Boeing Defence Australia is planning an air-to-air missile test from its MQ-28A Ghost Bat collaborative combat aircraft demonstrator.
Steve Parker, interim president and chief executive for Boeing Defense, Space & Security, revealed the planned test in a media roundtable at the Avalon air show.
“We’re going to accelerate into a weapons shot with the MQ-28… later this year or early next year,” says Parker.
He confirms that the shot will involve an air-to-air munition, marking the first attempt to introduce weapons to the uncrewed Ghost Bat.
Boeing has yet to decide if the test will use a Block 1 or improved Block 2 aircraft. With the pending arrival of the first Block 2 standard MQ-28s this year, the Ghost Bat test fleet will grow to 11 aircraft.
Parker also suggests that the MQ-28 – which carries sensor payloads in its nose – will eventually gain a weapons bay.
“We’ve flown one hundred times, and we’ve proven algorithms that are autonomous, and we are adding [artificial intelligence],” he says.
Heretofore, the 100h of test work with the MQ-28 fleet have focused on handling characteristics, as well as non-kinetic missions such as electronic warfare and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
The MQ-28 is a joint development effort with the Royal Australian Air Force, but the type’s future is not entirely clear as it has yet to secure a long-term production contract.
However, Parker feels the type has “a lot of runway ahead” with opportunities in Australia, internationally, and in the USA. In 2023, Boeing brought at least one Ghost Bat to North America for testing with the US Air Force (USAF) at the company’s US headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri.
Regarding MQ-28 test work, managing director of Boeing Defence Australia, Amy List, says that the aircraft has demonstrated an ability to adapt and make adjustments during flight to achieve its mission.
“The aircraft is doing incredible things, and when people start seeing what it’s doing, the interest will continue to grow,” she says. “We’ve got significant interest at the moment, and we’ve got the support of the government.”
Parker declines to offer details about the USAF’s F-47 sixth-generation fighter programme, the contract for which Boeing just secured on 21 March, after a highly-classified, multi-year competitive process known as the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) programme.
Parker indicates Boeing’s prototype F-47 design already boasts a certain maturity, noting NGAD test flights have been going on for some time.
The USAF has confirmed that two NGAD competitive prototypes have been secretly flying for the past five years. The other aircraft is believed to have been designed by Lockheed Martin.
