Latest news with #XQ-58
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Two Secretive Loyal Wingman Drones Aimed At European Market In Development From Kratos
Two new drone designs, Apollo and Athena, are in development at Kratos with a particular focus on collaborative operations with other crewed and uncrewed aircraft, and an eye toward sales in Europe. The modular Apollo and Athena designs are smaller than the company's XQ-58 Valkyrie, and could be configured to carry weapons, electronic warfare systems, or additional sensors. Steve Fendley, President of Kratos' Unmanned Systems Division, shared details about Apollo and Athena in an interview with TWZ's Howard Altman on the sidelines of the annual Modern Day Marine exposition last week. In December 2024, Kratos confirmed to us that it secured contracts for both drones, but said it could not provide any additional information. During a quarterly earnings call in August 2024, Kratos CEO Eric DeMarco had disclosed the Apollo contract and said one for Athena was expected in the coming months. The company has yet to release imagery of either design. 'I can't say too much, but there they are high-subsonic systems,' Fendley told TWZ. 'They're quite a bit smaller than the [XQ-58] Valkyrie. So, much smaller footprint.' Fendley also said that Kratos was targeting a sub-$5 million unit price for both Apollo and Athena, which have highly modular designs to allow them to be configured for multiple mission sets. Per Kratos' website at the time of writing, the company says the Valkyrie is 30 feet long, has a 27-foot wingspan, a dry weight of 2,500 pounds, and a maximum takeoff weight of 6,000 pounds. The drone also has a stated cruising speed of 0.72 Mach, a maximum speed of 0.85 Mach, and a maximum range of 3,000 nautical miles. In 2022, the company also announced it had developed a Block 2 version with a heavier overall weight, but did not provide a specific weight figure. A number of additional variants have been developed since then, but specific details about their configurations remain limited. Kratos has also said in the past that its goal is to eventually drive down Valkyrie's unit cost to around $2 million. However, last year, the company told TWZ that the price tag for a single XQ-58 was still between $4 and $6 million, depending on the exact configuration. In general, Kratos has historically focused on lower-cost designs and ones that can be manufactured relatively quickly. Apollo and Athena 'are designed to be hard to detect,' Fendley added, but did not elaborate on. There are various ways to reduce an aircraft's radar cross-section, as well as its infrared, auditory, and visual signatures. For instance, the external moldline, the shape and position of the engine intake and exhaust, and other features of the XQ-58 contribute to that design's low-observability (stealthiness). 'The big focus' with both of the new drones 'is interactive collaboration of multiple aircraft at the same time,' Fendley explained. 'So multiple uncrewed aircraft at the same time, collaborating, [and] performing' missions with, 'basically, any fighter or attack aircraft in the inventory, that's that's the intent.' 'So joining those [Apollo and Athena] aircraft, or even Valkyrie, up with a fifth-gen[eration stealth] fighter, you have some capability to get to go out in front. You have some capability to basically light up the enemy,' he continued. 'But what's really interesting, when you combine it with a [non-stealthy] fourth-gen or even a third-gen system – which, of course, the U.S. doesn't do much of that anymore, but the international customers do – what you really do is you substantially increase the capability of that third or fourth-gen system because now it has off-board capability that's not adding risk to that system.' 'So let's pick an F-16. The F-16 can have a Valkyrie or an Athena or Apollo doing part of a mission that it normally would do, but it would have to be within a risk area to be able to conduct that part,' he added. Speaking in more general terms about drones with the kinds of capabilities that Athena and Apollo are expected to offer, 'one use case is a system that's hard to detect … can, from a, let's say, from an EW [electronic warfare] perspective, can detect potential threats or potential targets of interest without being detected itself, which again, brings a capability that you can't do with a third or fourth-gen fighter system,' Fendley said. 'The other use case is if you have a group of them [the drones] and a handful of them are configured for EW, and a handful of them are carrying actual weapons – either air-to-surface, air-to-ground, or air-to-air – the sensor system can identify the target, can point out the target, basically pass the coordinates, and then the weapons aircraft can conduct the termination mission.' 'One of the other things that allows us to be more cost-effective than others is we don't put all that on one aircraft,' he continued. 