Boeing will build the U.S. Navy’s MQ-25 Stingray unmanned aerial refueler at a new 300,000-square-foot facility at MidAmerica St. Louis Airport in Illinois. (Photo: Boeing)
Boeing will build the MQ-25 Stingray — the Navy’s first carrier-based unmanned aircraft — at a new high-tech facility in Illinois. The 300,000 square-foot facility at MidAmerica St. Louis Airport, Illinois, is scheduled for completion in 2024.
The MQ-25 facility will include state-of-the-art manufacturing processes and tools, including robotic automation and advanced assembly techniques, to improve product quality and employee ergonomics. The facility initially will employ 150 mechanics, engineers and support staff, but could grow to 300 with additional orders.
Boeing digitally engineered the entire MQ-25 aircraft and its systems, resulting in high-fidelity models used to drive quality, efficiency and flexibility throughout the production and sustainment process.
For two years, Boeing and the Navy have been flight testing the Boeing-owned MQ-25 test asset from MidAmerica Airport. In recent missions, the T1 model has refueled an F/A-18 Super Hornet, an E-2D Hawkeye and an F-35C Lightning II.
The U.S. Navy intends to procure more than 70 MQ-25 aircraft to help extend the range of the carrier air wing, and the majority of those will be built in the new facility. Boeing is producing the first seven MQ-25 aircraft, plus two ground test articles, at its St. Louis facilities, and they will be transported to MidAmerica for flight test. The MQ-25 program office, including its core engineering team, will remain based in St. Louis. MidAmerica is adjacent to Scott Air Force Base.
The new MQ-25 facility will be in addition to existing manufacturing operations at Boeing St. Clair, which produce components for the CH-47 Chinook, F/A-18 Super Hornet, F-15 and other defense products.
T1 Stingray refuels a Navy F/A-18. (Photo: U.S. Navy/Boeing)
An unmanned MQ-25 T1 test asset refueled a third U.S. Navy carrier-based aircraft, demonstrating the maturity of the aircraft’s design and performance
The U.S. Navy and Boeing used the MQ-25 T1 test asset on Sept. 13 to refuel a U.S. Navy F-35C Lightning II fighter jet for the first time, demonstrating the aircraft’s ability to achieve its primary aerial refueling mission.
This was the third refueling mission for the Boeing-owned test asset in just over three months, advancing the test program for the Navy’s first operational carrier-based unmanned aircraft. T1 refueled an F/A-18 Super Hornet in June and an E-2D Hawkeye in August.
“Every test flight with another type/model/series aircraft gets us one step closer to rapidly delivering a fully mission-capable MQ-25 to the fleet,” said Capt. Chad Reed, the Navy’s Unmanned Carrier Aviation program manager. “Stingray’s unmatched refueling capability is going to increase the Navy’s power projection and provide operational flexibility to the Carrier Strike Group commanders.”
During a test flight on Sept. 13, an F-35C test pilot from the Navy’s Air Test and Evaluation Squadron Two Three (VX-23) conducted a successful wake survey behind T1 to ensure performance and stability before making contact with T1’s aerial refueling drogue and receiving fuel.
“This flight was yet another physical demonstration of the maturity and stability of the MQ-25 aircraft design,” said Dave Bujold, Boeing’s MQ-25 program director. “Thanks to this latest mission in our accelerated test program, we are confident the MQ-25 aircraft we are building right now will meet the Navy’s primary requirement — delivering fuel safely to the carrier air wing.”
The T1 flight test program began in September 2019 with the aircraft’s first flight. In the following two years, the test program completed more than 120 flight hours — gathering data on everything from aircraft performance to propulsion dynamics to structural loads and flutter testing for strength and stability.
MQ-25 is benefitting from the two years of early flight test data, which has been integrated back into its digital models to strengthen the digital thread connecting aircraft design, production, test, operations and sustainment.
T1 will be used to conduct a deck handling demonstration aboard a U.S. Navy carrier in the coming months to help advance the carrier integration progress.
Boeing’s MQ-25 T1 test asset transfers fuel to a U.S. Navy F-35C Lightning II fighter jet Sept. 13 during a flight-test mission. The Navy and Boeing have conducted three refueling flights in the past three months, including an F/A-18 Super Hornet and E-2D Hawkeye. (Photo: Kevin Flynn/Boeing)
General Atomics MQ-9 Predator. (Photo: General Atomics)
There has been a lot of scene stealing by General Atomics recently with Predators flying hither and thither, new orders for the Boeing-Navy unmanned re-fueling drones and a UAV flying on Mars — this month’s unmanned aircraft summaries.
