to populate "60 percent or more" of the future air wing with. The fixed-price lowball was not just about winning one program; it was about preventing that beachhead.
The DOD's own State of Competition Within the Defense Industrial Base report, issued February 2022, documents the structural problem in plain language: between roughly 1990 and 2022, the U.S. aerospace and defense prime contractor base shrank from 51 firms to five — Lockheed Martin, RTX (Raytheon), General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing. The top ten contractors have retained approximately 65 percent of total defense procurement and RDT&E spending across key segments for the past decade despite significant private capital investment in new entrants. The report explicitly warns that this concentration "raises barriers for new entrants" and creates conditions where "existing dominant suppliers… leverage their market position to charge more." The Pentagon's January 2024 National Defense Industrial Strategy made supplier-base diversification an explicit priority. The FoRGED Act, advancing through Congress in 2025, expands the definition of "nontraditional contractor" specifically to give companies like General Atomics, Anduril, Saronic, and Shield AI a structural advantage when competing against the legacy primes.
Palantir co-founder and Anduril chairman's brother Shyam Sankar has described the prime defense of established turf as a "first breakfast" phenomenon — established defense contractors habitually devouring smaller innovative competitors through acquisitions or by exploiting incumbent advantages, "effectively stifling true innovation." The mechanism Boeing applied to MQ-25 is one face of this: aggressive fixed-price bids that price-out competitors with cleaner cost structures, compensated for through engineering changes against unstable requirements baselines. Other faces include vertical integration of subsystem suppliers, sole-source teaming arrangements that lock up component industries (the MQ-25 RFP's October 2017 "studies and analysis" sole-source provision is one example — it was issued only to the four PDR-completed firms under FAR 6.302-1(a)(2), explicitly preventing new entrants), and post-award acquisition of any disruptor that achieves meaningful scale. The pattern is institutional, not incidental.
The disruption is now happening anyway, but on adjacent turf. Anduril won, alongside GA-ASI, the Air Force CCA Increment 1 contract that produced the YFQ-44A (still pre-flight as of late 2025) and YFQ-42A (flying since August 2025). SpaceX has displaced United Launch Alliance — a Boeing/Lockheed joint venture — across the majority of national security launch missions, and is a frontrunner alongside Palantir and Anduril for major elements of the Trump administration's Golden Dome missile defense architecture. Palantir described its own trajectory in 2022 SEC filings as "a fundamental shift in our business, from insurgent outsider to incumbent, particularly in the U.S. market." In March 2026, Anduril signed a five-to-ten-year, up-to-$20 billion enterprise agreement with the U.S. Army for counter-drone capabilities — a contract structure that, as Fortune noted, "lets them compete directly with the old guard" by combining hardware, software, and services under a single prime-like umbrella.
GA-ASI sits in a unique position within this disruption pattern. It is older than the post-2010 venture-backed defense tech wave (Avenger first flew in 2009, Predator dates to 1995) but has avoided being absorbed into one of the five primes. As a family-owned, privately held company for more than three decades, it has been able to fund its own jet-UAS prototypes — Avenger 2009, Mojave 2021, XQ-67A 2024, YFQ-42A 2025 — with company money rather than chasing fixed-price-development contracts. The result is a company that had already flown the next generation of unmanned combat jets, on its own dime, before Boeing flew the production-representative MQ-25 it had been paid to deliver in 2024. That is not a failure of execution by Boeing; it is a working illustration of why GA-ASI, Anduril, SpaceX, and Palantir are increasingly seen by Pentagon reformers as the model rather than the exception.
The MQ-25 first flight, in this frame, is best understood not as a milestone in unmanned carrier aviation but as the last hurrah of an industrial-base structure that DOD is now consciously trying to dismantle. Boeing won the program by playing the prime-contractor playbook — lowball the development phase, lock out the disruptor, recover through ECPs and production-phase scope expansion. Eight years later, the disruptor (GA-ASI) is producing more advanced unmanned jets faster, the customer (Navy) is using the disruptor's aircraft as the surrogate to wring out its own ground control system, and Pentagon reformers (and Congress, through FoRGED) are actively rewriting the acquisition rules to make this kind of incumbent moat-building harder to execute on the next program. The next carrier-based unmanned aircraft after MQ-25 — whether CCA, F/A-XX wingman, or successor strike platform — will be procured under different rules, and the legacy primes know it.
