MQ-28 Ghost Bat Drones Controlled from Australian E-7 Wedgetail Awacs

MQ-28 Ghost Bat drones have demonstrated their ability to engage an aerial target while under the direction of the crew of a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) E-7 Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft. The RAAF plans to conduct more crewed-uncrewed teaming tests this year with the MQ-28, including with F/A-18F Super Hornets and F-35A Joint Strike Fighters, as its plans for the drone evolve.

Boeing announced the MQ-28/E-7 test on Monday, which involved a pair of real Ghost Bats and a third drone simulated entirely in a digital environment, along with the Wedgetail, but did not explicitly say where or when it had occurred. Since the MQ-28’s first flight in 2021, RAAF Base Woomera and its surrounding range complex have been, together, a central hub for Ghost Bat testing in Australia. To date, Boeing has delivered eight MQ-28s to the RAAF in a Block 1 prototype configuration, and the company is on contract to supply three more Ghost Bats in an improved Block 2 configuration.

“During the mission, a single operator onboard the E-7A took control of the uncrewed MQ-28s emulating the role they play in flying ahead of and protecting crewed assets,” according to a Boeing release. Underlying software used in the test “was jointly developed and implemented by Boeing Defence Australia, Defence Science and Technology Group, and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratories.”

“This trial demonstrates family-of-systems integration, the strength of our open systems architecture, and is a critical first step towards integrating mission partners’ software and communications systems natively into the E-7A Wedgetail,” Glen Ferguson, Boeing’s director of MQ-28 Global Programs, said in an accompanying statement. “It not only validated a key element of the MQ-28 concept of operations, but also how collaborative combat aircraft can expand and enhance the role of the E-7A to meet future force requirements.”

“It is another tangible proof point of the maturity of our program.”

The idea of using MQ-28s as uncrewed loyal wingmen to help protect high-value assets like E-7s has been part of the RAAF’s vision for using the drones from the very start of what is also known as the Airpower Teaming System (ATS) program. It is a mission set that has been envisioned for other next-generation drones for some time, as well. In addition to providing an extra layer of defense for important, but often vulnerable support aircraft like the Wedgetail, this would also help free up crewed combat jets for other missions.

The crew of an E-7 could also use MQ-28s as additional sensor nodes to help spot and track targets of interest, as well as conduct more general surveillance and reconnaissance missions, and just provide valuable additional situational awareness.

The Ghost Bat has a highly modular design that includes a nose section intended to be relatively easily swapped out, as required. Together with open architecture mission systems, this opens up significant possibilities for tailoring the drone’s sensor fit and the rest of its configuration to specific operational requirements. At least one of the Block 1 prototypes has been seen with a nose infrared search and track (IRST) sensor system that would improve its ability to spot and track potential threats, including stealthy ones.

A trio of MQ-28s, including one in front with an IRST sensor on top of its nose. Boeing

TWZ has also highlighted in the past that the demonstration of this kind of ‘tethered’ teaming between the MQ-28 and the crew of an E-7 could be a stepping stone to other operational possibilities involving different types of crewed aircraft.

“During a typical mission, a launch and recovery operator … would oversee the [MQ-28] aircraft as it takes flight. It would then be handed off to a crewed aircraft, such as an E-7A, F-35A or F/A-18F, whose crew tasks it to perform, for example, an intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance mission,” Boeing’s Ferguson had offered as just one possible use case last year, according to Australian Defense Magazine. 

A rendering of MQ-28s flying together with an F/A-18F Super Hornet. Boeing

The recently announced MQ-28/E-7 test is just one of a planned “series of events with RAAF assets throughout this year, collectively known as Capability Demonstration 2025 (CD25),” according to Boeing’s release. “CD25 will demonstrate MQ-28 operational effectiveness and how collaborative combat aircraft will integrate and operate with RAAF crewed assets. Future events will involve teaming with other assets, including F/A-18F and F-35.”

Boeing has also previously announced its intention to begin live-fire testing of air-to-air weapons from the MQ-28 either this year or next year. Demonstrating the Ghost Bat’s ability to employ air-to-ground munitions could follow.

For the RAAF, MQ-28/E-7 test and the rest of CD25 will provide valuable opportunities to develop and refine concepts of operations and tactics, techniques, and procedures, for this kind of crewed-uncrewed teaming. The RAAF will also need to answer questions about how exactly the Ghost Bat might fit into the RAAF’s broader force structure, as well as be deployed, launched, recovered, supported, and otherwise operated.

At the same time, when MQ-28s might begin entering service in Australia remains to be seen. The RAAF has said in the past that it could start flying Ghost Bats operationally by the end of this year, but this looks increasingly unlikely to happen.

Boeing

The Block 1 MQ-28 is “probably not the type of aircraft you will see in service,” RAAF Air Commodore Angus Porter, the service’s director general of air combat capability, said, according to a piece that National Defense Magazine published just last week. The Block 2 drones “could, in [the] future, be an operational capability if [the] government wanted to take it in that direction.”

The MQ-28, in its current form, “is probably not what we need longer term,” RAAF Air Vice-Marshal Nicholas Hogan, the service’s head of capability, also said, according to National Defense Magazine‘s story. “There are already advancements in the way that the technology actually operates, and the way the air vehicle is designed may not be enough for what we want in our region.”

Finding the right balance between range and other capabilities has already emerged as a major source of debate in U.S. military plans for future fleets of drones that are expected to be at least very broadly similar to MQ-28. This has been especially so in the context of separate planning around future operations across the broad expanses of the Pacific. Since 2023, the U.S. military and its Australian counterparts have had a formal arrangement to cooperate on developments relating to drones like the Ghost Bat, which are increasingly referred to collectively as Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA).

In addition, the U.S. Navy has expressed a strong interest in the MQ-28 specifically as a potential addition to its future fleets. The U.S. Air Force has also used at least one of the drones in the past for research and development and test and evaluation purposes. Interest in using CCA-like drones to protect critical, but increasingly more vulnerable platforms like surveillance aircraft and tankers, as demonstrated in the MQ-28/E-7 test, is likely to grow among air arms, in general, as well. As an aside, it is worth noting here that the Air Force had also been planning to acquire E-7s, but that effort is now on the chopping block.

A computer-generated image depicting a US Air Force F-22 Raptor stealth fighter flying together with an MQ-28. USAF

National Defense Magazine‘s recent piece says that Australian officials have raised the prospect of a future “family” of MQ-28 variants, potentially with significantly different features based around a common core architecture of some kind. As mentioned, Ghost Bat was designed from the outset with a high degree of modularity, including its readily swappable nose section. What is being described here is also interestingly in line with a concept that General Atomics has pioneered in cooperation with the U.S. Air Force, and has led to that company’s Gambit family of highly modular drones, which you can read more about here.

“The fascinating thing is, we know we want something. We don’t know what it looks like yet, and when we want it and when we see it, we go, ‘We want it, and we want it now,’” RAAF’s Hogan said per National Defense Magazine. “But we certainly know where we need to go.”

The Australian government and Boeing have made significant additional investments in the MQ-28 just in the past year. In February 2024, the Australian government announced the allocation of an additional $260 million ($399 million Australian dollars) for the program. The following month, Boeing’s Australia-based subsidiary announced plans to build a new 9,000 square meter (96,875 square feet) facility in the country specifically to help ramp up production of the Ghost Bat.

Whatever form the Ghost Bat might ultimately take, the MQ-28/E-7 test and the rest of the planned CD25 events look set to continue feeding into plans for the drones in Australia, and potentially beyond.

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