The Navy awarded Boeing a $562 million fixed price incentive contract Monday to begin Lot 1 Low Rate Initial Production of the MQ-25A Stingray unmanned tanker.
The award covers the first production aircraft under a program built around carrier based aerial refueling.
Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao previewed the production and deployment announcement in May during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
Boeing’s MQ-25A is set to become the War Department’s first unmanned tanker and the Navy’s first operational carrier based unmanned aircraft.
The aircraft is designed to take over aerial refueling duties currently performed by Navy F/A-18 Super Hornets.
Relieving those fighter jets of the tanker mission would allow them to concentrate on strike missions instead of carrying fuel for other aircraft.
According to an August report from the Government Accountability Office, the Stingray is supposed to deliver at least 14,000 pounds of fuel over 500 nautical miles.
That capacity is around the same as what the Super Hornets can provide while serving in the refueling role.
The newly awarded contract covers three MQ-25As in LRIP Lot 1. It also includes additional funding for components intended to support three more MQ-25As planned for Lot 2, according to the Navy’s announcement.
Initial deliveries from Lot 1 are scheduled for 2029. The full MQ-25 program of record calls for 67 operational aircraft along with nine test aircraft, giving the Navy a substantial planned fleet if production proceeds as outlined.
Boeing is advancing into production after the MQ-25 program encountered several snags. The Navy completed its first successful Stingray test flight on April 25, although that demonstration occurred one year later than the service originally planned.
The Navy estimates that flight testing will continue through the end of this year. Those tests come as the service and Boeing work through a schedule that has already slipped well beyond its original operational target.
The Pentagon’s April 2026 Modernized Selected Acquisition Report presented a pessimistic assessment of the MQ-25 timeline.
It identified technical risks and the Boeing Union labor strike as factors that contributed to delays affecting the program.
According to that report, the Pentagon expects the unmanned aircraft could reach initial operational capability in 2029.
That would put the milestone four years later than the Navy’s initial plan, adding another measure of the program’s troubled schedule.
The same report also identified a key carrier milestone for the Navy. In March, the USS Theodore Roosevelt became the first Navy carrier equipped with an Unmanned Air Warfare Center designed to support the MQ-25A.
That installation gives the service its first carrier based center for supporting the Stingray as the aircraft moves through testing and toward planned operational use. The milestone arrived even as production and initial operational capability remained years away.
The Stingray program followed a complicated path from its original concept to the first production contract.
The aircraft was initially envisioned as a stealthy intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and strike drone called the Unmanned Carrier Launch Airborne Surveillance and Strike platform.
Both the Pentagon and the Government Accountability Office pushed the Navy to narrow the program’s scope. By 2016, the service had pivoted away from the proposed strike and intelligence mission and toward a carrier based unmanned aircraft mission centered on aerial refueling.
The $562 million Lot 1 award now formally starts low rate production with three aircraft and support components for another three.
Despite delayed testing and a projected 2029 initial operational capability, the Navy has moved the MQ-25A from a repeatedly reshaped concept into production.