'Let's just talk in rough numbers. Let's say there are six useful mission systems. And, again, rough numbers. Let's call three of them sensor-type systems, three of them weapon-type systems. We won't put all six on any one aircraft. We'll distribute that. It allows each aircraft to be much less expensive. It also allows you in a large mission, it allows you to distribute your risk and make it very hard for the enemy to decide 'do I want to shoot down a sensor airplane or a weapons airplane?'' For years now, TWZ has been highlighting the inherent benefits of distributing systems and associated roles among individual drones in a fully networked swarm or other collaborative environment. Beyond helping to reduce the cost of each uncrewed aircraft, including just by allowing them to be smaller and less complex, this also offers valuable operational flexibility since different drones can be performing multiple tasks simultaneously. It also means that the loss of some number of drones is less likely to immediately render the entire group ineffective. That stealthy 'loyal wingman' drones that also feature high degrees of autonomy and collaborative capabilities could be especially valuable force multipliers when paired with fourth-generation crewed combat jets is something TWZ has noted in the past, as well. This was a particular key point in a detailed case we previously laid out for how the trilateral Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) defense cooperation agreement could offer an ideal framework for the shared development of loyal wingmen-type drones. In speaking with TWZ, Fendley also talked about out how the modularity of the Apollo and Athena drones could allow them to be better tailored to a customer's particular needs from a regional perspective. 'The European market is very different than the Pacific markets. The European market is more interested in, let's call it, … sensor capability, weapons capability doesn't need the long legs, the long endurance that you do for the Pacific,' he explained. 'What that allows you to do is that allows you to really load that airplane up with more weapons, for example, than you would for an aircraft that's going to the Pacific, but has to fly a long way, so it's carrying fuel. So that's kind of the trade there.' Right now, Kratos is working on Apollo and Athena configurations 'to focus more on that European market,' he added. There is already extensive work ongoing on various tiers of drone 'wingmen' across Europe, including in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Poland, and Turkey. This reflects a global trend, as well. However, if Kratos can offer a particularly low-cost option that is readily adaptable to multiple mission sets, it could be very attractive to smaller air forces looking to bolster their airpower capabilities and overall capacity, and that cannot afford more exquisite crewed or uncrewed platforms. The core attributes of Apollo and Athena could be of interest to larger air arms, as well. The U.S. Air Force has indicated that it may now be leaning toward cheaper and simpler designs for the second iterative development phase, or Increment 2, of its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. Kratos, which was notably absent from the CCA program's Increment 1 competition, has said on several occasions that it is interested in taking part in Increment 2. General Atomics and Anduril are currently developing designs, now designated YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A, respectively, under Increment 1. The Air Force has also previously said that Increment 2 could be the first phase of the CCA program to weave in foreign participation. The U.S. Marine Corps has separately said it is looking into whether certain roles and missions that are typically associated with larger, more exquisite drones, could be performed, at least in part, by smaller designs. It's worth noting here that the Air Force and the Marine Corps are also currently the only two known operators of Kratos' XQ-58. The U.S. Navy has also outlined a vision for future carrier-capable CCA-type drones that would be low-cost enough to be 'consumable,' and then expended as one-way attack munitions, or as targets in training or testing, at the end of relatively short service lives. CCA-related work across the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy is directly intertwined via a joint service agreement. With Kratos now having secured contracts for both Apollo and Athena, more details about both of these specific designs may begin to emerge. Contact the author: joe@
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Kratos Close To 'A Couple' Final Versions Of XQ-58 Valkyrie For The Marines
