U.S. Marine Corps Selects XQ-58 Valkyrie Drone to Team with F-35s in Future Air Combat.

Northrop Grumman has been competitively awarded the U.S. Marine Corps MUX TACAIR Collaborative Combat Aircraft effort, teaming its autonomy and mission systems with Kratos’ XQ-58 Valkyrie air vehicle under a $231.5 million prototype agreement. The program signals a shift toward scalable, attritable uncrewed aircraft designed to extend Marine aviation reach and absorb risk in high-threat environments.

Northrop Grumman announced on January 8, 2026, that it has secured the U.S. Marine Corps Marine Air-Ground Task Force Uncrewed Expeditionary Tactical Aircraft, or MUX TACAIR, Collaborative Combat Aircraft contract, partnering with Kratos Defense to field a Marine-tailored version of the XQ-58 Valkyrie. Structured as an Other Transaction Agreement valued at approximately $231.5 million over 24 months, the award emphasizes rapid prototyping and operational experimentation rather than a traditional, requirements-heavy aircraft development path. Under the agreement, Northrop Grumman will deliver the mission systems and its open-architecture Prism autonomy software, while Kratos provides a Valkyrie variant adapted for expeditionary Marine operations and scalable production. Company statements frame the effort as a move toward operationally relevant uncrewed combat aviation rather than a technology demonstration.
Follow Army Recognition on Google News at this link

The XQ-58 Valkyrie can carry precision weapons, decoys, and electronic-attack payloads, utilizing an internal bay for low-signature and wing hardpoints for additional effectors once defenses are weakened (Picture source: U.S. DoW).

For the Marine Corps, the timing matters as much as the platform: CCA is not marketed as a single exquisite drone, but as a combat system built around numbers, dispersion, and adaptability: uncrewed aircraft that can push sensors and effects forward, soak up risk, and force an adversary to spend high-end interceptors and radar time on targets that are intentionally attritable. Northrop and Kratos explicitly frame the outcome as air dominance in high-threat environments, and the language is telling: survivability, connectivity, lethality, and supportability are treated as the minimum viable package.

The Valkyrie brings a compact, stealthy jet baseline that has already matured through multiple flight demonstrations. Kratos describes XQ-58 as a clean-sheet collaborative combat aircraft design with runway flexibility, capable of more than 3,000 nautical miles range, speeds around Mach 0.86, and altitudes up to 45,000 feet. The aircraft sits in a roughly 6,000 lb maximum takeoff weight class and is optimized for long-range, stand-in operations rather than short-legged orbiting concepts, allowing it to operate ahead of manned formations in contested airspace.

Where the Marines are clearly shaping the design is launch and recovery flexibility, which directly drives operational credibility in the Pacific theater. The original Valkyrie concept is runway independent, using rocket-assisted launch from a static launcher and recovery by parachute with airbags, a model optimized for austere basing and rapid displacement. The Marine-focused CTOL variant adds fixed landing gear, but it can still be booster-launched from the same static launch architecture and then recover conventionally. This hybrid approach allows the Marine Corps to mix expeditionary launch options with runway recovery where available, reducing dependence on a small number of predictable airfields while enabling higher sortie rates and simpler turnarounds when infrastructure exists.

Armament is where Valkyrie shifts from a flying sensor node to a true force multiplier, even if specific loadouts remain modular and mission dependent. The air vehicle is designed to carry kinetic and non-kinetic payloads from an internal weapons bay and wing hardpoints, balancing signature management with payload flexibility. The internal bay supports carriage of compact precision-guided munitions, loitering weapons, or air-launched decoys while preserving a reduced radar cross section for early phases of contested ingress. External stations provide additional capacity for electronic attack pods, sensors, or auxiliary effectors once survivability tradeoffs become acceptable. This architecture allows commanders to tailor each sortie to the threat, rather than forcing a one-size-fits-all payload.

Northrop Grumman’s mission systems and Prism autonomy software form the digital backbone that turns Valkyrie into an operational combat asset rather than a remotely piloted aircraft. The autonomy stack is designed to manage flight operations, sensor employment, and mission execution with minimal pilot input, shifting the human role toward tasking and supervision. This enables coordinated behaviors such as autonomous route planning around threat emitters, synchronized sensing to build a common operating picture, timed electronic attack, and controlled weapons employment under predefined rules. In effect, the loyal wingman becomes an extension of the manned aircraft’s combat system rather than a separate platform competing for pilot attention.

The XQ-58 Valkyrie is optimized to accompany the Marine Corps’ F-35B, with natural applicability to F-35C operations and relevance to legacy tactical aircraft while they remain in service. Teamed operations allow the Valkyrie to operate forward as a passive sensor, decoy, or weapons carrier, extending the reach and magazine depth of the manned force. By pushing expendable or attritable assets ahead of the formation, Marine pilots can provoke enemy radar activation, draw missile launches, and expose integrated air defense nodes without placing a high-value crewed aircraft inside the densest threat envelope.

The presence of the Valkyrie is crucial in the opening phase of a high-end conflict, where attrition, uncertainty, and time favor the defender. By trading relatively low-cost uncrewed aircraft for information, targeting data, and early effects, Marine aviation can compress the enemy’s decision cycle and degrade defenses faster. Strategically, the program offers the United States a scalable, adaptable way to maintain air combat relevance against near-peer adversaries. A modular airframe, flexible basing concept, and open autonomy architecture allow rapid iteration as threats evolve, while cost-conscious design supports employment at scale. If fielded in meaningful numbers, Valkyrie-based CCAs will give the Marine Corps a practical means to extend F-35-led airpower, complicate adversary planning, and preserve manned aircraft for the missions where human judgment remains indispensable.