What Comes Next
The MQ-25 program now enters envelope-expansion flight testing, leading to carrier suitability work that the Navy attempted in non-flight form aboard USS George H.W. Bush during the December 2021 Unmanned Carrier Aviation Demonstration. The Pentagon's DOT&E and the GAO have both warned that beginning LRIP before flight test maturity creates concurrency risk; the GAO specifically flagged in 2025 that "the program's potential inability to maintain its schedule commitments may require modifications to the contract that would impact the fixed-price terms." Translation: further Boeing losses, or a Navy concession that converts portions of the LRIP scope to cost-plus.
Three EMD aircraft are designated to support the first MQ-25 deployment. The FY2027 budget covers three additional LRIP aircraft, with five funded in FY2028 and seven per year planned in FY2029–FY2031 toward the 76-aircraft program of record. Vice Adm. Cheever continues to describe the MQ-25 as a "trailblazer" for unmanned carrier aviation — the platform that "unlocks the future for manned-unmanned teaming on the aircraft carrier." Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle has linked MQ-25 directly to the F/A-XX program, citing its potential for "clandestine refueling and organic refueling from the carrier" alongside the next-generation strike fighter.
That future may yet arrive. But it is arriving four years late, at a flyaway unit cost 33 percent above the FY2024 estimate, on the back of a contracting structure that Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg and his predecessors have publicly disavowed for any future development bid. And it is arriving while the unsuccessful 2018 bidder is delivering uncrewed jet fighters in 16 months and providing the autonomy surrogate the Navy uses to wring out its own ground control station.
The MQ-25's first flight is a milestone worth marking. The path to it is a cautionary tale worth studying — particularly as the Navy prepares to source the carrier-based CCAs that will follow.
Verified Sources
D'Urso, Stefano. "Breaking: U.S. Navy's MQ-25 Stingray Completes First Flight." The Aviationist, April 25, 2026. https://theaviationist.com/2026/04/25/breaking-u-s-navys-mq-25-stingray-completes-first-flight/
"U.S. Navy's First Production-Representative MQ-25 Stingray Completes Maiden Flight." The Defense News, April 26, 2026. https://www.thedefensenews.com/news-details/US-Navys-First-Production-Representative-MQ-25-Stingray-Completes-Maiden-Flight/
"US Navy's first production Boeing MQ-25 Stingray completes maiden flight." AeroTime, April 26, 2026. https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/us-navys-first-production-boeing-mq-25-stingray-completes-maiden-flight
Norris, Guy. "MQ-25 First Flight Imminent As Navy Costs Rise." Aerospace Daily & Defense Report / Aviation Week Network, April 24, 2026. https://aviationweek.com/defense/aircraft-propulsion/mq-25-first-flight-imminent-navy-costs-rise
D'Urso, Stefano. "Boeing's MQ-25 First Flight Delayed to 2026." The Aviationist, December 10, 2025. https://theaviationist.com/2025/12/10/boeings-mq-25-first-flight-delayed-to-2026/
D'Urso, Stefano. "U.S. Navy's MQ-25A Stingray Unmanned Tanker Begins Taxi Trials." The Aviationist, January 31, 2026. https://theaviationist.com/2026/01/31/us-navy-mq-25a-stingray-taxi-trials/
Trevithick, Joseph. "MQ-25 Stingray Has Begun Taxi Tests (Updated)." The War Zone, January 30, 2026. https://www.twz.com/air/mq-25-stingray-has-begun-taxi-tests
O'Rourke, Ronald. "MQ-25 Stingray: Background and Issues for Congress." Congressional Research Service Report IF12972, updated August 8, 2025. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12972 and https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IF/PDF/IF12972/IF12972.3.pdf