Kratos' XQ-58 Valkyrie continues to rapidly evolve, with the company being close to final configurations of the drone for the USMC, which has been testing it extensively. This comes as the USAF also now appears to be looking for less expensive designs for the second increment of its Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. Kratos has historically focused on lower-cost designs that can be manufactured quickly, which they hope will put them in a good position for breaking their way into the Air Force's high-stakes CCA program. Currently, Anduril and General Atomics are providing aircraft for CCA's Increment One. TWZ talked with Kratos Defense President of Unmanned Systems Division, Steve Fendley, about Valkyrie developments, as well as some of the company's other combat drone programs, on the show floor of the annual Modern Day Marine conference in Washington, D.C., last week. 'So we're obviously, we've been doing a lot of development work for the Marines, a lot of integration of mission systems, a lot of ground and flight test of those mission systems,' Fendley said. 'And that's that's continued to where we're, we're pretty close to having a couple final versions of the aircraft.' Fendley continued, 'So we've been working PAACK-P [Penetrating Affordable Autonomous Collaborative Killer program] for a number of years, and like I say, we've got a couple mission configurations of the system that we've developed for that, for the Marines, for that purpose. And those exist. You know, those exist today. We're obviously producing the aircraft in Oklahoma City on a regular basis. So we're basically teed up to be able to accept a more substantial production-type order.' It's unclear what the two variants will be, but we do know Kratos has previously said it was working on at least five XQ-58 variants, including one that was optimized for electronic attack. The Marines have been testing XQ-58s with precursor electronic warfare payloads. This will likely result in an electronic warfare variant that you can read about here. The ability to conduct kinetic strikes would also be high on the list, but we cannot say for sure if that will be one of the two mission configurations. There is also the shadowy XQ-58B designation, and the exact configuration it represents remains unclear. When asked about the B model, Fendley would not address it directly. For the USMC, the XQ-58 makes a lot of sense, especially for its ability to be launched and recovered from very austere locations that do not feature a runway. The base model Valkyrie launches via rocket booster from a rail system and is recovered via parachute. Now the company has put forward two new capabilities that will allow the XQ-58 to be launched from traditional runways. One is a wheeled launch trolley that can put a standard XQ-58 into the air via a runway, but the aircraft will still recover via parachute. The other and newest adaptation of the Valkyrie sees it gaining landing gear, so it can operate like a normal aircraft from a fixed runway. This has certain benefits, including enhanced sortie rates, but it also has drawbacks. Fendley says the landing gear model will sacrifice payload bay capacity for its landing gear, with the ability to carry two Small Diameter Bombs (SDB) internally instead of four on the rocket and trolley-launched models. It can still be rocket-launched, though, as it has the same gross weight as the standard version. This also opens the possibility for rocket-launched, but runway-recovered operations. Regardless, being able to more seamlessly operate alongside its manned counterparts where runways are available is a huge plus for the Valkyrie family and opens the door larger for a possible USAF CCA contract win in the future. The landing gear-equipped version of the Valkyrie is slated to make its first flight this year. The trolley-launched configuration was first demonstrated last year. 'We're continuing to work with the Air Force evolving different versions of the Valkyrie, and of course, not necessarily related to Valkyrie, but the Air Force's CCA program is obviously well underway, and we're obviously still very, very interested in that,' Fendley said. 'Can't talk much about that, of course, that's classified, but very high level of interest from the company on that program. I think you've probably heard recently that there's probably going to be a focus there on a lower-cost system. And you know, of course, we're optimized [for that]. That's been our focus the whole time – 'how do we optimize performance per cost?' … Yeah, we're very interested in pursuing it… we are aggressively pursuing interest in that program.' Fendley elaborated further on how the company, which is best known for its target drones, has deep roots in balancing cost against finite requirements: 'I would say the Kratos' approach to developing systems in the first place, which is we always… pick a cost target, and then we'll allocate that cost target across the subsystems that make up a system. And as the designers and developers are going through developing it, they keep closing a loop on that cost, so when they come up with something and say, 'oops, this is 10% more than our cost target,' well, we throw it out and say, 'no, refine it. We've got to get to this cost.' So it's specifically designed to meet a certain cost level. And that's really our major discriminator against the traditional primes.' We also asked if Kratos put forward a proposed aircraft for CCA increment one. Here what Fendley