USS Ronald Reagan, underway in the Pacific Ocean, connected to and controlled a Boeing MQ-25A Stingray refuelling drone more than 2,100 miles away at Boeing’s facility in Mascoutah, Illinois, the US Navy said in a press release dated 19 October 2026.
The link ran over a Proliferated Low Earth Orbit, or pLEO, satellite network.
The connection was made during a Preliminary Sea Trial aboard the Nimitz-class carrier. The ship’s Unmanned Air Warfare Center used its MD-5C Ground Control Station to reach the MQ-25A test aircraft beyond line of sight. The release does not describe what the Stingray was doing at Mascoutah while the ship held the link.
The Navy called the event historic and said it was the first underway connection between a carrier-based Unmanned Air Warfare Center and an MQ-25A.
What the ship was controlling
The MQ-25A is a carrier-based unmanned aircraft built to refuel F/A-18 Super Hornets.
The Navy describes it as the world’s first fully integrated, carrier-based unmanned aerial vehicle and as the pathfinder for unmanned carrier aviation. The Stingray is meant to give the Carrier Air Wing its own refuelling so that more F/A-18E/F aircraft can focus on strike missions, which the Navy says expands the operational reach of the air wing.
“The MQ-25A Stingray’s carrier-based refueling capabilities enable F/A-18 Super Hornets to fly farther and longer,” said Hung Cao, the Acting Secretary of the Navy, in the release.
Cao added that bringing the drone into the fleet “demonstrates the transformational change our manned and unmanned asset integration provides the Fleet.”
How the link worked
The MD-5C ground control station combines the Navy’s Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence network, known as C4I, with Lockheed Martin’s MDCX hardware and software and other government-produced equipment. The Navy says the same system will provide command and control for its future unmanned carrier aircraft and the Air Wing of the Future.
The connection was one in a series of build-up exercises meant to validate procedures, networks and interfaces.
Before the sea trial, the Unmanned Carrier Aviation Mission Control System team at the Unmanned Carrier Aviation Program Office, PMA-268, ran pier side and at-sea tests with the MQ-25 Integrated Test Team. That team includes the US Navy, Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
“We have redefined naval power projection,” said Capt. Daniel Fucito, who manages PMA-268.
Fucito said the connection “proves that the Carrier Air Wing of tomorrow is a reality today.”
The ship, the Reagan, is designated CVN 76. The Navy’s Unmanned Air Warfare Center aboard the carrier is the part of the ship that operated the MD-5C station during the trial, and the Stingray on the other end of the link was a test aircraft.
The release was issued from Patuxent River, Maryland, on 19 October 2026 and gives no date for the sea trial itself.
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