General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Saab will demonstrate an Airborne Early Warning and Control configuration on the MQ-9B in mid-2026.
The trial will take place at GA-ASI’s Desert Horizon site in Southern California and will use an MQ-9B fitted with Saab’s airborne early warning sensors.
The project combines Saab’s AEW technology with what GA-ASI describes as the longest-range and highest-endurance remotely piloted aircraft in service. The firms argue that integrating AEW sensors onto an MQ-9B could provide persistent surveillance over land or sea, including in regions that currently lack such coverage or where crewed AEW aircraft would be too costly to operate.
GA-ASI President David R. Alexander said the integration is intended to give operators a survivable and continuous sensor presence. “Adding AEW&C to the MQ-9B brings a critical new capability to our platform,” he said, adding that the goal is to “deliver a persistent AEW&C solution to our global operators that will protect them against sophisticated cruise missiles as well as simple but dangerous drone swarms.”
The MQ-9B family includes the SkyGuardian, the SeaGuardian and the UK’s Protector variant, as well as a short takeoff and landing version in development. The AEW configuration is being positioned as a complement to these roles. According to the companies, a medium-altitude, long-endurance UAV offers high operational availability and removes aircrew risk entirely.
The AEW package will support early detection, long-range tracking and the simultaneous monitoring of multiple targets, with the firms pushing compatibility with line-of-sight and satellite communications links. The companies state that the demonstration will showcase options ranging from maritime warning for carrier groups to ground-based air defence cueing, reflecting the growing interest in unmanned platforms for tasks traditionally handled by large crewed aircraft.
This sounds like a very similar timeline to the MQ9B STOL development and demonstration.
We might actually be able to trial fixed-wing AEW on our carriers by the end of next year.
Hopefully. This would be a great move.
Oh Gawd, is really the best we can do?
Let’s wait and see what they come up with before writing the idea off entirely. I know your problems with the idea and they are important, but I think that getting Crowsnest out of the Merlins and the ASW/MPA capability are more important than aiming for the optimal AEW solution.
SAAB and GA are claiming a 100 nautical mile detection range for the radar, if true this is a very impressive capability for providing AEW and targeting for a carrier task force.
However it’s probably too limited a range to provide AWACS capability against an opposing airforce.
Definitely something the UK should invest in. This would be great for UK defence as well as well as carrier defence.
It’s a solution ……. of sorts ……. so well done to GA and SAAB so far but how long can that 100 mile range loiter for? How much of a penalty is that SAAB payload to the operational endurance of this system? If, and it’s a big if, a 2nd shipborne MQ-9B can use fuel tanks (in place of AEW RADAR) with a drogue system then perhaps this has the makings of a system the QE class have been looking for, for some time now. Lots of designing, testing and trialing before then though, I dare say.
Original MQ9B has >40h endurance, even if the STOL wings and the AEW power draw halve that it still hugely outstrips Crowsnest. I can’t see using it for refuelling as viable, it just doesn’t have the disposable payload to refuel anything other than itself so it would be a pretty pointless expenditure.
I very much doubt you’ll do any refuelling with this drone
Let’s wait and see.
I’m hugely sceptical about this as an approach for carrier AEW, for three reasons. First the quality of the sensors a MQ-9B drone can carry. Second, the weight an MQ-9B STOL will be able to take off and land with on a carrier. Third, the ability to separate the AEW funvtionality from Control.
The first two are a function of the drone and carrier’s sizes. The latter is down to being the first breakup of AEW&C into geographically separated capabilities. What’s new will always have teething problems, that seem in this case to be being ignored. That bodes badly for success.
Can’t be much worse than crowsnest. Unless they add a catapult to the carriers then this is probably the best option for when you can’t get a wedge tail in the area.
I think we are firmly in the ‘anything is better than Crowsnest’ stage, but there are other reasons why MQ9B is a good idea for AEW. The most important is that the platform isn’t just for one role; getting MQ9B STOL would also give us a long range carrier-based maritime patrol capability beyond any other navy in the world (because the USN got rid of their Vikings) which would be really useful for Atlantic work (where the carrier would be able to send MQ9s across essentially the entire theatre) and in the Pacific where hunting down lone ships would be a lot of effort.
The second is that we don’t have enough E7, and having some form of early warning that is interchangeable between ship- and land-based operation is a very useful boost to numbers. I’m not claiming that MQ9B is attritable, but having a drone rather than a hugely expensive manned platform that we can deploy closer to the front lines is a good backup to a system costing as much as a T26.
I can’t see any other way of getting the same capability for a similar cost. Tiltrotors etc would cost vastly more because there simply aren’t any projects around, and other fixed-wing solutions require modifications to the carriers.
So we live in Northern Europe so most of our requirement would be over the North Atlantic or Arcticand the trials are being carried out in the California Dessert !
I think I’ll hang fire on getting too excited ?
Now if someone was to tell me that SAAB was tying up with Airlander to provide a persistent, manned, high altitude AEW, MPA, AWACS capability I might just get quite interested.
GA are a US company based in the California Dessert, so it makes sense that their testing is done there. MQ9B has already done a lot of maritime work in the Pacific, not sure what the worst conditions it’s been in are but I think we can assume the main barrier is shipborne operation which can’t be done yet anyway.
Yes Airlander is the obvious solution to our AEW problem but I don’t think HAV or the MoD are being brave enough in exploring the possibilities (that said, the recent reservation and HAV’s socials posts show they are interested). There are some obvious questions that would have to be ironed out, the obvious one being how to land something 98m long and 44m wide on something 284m long and 70m wide, but the end result would be fantastic and a full circle back to the US Navy experience with blimps in the 1950s, which was only ended because the nuclear navy sucked up all of the budget (sound familiar?).