said: 'It's a complicated question because of the stages that occurred on that, the development of that program. There are multiple configurations of CCA-type aircraft that Kratos has… We've made those known. However, the specific public requirements for Increment One vary a little bit from the traditional Kratos approach, which is more cost optimized… It's a more exquisite type approach than we traditionally take.' Finally, we also got an update on Thanatos, the company's stealthy drone that remains largely shrouded in secrecy from Fendley, who said: 'Thanatos is progressing well. There's some international interest in it, too. We don't have approval yet to do any kind of export, but we may get that… I can't give specific details on the aircraft or the specific customers, but it's progressing well, and it's a unique capability, but again, tied to the high performance per cost ratio.' The initial flight testing of the shadowy Thanatos was completed late last year, and similar testing of a fully mission-configured aircraft is now quickly approaching, Fendley continued. 'So treat this as the basic aircraft, the non-fully-mission aircraft was effectively completed late last year and looked very good. And as we're moving forward, it's more integration of mission systems and integration of autonomy elements.' Fendley said testing of this more production representative craft would begin in the third or fourth quarter of this year. Howard Altman contributed to this story. Contact the editor: Tyler@
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Yahoo
XQ-58 Valkyrie With Built-In Landing Gear Shown In New Rendering
Kratos has released a rendering offering the first look at a version of its stealthy XQ-58A Valkyrie drone with built-in landing gear. The company first announced that this new version, which might present certain advantages over the original runway-independent design, was in the works last year. A social media post from Kratos' official account on X included the rendering of the tricycle landing gear-equipped XQ-58, seen at the top of this story. This is the third launch and recovery method the company has developed for the Valkyrie and follows the unveiling of a special launch trolley last year that allows existing versions to take off from traditional runways. The uncrewed aircraft was originally designed for completely runway-independent operation, using expendable rocket boosters to get into the air via ground-based launchers and a parachute recovery system to get back down after a sortie. The company has also shown a concept for a containerized launch system in the past. 'A conventional take-off and landing (CTOL), also referred to as horizontal take-off and landing (HTOL), is the method by which fixed-wing aircraft take off and land using runways,' Kratos' post on X about the new XQ-58 with landing gear also reads. 'Being runway flexible/runway independent delivers maximum operational utility to the warfighter.' A conventional take-off and landing (CTOL), also referred to as horizontal take-off and landing (HTOL), is the method by which fixed-wing aircraft take off and land using runways. Being runway flexible/runway independent delivers maximum operational utility to the warfighter.… — Kratos (@KratosDefense) April 14, 2025 The rendering shows the single wheel nose and main landing gear units. The nose gear is appears to be designed to retract forward into a bay covered by two trapezoidal-shaped doors, while the two main gear units retract into bays on either side of the fuselage that are each covered by a single door. As depicted, the overall design of the CTOL/HTOL version of the XQ-58 otherwise looks largely unchanged from the standard type. Kratos has not yet released more specific details about how the new configuration differs from the runway-independent one, especially when it comes to its gross and maximum takeoff weights, speed, and endurance. When asked for more information about how the CTOL/HTOL differs from existing XQ-58 variants, Kratos told TWZ today it could not currently provide any additional details. Runway-independent versions of the drone could 'technically' be converted into landing gear-equipped ones, 'but the intent is that there are multiple Valkyrie configurations to support different mission requirements,' a company representative said. 'You'll be able to do a conventional takeoff and land with retractable gear,' Steve Fendley, President of the Unmanned Systems Division at Kratos, did tell Aviation Week, according to a recent report from that outlet. 