For the first time, an MQ-25A Stingray unmanned refueling aircraft was controlled through a ground control station aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76), the U.S. Navy said. Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao announced the milestone on Oct. 19. The drone took off from Boeing’s facility in Mascoutah, Illinois, while the carrier operated in the Pacific Ocean.
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The distance between the two is the point of the test: sailors on a ship at sea steered a robot tanker that was flying from the American Midwest. The Navy called the event a preliminary sea trial and did not say when the flight took place.
What the Navy said it did on Oct. 19
Air & Space Forces Magazine’s daily report for Oct. 21 carried the announcement, which it described as marking “a major milestone for the program.” The Aviationist added that the Navy described the event as a preliminary sea trial that used a proliferated low Earth orbit satellite network to link the drone to the Unmanned Air Warfare Center’s MD-5C ground control station on the ship. Cao said the trial tested remote connections, flight profiles and more, and the Navy called it part of build-up exercises to validate procedures, networks and interfaces.
The Navy statement did not identify which Stingray airframe flew. The Aviationist suggested the first production-representative MQ-25A, which has been flying from MidAmerica St. Louis Airport, as the likely candidate, but that remains an inference, not a Navy confirmation.
The MD-5C ground station and the Unmanned Air Warfare Center
The unmanned carrier setup has been built up in stages. A Military Times report from Aug. 10 said USS George H.W. Bush was the first carrier where an Unmanned Air Warfare Center was installed and tested, in August 2024, and that USS Theodore Roosevelt later became the first fully operational, deployable MQ-25 capable carrier, in March 2026. It added that a center aboard Ronald Reagan was slated to be operational at the end of August 2026.
The Defense Post, in an Oct. 7 article, said the Navy had doubled its capacity to command the Stingray by installing a second operational control hub aboard Ronald Reagan, following the first unit fielded on Theodore Roosevelt in March. Both systems sit in dedicated centers and run MDCX autonomy software from Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works. The Aviationist reported that the MD-5C combines the Navy’s C4I network with Lockheed Martin hardware and software, and that the station will also control future unmanned carrier aircraft.
The sea trial follows a run of program milestones this year. The Military Times report said the Stingray completed a test flight of about two hours near Mascoutah, Illinois, on April 25, 2026, and that Cao said the MQ-25A reached Milestone C in May 2026, the point where the program moves from development into production and deployment. Those steps put a control link between a ship and a distant aircraft near the end of a list that began with the airframe itself, then the carrier-side gear, and now the satellite-linked flight.
Satellite links are central to the claim. A control station on a ship can reach an aircraft over a long distance only if the data path holds, and the Navy said the trial used a proliferated low Earth orbit network to connect the drone with the shipboard station. The Navy did not publish performance numbers, lag measurements or the length of the flight, and its statement included no images, so the public record shows that the connection was made but not how smooth it was.
Why a tanker drone matters to the air wing
Cao said the Stingray lets F/A-18 Super Hornets, which are currently used for buddy refueling, fly farther and longer. The Navy said the MQ-25A will give the carrier air wing organic refueling, freeing more F/A-18E/F jets to focus on strike missions. Capt. Daniel Fucito, the PMA-268 program manager, said the first underway connection between a carrier-based Unmanned Air Warfare Center and an MQ-25A shows the “Carrier Air Wing of tomorrow is a reality today.”
The aircraft itself has a long development history, with a first flight on 19 September 2019 and an initial plan to build seven test aircraft, according to the reference entry for the MQ-25 Stingray. The Aviationist reported that the Navy awarded Boeing a 562 million dollar low-rate initial production contract in September 2026, bringing the total Stingrays under contract to 14.
USS Ronald Reagan, a nuclear-powered Nimitz-class carrier commissioned on July 12, 2003, is the ship that hosted the control station. The Stingray test is a link in the chain from ground tests to full integration, not the end of it: the Navy has said the sea trials are meant to validate procedures before the aircraft joins a carrier air wing.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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