Australia Backs MQ-28A Ghost Bat Drone as Long-Range Partner for F-35A and Super Hornet Fighters.

Australia has approved a 1.4 billion Australian dollar contract with Boeing Defence Australia for six MQ-28A Ghost Bat aircraft after the drone completed a live AIM-120 air-to-air missile shot. The move shifts the program from experiment to operational capability and signals a major jump in Australia’s ability to field advanced uncrewed combat aircraft.

Reuters announced on December 9, 2025, that the Australian government had signed a 1.4 billion Australian dollar contract with Boeing Defence Australia for six MQ-28A Ghost Bat collaborative combat aircraft, following a successful live firing of an AIM-120 air-to-air missile against an aerial target. This decision moves the Ghost Bat from an experimental project to a fully funded war-fighting asset and marks the first combat aircraft designed in Australia in more than fifty years.
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The MQ-28A Ghost Bat is a stealthy long-range collaborative combat drone equipped with modular sensor payloads, AI-driven mission systems, and the ability to launch air-to-air weapons, providing the Royal Australian Air Force with an extended reach for surveillance, electronic attack, and frontline air combat operations (Picture source: Commonwealth of Australia).

The MQ-28A is a stealthy, high subsonic unmanned combat aircraft roughly 11.6 to 11.7 meters long with a 7.3 meter wingspan, a maximum take-off weight of around 3,000 kilograms, and a payload capacity close to 500 kilograms. A single Williams FJ33 turbofan powers the jet, giving it fighter-like dash speed while its chined fuselage, S-shaped inlet, and radar absorbent coatings reduce radar signature. The composite wing is one of the largest resin-infused structures Boeing has produced in Australia, underscoring the industrial depth built around the program.

The aircraft’s most distinctive feature is its swappable nose. The entire forward section can be removed and replaced with mission packages, from active electronically scanned array radar and electro-optical sensors to electronic attack or signals intelligence payloads, and in the future, compact internal weapons bays. Boeing describes the MQ-28 as an uncrewed collaborative combat aircraft built around smart human-machine teaming, with onboard AI managing navigation, sensor fusion, and threat avoidance while maintaining datalink connectivity with crewed aircraft and ground controllers.

Flight test campaigns at the Woomera test range and from RAAF Base Tindal have already demonstrated deployment by C-17 airlift, remote operations from austere northern bases, and control from an E-7A Wedgetail airborne early warning aircraft. In the latest trial, a Ghost Bat fired an AIM-120 from beneath its fuselage against an aerial drone, proving the platform can act not only as a sensor node but also as a networked shooter that extends the weapons envelope of F-35A and F/A-18F formations.

The Royal Australian Air Force intends to employ Ghost Bat as a long-range, semi-expendable loyal wingman that flies ahead of crewed fighters, Growlers, Wedgetails, and KC-30A tankers. In a typical package, a single F-35A pilot could control several MQ-28As, which push forward the sensor horizon, conduct electronic attack, act as decoys, or take the first shots against hostile aircraft and surface-to-air missile sites. With over 2,000 nautical miles of range, the MQ-28 gives Australia the ability to surveil and contest airspace across the northern approaches of the continent while remaining based deep inside the country.

This concept fits squarely inside Canberra’s Defence Strategic Review and 2024 National Defence Strategy, which enshrine a strategy of denial and call for long-range strike, upgraded northern bases, and integrated air and missile defense as the backbone of national defence. Autonomous systems are a central pillar of that plan; Australia expects to invest around 10 billion Australian dollars in drones over the next decade, including the Ghost Shark large underwater vehicle, yet analysts warn that current projects remain too focused on elite platforms and not enough on low-cost mass.

The Ghost Bat arrives as the Indo-Pacific balance of power shifts, with Chinese air and missile forces eroding any assumption of uncontested allied air superiority and Australian officials describing the security environment as the most challenging since the Second World War. A high-endurance, stealthy, crewless aircraft that can operate from hardened northern airfields and tie into AUKUS-era networks gives Canberra more ways to complicate adversary planning without exposing limited fighter numbers to early attrition.

Against its Western peers, Ghost Bat occupies the upper tier of reusable collaborative combat aircraft. The American Kratos XQ-58 Valkyrie is similar in concept but lighter, with a payload of around 270 kilograms, a maximum launch weight of nearly 6,000 pounds, and about 3,000 miles of range, trading volume and modularity for lower cost and higher producibility. European efforts, from Airbus Remote Carrier concepts for FCAS to the newer Airbus Wingman model for the German Air Force, focus on swarming, air-launched drones with shorter range that are designed to be expended in large numbers. The United Kingdom’s Mosquito loyal wingman demonstrator, once touted as a fast path to a similar capability, was cancelled as London shifted toward smaller, cheaper unmanned additives instead of a single large UCAV.

That comparison highlights both the promise and the risk of Ghost Bat. Australia is embracing a higher-end, more survivable collaborative combat aircraft tailored to its geography and alliance architecture rather than the very low cost swarming end of the spectrum. If unit prices can be driven down and production at Wellcamp scales up, the MQ-28A could become an exportable benchmark for loyal wingman aircraft. If not, it may remain a boutique asset that needs to be complemented by simpler expendable systems to provide the mass that high-intensity conflict in the Indo-Pacific will demand.