US Operates Multiple MQ-25 Stingray Drones in Digital Intelligence Exercise - Boeing

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - Several US combat aircraft have simultaneously directed four autonomous MQ-25 Stingray unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, in a digital exercise on Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions, Boeing announced in a press release on Tuesday.

"Boeing has digitally demonstrated a new open autonomy architecture for MQ-25 that will allow the US Navy to increase mission effectiveness by integrating manned-unmanned teaming (MUM-T) capability at speed and scale," the release said. "A Boeing-led team virtually demonstrated how other aircraft can use MQ-25’s architecture and task it to conduct tanking and ISR missions."

Boeing’s manned-unmanned teaming demonstration included Northrop Grumman’s E-2D Advanced Hawkeye command and control aircraft, the P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft and Boeing’s F/A-18 Block III Super Hornet fighter jet, the release said.

“Large swaths of ocean could be surveilled, identified and targeted when MQ-25 is teamed with carrier-based assets such as the E-2D or the land-based P-8A patrol aircraft,” Boeing MQ-25 Advanced Design Director Don Gaddis said in the release.

The different aircraft used their existing operational flight program software and data links to task four virtual, autonomous MQ-25s to conduct ISR missions, Boeing said. The MQ-25 Stingray is an aerial refueling drone, the release said.