The Predator is the archetypical unmanned aircraft which most people might visualize as a “drone” as a result of numerous news reports and photos. Its what we might refer to a “Large UAV” with a 65-ft. wingspan, a 35 ft.-long fuselage and weighing in at around ~10,500 pounds fully fueled.
The SkyGuardian. (Photo: General Atomics)
In fact it’s bigger than a small manned aircraft, like the single engine Cessna 182 which checks in at 36ft wingspan/29ft fuselage. So its clear that something this big and without an on-board driver has to watch where its going, especially when flying within in the US National Airspace System (NAS).
So it was no small feat when General Atomics recently flew a new MQ-9 Predator on a delivery flight from its flight ops center in Palmdale, California, to the Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. There was significant coordination by the flight teams in both locations, and with the approval by the FAA. Delivering a new Predator by air saves the Air Force significant manpower, as normally new ones arrive in a crate and require effort to re-assemble.
It’s a sign of progress towards achieving approval to allow regular flights of such large UAVs in the NAS. Nowadays a Cessna 182 pilot can file a flight plan and then basically fly anywhere in unrestricted airspace. Hopefully one day — as a consequence of following rigorous certification verification and FAA approval – pilots of such Large UAS will be authorized to operate in a similar fashion.
General Atomics is working with the U.K. Royal Air Force (RAF) to develop and certify the all-weather, long-endurance SkyGuardian MQ-9B variant to meet NATO-standard Type-Certification requirements, which will then enable the UAV to be flown in civil airspace. The Australian Defence Force (ADF) has also selected this UAV variant for its unmanned applications in and around Australia. In late March, General Atomics flew the first production representative SkyGuardian – known to the RAF as the ‘Protector’ – out of its flight ops facility in El Mirage, California.
Staying with the military theme, Boeing has been working with the US Navy to develop a UAV that can land on aircraft carriers, and following a concept change by the Navy, won a contract to provide tanker UAVs. Tanker UAVs will fill up with aircraft gas on an aircraft carrier or land base, then take off and fly to rendezvous with fighter aircraft to transfer fuel and extend fighter endurance and range.
Right now tanker aircraft are usually quite large aircraft – like the Boeing KC-46A tanker which is based on the Boeing B-767 civil transport aircraft which many of you may have flown on as passengers.
The MQ-25 is still in its initial phases, with four test UAVs slated to undertake the initial flight test program. The first test vehicle has already begun exploring the UAV flight envelope and has 30 flight-test hours under its belt. The Navy has just shown confidence in the program by ordering another three aircraft, bringing the total initial build to seven vehicles.
Its easy to see that UAVs are showing themselves to be extremely useful to military forces, but it might be difficult to understand how a UAV might find itself in the U.S. space program. The “Mars Helicopter” has just been mated to the underside of the next Mars Rover — now called “Perseverance” — both are slated to leave on their eight month journey to Mars in July this year.
Mars UAV being mater with Perseverance. (Photo: NASA)
With two ~4ft rotors which spin in opposite directions, the UAV will have to wait patiently for up to 90 Martian Days after Perseverance touches down in February 2021 until it gets a chance to prove that it can fly in the thin Mars atmosphere — chamber tests here on Earth in simulated Mars air have already shown that flight should be feasible.
Built to withstand high g launch and vibration forces and those of the Mars landing, the UAV carries a high resolution camera which is used for navigation, landing and survey of Mars’ surface. Its also designed to withstand the extreme temperatures and high radiation environment on the surface of Mars. The UAV is equipped with a dual-processor flight controller linked to sensors which include a gyroscope, an altimeter, visual odometer, hazard detectors and a ‘visual inertial nav system’ developed by JPL. Although the Mars Helicopter operates autonomously, it communicates with and receives control inputs from the lander, so controllers on Earth load up the flight plan ahead of time into the lander, and then wait for the helicopter UAV to execute the commands. Don’t expect vast coverage of huge panoramas of Mars – its flights are each intended to be more of an extensive hop lasting around 90 seconds at 10-15 ft above the terrain.
Mars Helicopter on simulated Mars surface. (Photo: NASA)
With a body no larger than a softball and weighing less than 4 pounds, the Mars Helicopter is an experiment to see if its possible to fly in the extremely thin Martian atmosphere. With less than 1% the density of our sea-level atmosphere, its necessary to spin the rotors at 2,800 rpm, ten times faster than on Earth. The UAV collects power from its own small solar panel and needs several days to recharge after each flight — of which five are planned. The main objective if flight is possible is to pre-survey interesting potential routes for the lander.
So preparations for large UAVs to regularly fly in civilian airspace, a new approach for Navy refueling systems, and a helicopter UAV destined to fly on Mars next year — completely different unmanned applications, all making progress.