'You give up a proportion of your payload volume of your internal payload, but you can still maintain all the external.' Existing XQ-58s can carry weapons and other stores in an internal bay, as well as a single hardpoint under each wing. Kratos has previously disclosed that there are at least five different Valkyrie variants, including a 'Block 2' runway-independent version with improved performance and a heavier overall weight than the original design. The company has also said in the past that it is working on a version tailored to U.S. Marine Corps operational needs, tentatively referred to as the MQ-58B, with a focus on being able to launch electronic attacks to suppress enemy air defenses while operating in cooperation with crewed F-35B Joint Strike Fighters. The Marines and the U.S. Air Force, the latter of which is the XQ-58's first known operator, currently fly Valkyries for research and development and test and evaluation use. TWZ has previously highlighted the benefits of the XQ-58's runway-independent configuration. This capability could be especially valuable in a future high-end fight in the Pacific against China, where large established airbases would be prime targets, and other available traditional runways could be few and far between. The Valkyrie aligns particularly well with the Marine Corps' vision for future island-hopping scenarios that already heavily feature the short takeoff and vertical landing capabilities of its F-35Bs. At the same time, a runway-independent configuration can present limits on maximum takeoff weight, which, in turn, have impacts on range and payload capacity. Kratos previously told The War Zone that the launch trolley configuration offers an increase that 'is in the 10s of % for both fuel and payload capacity' and 'enables quite an advantage for amount of payload and range / endurance of the system.' Landing gear presents additional benefits over the static launcher/parachute recovery combination when it comes to sortie generation, as well as making it easier to integrate the drones with normal runway-centric tactical air operations. Kratos has previously pointed out that the trolley-launched configuration would also not be dependent on the availability of rocket motors, which would also be true for operations with CTOL/HTOL types. The emergence of the landing gear-equipped XQ-58 does follow Kratos' pronounced absence from the competition to build the first tranche of drones for the U.S. Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program. General Atomics and Anduril were subsequently selected to build flying prototypes of their designs, now designated YFQ-42A and YFQ-44A, respectively, under CCA's Increment 1. Both of these drones are designed to operate from traditional runways. Kratos has previously expressed interest in participating in the forthcoming CCA Increment 2 competition, the requirements for which are still being finalized. The Air Force has indicated that it could ask for more performance and capability-wise from the Increment 2 drones than it did with Increment 1, which could lead to higher unit costs. The XQ-58 has historically been presented as a lower-cost and at least somewhat attritable design, which stands in significant contrast to what has emerged from the Air Force's CCA program so far. A CTOL/HTOL XQ-58 might also be of interest to the U.S. Navy for operations from carriers and other big-deck ships. The service has its own CCA program that is directly intertwined with the Air Force's effort, but is very much still in the process of defining its particular requirements. In the past, the Navy has also expressed explicit interest in cheaper carrier-based drones that could be 'consumed' as weapons or targets at the end of service lives measured in hundreds of flight hours rather than years. The Navy did just recently confirm to TWZ that it has a particular interest in the MQ-28 Ghost Bat that Boeing's subsidiary in Australia has been developing for that country's air force. The Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force have been actively collaborating on the ongoing development of the MQ-28. Boeing has also already been pitching a carrier-based version of the Ghost Bat with a tail hook, including to the Royal Navy in the United Kingdom. Interestingly, back in 2021, the Navy also put out a call for ideas about how to recover runway-independent XQ-58s aboard its then-new Expeditionary Sea Base ships. That notice also raised the possibility of employing similarly-sized drones with landing gear and tail hooks from those vessels. The XQ-58 family could present an option for the Navy that could be acquired in multiple configurations for operations from carriers and other ships using different launch and recovery methods, including via containerized launchers. The possibility of foreign sales of variants and derivatives of the XQ-58, as well as other operationalized designs in the company's 'tactical' portfolio, has come up in the past. Kratos has already secured overseas sales of target drones designed for use in training, as well as in support of research and development and test and evaluation activities. When Kratos' CEO Eric DeMarco first confirmed his company was working on the CTOL/HTOL version of the XQ-58 in August 2024, he indicated that it would flying 'very soon.' Kratos told TWZ it could not provide a timeline for when that first flight might occur. More information about this version and its capabilities may begin to emerge once it is confirmed to have taken to the skies for the first time. Contact the author: joe@