U.S. Government Accountability Office. Weapon Systems Annual Assessment: DOD Leaders Should Ensure That Newer Programs Are Structured for Speed and Innovation. GAO-25-107569, June 11, 2025. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107569
U.S. Government Accountability Office. Defense Acquisition Reform: Persistent Challenges Require New Iterative Approaches to Delivering Capabilities with Speed. GAO-25-108528, June 11, 2025. https://files.gao.gov/reports/GAO-25-108528/index.html
Department of Defense. MQ-25 Selected Acquisition Report (SAR), December 2022. Office of the Secretary of Defense, FOIA Reading Room. https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/Selected_Acquisition_Reports/FY_2022_SARS/MQ-25_SAR_DEC_2022_final.pdf
Boeing. "MQ-25 Stingray Program Information and Milestones." https://www.boeing.com/defense/autonomous-and-unmanned-systems/mq-25-stingray
Naval Air Systems Command. "Unmanned Carrier Aviation – MQ-25." https://www.navair.navy.mil/product/Unmanned-Carrier-Aviation
Naval Air Systems Command. "Navy completes install of first MQ-25 Unmanned Air Warfare Center aboard USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77)." August 15, 2024. https://www.navair.navy.mil/news/Navy-completes-install-first-MQ-25-Unmanned-Air-Warfare-Center-aboard-USS-George-HW-Bush-CVN
Naval Air Systems Command. "U.S. Navy, General Atomics and Lockheed Martin Complete Unmanned Aviation Control Station Flight Demo." November 2024. https://www.navair.navy.mil/news/US-NAVY-GENERAL-ATOMICS-AND-LOCKHEED-MARTIN-COMPLETE-UNMANNED-AVIATION-CONTROL-STATION-FLIGHT
Trevithick, Joseph. "Supercarrier USS George H.W. Bush Now Has First Of its Kind Drone Control Center." The War Zone, August 16, 2024. https://www.twz.com/air/supercarrier-uss-george-h-w-bush-now-has-first-of-its-kind-drone-control-center
LaGrone, Sam. "GAO 2025 Weapon Systems Annual Assessment." USNI News, June 12, 2025. https://news.usni.org/2025/06/12/gao-2025-weapon-systems-annual-assessment
LaGrone, Sam. "Navy Exercises $84.7 Million Option With Boeing For Three MQ-25A Stingrays." USNI News, April 3, 2020. https://news.usni.org/2020/04/02/navy-exercises-84-7-million-option-with-boeing-for-three-mq-25a-stingrays
Decker, Audrey. "Boeing to log $1.7B in defense program losses in fourth quarter." Breaking Defense, January 2025. https://breakingdefense.com/2025/01/boeing-to-log-1-7b-in-defense-program-losses-in-fourth-quarter/
Decker, Audrey. "Boeing's defense unit logs massive $2 billion in losses for third quarter." Breaking Defense, October 2024. https://breakingdefense.com/2024/10/boeings-defense-unit-logs-massive-2-billion-in-losses-for-third-quarter/
Mehta, Aaron, and Stephen Losey. "Strike, fixed-price contracts leave Boeing defense bleeding cash." Defense News, October 23, 2024. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2024/10/23/strike-fixed-price-contracts-leave-boeing-defense-bleeding-cash/
Losey, Stephen. "'Cautionary tale': How Boeing won a US Air Force program and lost $7B." Defense News, January 9, 2024. https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2024/01/09/cautionary-tale-how-boeing-won-a-us-air-force-program-and-lost-7b/
Smith, Marcia. "Boeing's Starliner Losses Reach $2 Billion." SpacePolicyOnline, January 2025. https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/boeings-starliner-losses-reach-2-billion/
Mehta, Aaron. "Boeing defense programs hit with $400M in cost overruns." Breaking Defense, July 27, 2022. https://breakingdefense.com/2022/07/boeing-defense-programs-hit-with-400m-in-cost-overruns/
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. "GA-ASI Marks Another Aviation First With YFQ-42A CCA Flight Testing." Press release, August 27, 2025. https://www.ga-asi.com/ga-asi-marks-another-aviation-first-with-yfq-42a-cca-flight-testing
