Second U.S. Navy carrier ready to fly MQ-25 drone tanker

USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) has become the second U.S. Navy aircraft carrier equipped to fly the MQ-25A Stingray, the service’s carrier-based drone tanker, after crews finished installing an Unmanned Air Warfare Center aboard the ship in August.

The center is the shipboard control room for the MQ-25A. It houses the MD-5C ground control station that operators use to command the drone. The Unmanned Carrier Aviation Program Office, known as PMA-268, manages the effort.

USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) received the first operational installation in March. On USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76), the U.S. Navy took a faster route. Instead of spreading the work over several years in phases, the team completed all 11 ship modifications at once within a single 17-month period.

That window matches the carrier’s recent overhaul. USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) spent 17 months in a scheduled dry-dock maintenance period at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington, starting in March 2025, and left for sea trials on Sept. 3.

“With each new install and milestone, we are closing the gap for our warfighters to give them the capability, capacity, and lethality they need to win the fight,” said Capt. Daniel Fucito, PMA-268 program manager.

The control station combines several parts: the U.S. Navy’s command, control, communications, computers and intelligence network, Lockheed Martin’s MDCX software and hardware for planning and running missions, and other government-built equipment. The U.S. Navy has built shore, at-sea and expeditionary versions of the MD-5 so the MQ-25A can be flown from almost anywhere.

Next, the ship’s crew and the program team will run pier-side and at-sea tests to confirm the system is ready to support the drone.

The MQ-25A, built by Boeing, is meant to take over aerial refueling duties now handled by F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, freeing those fighters for combat missions and extending the range of the carrier air wing. It is the U.S. Navy’s first operational unmanned aircraft designed to fly from a carrier deck.

The program has faced long delays. A test aircraft first flew in 2019, but the first production-representative MQ-25A did not fly until April 25 this year, at Boeing’s facility at MidAmerica Airport in Illinois. In May, the Pentagon approved the program for low-rate initial production. The U.S. Navy plans to buy 76 aircraft in total.

The drone is expected to move to Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, later this year to prepare for carrier qualification testing. Earlier plans called for the first MQ-25A to deploy aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) in 2026, but production problems and carrier availability pushed that back. The U.S. Navy defines initial operational capability as three MQ-25As with trained crews ready to deploy on a capable carrier, and a Pentagon report in April estimated that milestone could slip to 2029.