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. "GA-ASI Achieves New Milestone With Semi-Autonomous CCA Flight." Press release, February 12, 2026. https://www.ga.com/ga-asi-achieves-new-milestone-with-semi-autonomous-cca-flight
D'Urso, Stefano. "General Atomics' YFQ-42A Collaborative Combat Aircraft Takes Flight." The Aviationist, August 27, 2025. https://theaviationist.com/2025/08/27/yfq-42a-cca-takes-flight/
Hemmerdinger, Jon. "General Atomics YFQ-42A First CCA Forerunner to Fly." Aviation Today, September 4, 2025. https://www.aviationtoday.com/2025/09/04/general-atomics-yfq-42a-first-cca-forerunner-to-fly/
General Atomics. "A New Transatlantic Partnership for European CCA." Press release, July 17, 2025. https://www.ga.com/a-new-transatlantic-partnership-for-european-cca
McGarry, Brendan. "Despite Delays, Navy to Accelerate Delivery of Unmanned Tanker." National Defense Magazine, January 26, 2024. https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2024/1/26/despite-delays-navy-to-accelerate-delivery-of-unmanned-tanker
Naval Air Systems Command. "Navy completes initial carrier demo for MQ-25 program." December 15, 2021. https://www.navair.navy.mil/news/Navy-completes-initial-carrier-demo-MQ-25-program/Wed-12152021-1336
Boeing MQ-25 Stingray, Wikipedia. (Reference for CBARS competition history; Northrop Grumman X-47B withdrawal, October 25, 2017; Lockheed Martin Sea Ghost; General Atomics Sea Avenger.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_MQ-25_Stingray
General Atomics MQ-20 Avenger, Wikipedia. (Reference for Avenger first flight, April 4, 2009; Lynx SAR and EOTS integration history.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-20_Avenger
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. "GA-ASI Demonstrates Short Takeoff/Landing of UAS on UK Carrier." Press release, November 17, 2023. https://www.ga-asi.com/ga-asi-demonstrates-short-takeoff-landing-of-uas-on-uk-carrier
General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. "GA-ASI Redefines Maritime Operations with Mojave." November 29, 2023. https://www.ga-asi.com/mojave-uas-carrier-takeoff-and-landing-demo
Martin, Tim. "UK Royal Navy completes Mojave UAS flight and recovery from Prince of Wales aircraft carrier." Breaking Defense, November 17, 2023. https://breakingdefense.com/2023/11/uk-royal-navy-completes-mojave-uas-flight-and-recovery-from-prince-of-wales-aircraft-carrier/
HMS Prince of Wales (R09), Wikipedia. (Reference for non-CATOBAR configuration; Mojave November 15, 2023 carrier operations; angled deck launch.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Prince_of_Wales_(R09)
Department of Defense, Office of Inspector General. Audit of the Navy's Management of the MQ-25 Stingray Program. DODIG-2024-026, November 20, 2023. https://www.dodig.mil/reports.html/Article/3594541/audit-of-the-navys-management-of-the-mq25-stingray-program-dodig-2024-026/ and press release: https://www.dodig.mil/In-the-Spotlight/Article/3594576/press-release-audit-of-the-navys-management-of-the-mq-25-stingray-program-dodig/
Trevithick, Joseph. "MQ-25 Stingray Tanker Delays, Risks Come Into View." The War Zone, November 21, 2023. https://www.twz.com/mq-25-stingray-tanker-delays-risks-come-into-view
AGM-158C LRASM, Wikipedia. (Reference for LRASM derivation from JASSM-ER, range, seeker, B-1B and F/A-18E/F early operational capability, and integration on F-35B/C, P-8A, F-15E, and F-15EX.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-158C_LRASM
D'Urso, Stefano. "First Images of F-35 Carrying AGM-158C Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile Released." The Aviationist, September 25, 2024. https://theaviationist.com/2024/09/25/first-images-of-f-35-carrying-agm-158c-long-range-anti-ship-missile-released/
Trevithick, Joseph. "Has The U.S. Been Firing AGM-158C Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles In The Middle East?" The War Zone, May–July 2025. https://www.twz.com/air/has-the-u-s-been-firing-agm-158c-long-range-anti-ship-missiles-in-the-middle-east
"MQ-25 Stingray: CBARS program dramatically shifts its orientation." Asia-Pacific Defence Reporter, March 20, 2024. https://asiapacificdefencereporter.com/mq-25-stingray-cbars-program-dramatically-shifts-its-orientation/
Tigner, Brooks. "GAO: Pentagon Confirms Requirements for Navy's MQ-25." Aviation International News (AIN), September 13, 2017. https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/defense/2017-09-13/gao-pentagon-confirms-requirements-navys-mq-25
Allison, George. "USN expects more development of MQ-25 'CBARS' timeline this year." Flight Global, May 2016. https://www.flightglobal.com/civil-uavs/usn-expects-more-development-of-mq-25-cbars-timeline-this-year/120476.article
"MQ-25 Stingray." GlobalSecurity.org. (Reference for CBARS descope from stealth in March 2016; risk-reduction contract awards October 2016; sole-source basis for studies and analysis solicitation.) https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/mq-25.htm
Skove, Sam. "Farnborough 2024: Boeing anticipates MQ-25 LRIP contract in early 2025." Janes, July 22, 2024. https://www.janes.com/osint-insights/defence-news/air/farnborough-2024-boeing-anticipates-mq-25-lrip-contract-in-early-2025
U.S. Department of Defense. State of Competition Within the Defense Industrial Base. February 2022. https://media.defense.gov/2022/feb/15/2002939087/-1/-1/1/state-of-competition-within-the-defense-industrial-base.pdf
U.S. Department of Defense. National Defense Industrial Strategy. January 2024.
Bain & Company. "Rethinking Defense: The Role of Private Capital." (Reference for top-10 contractor 65 percent share retention; nontraditional entrant traction.) https://www.bain.com/insights/rethinking-defense-the-role-of-private-capital/
Liu, Lily. "Another Last Supper and a New Era of Defense Giants." War on the Rocks, May 5, 2025. (Reference for "first breakfast" framing attributed to Shyam Sankar; 1990s consolidation history; current acquisition wave.) https://warontherocks.com/2025/05/another-last-supper-and-a-new-era-of-defense-giants
"Anduril, Palantir and SpaceX are changing how America wages war." The Economist, April 2026. (Reference for "neo-prime" framing; legacy prime concerns.)
Pabst, Stavroula. "New monopoly? Inside VC tech's overthrow of the primes." Responsible Statecraft, January 10, 2025. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/defense-tech-partnership/
Hughes, Christopher. "Forging a Stronger Defense Industrial Base." American Affairs Journal, September 2025. (Reference for FoRGED Act provisions on nontraditional contractors and commercial-first acquisition.) https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2025/09/forging-a-stronger-defense-industrial-base/
Anduril/Fortune. "Anduril's new mega-deal rewrites the rules for Silicon Valley—and raises new risks." Fortune, March 22, 2026. (Reference for $20 billion Army enterprise contract; prime-like contracting structure.) https://fortune.com/2026/03/22/anduril-pentagon-contract-turning-point/
Palantir Technologies Inc. Form 8-K, Q3 2022. (Reference for Palantir self-description: "fundamental shift in our business, from insurgent outsider to incumbent.") https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001321655/000132165522000029/a2022q3exhibit992ceoletter.htm
Stephen L. Pendergast is a retired senior radar and signal-processing engineer with more than two decades at General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, CACI International, and Raytheon, and earlier service with the U.S. Navy. He is an IEEE Senior Life Member and has taught at UCSD Extension.
