The U.S. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, or NGA, wants to know if Boeing could transform the MQ-25 Stingray tanker drone that it is developing for the U.S. Navy into an unmanned maritime intelligence platform using a modular sensor pod. This highlights continued interest within the Navy, and elsewhere in the U.S. military, in utilizing the Stringray, a test article for which flew for the first time just last month, for missions beyond just aerial refueling. NGA awarded the sole-source contract to Boeing's Phantom Works advanced projects division, the value of which is not disclosed, on Sept. 27, 2019, but only announced it had done so three days later on the U.S. government's main contracting website FedBizOpps. Under the deal, which Aviation Week was first to report, Phantom Works will conduct a study into what it would take to integrate "NGA's Maritime Program capability" into the MQ-25, as well as the manned P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, via Boeing's proprietary Multi-Mission Pod (MMP), according to a so-called Justification and Approval document. U.S. government agencies need to submit this type of document when requesting authority to give a contract directly to a specific company or companies without going through a competitive bidding process.

"The MQ-25 itself is still in early development containing much Boeing proprietary information," the Justification and Approval, which NGA lawyers and contracting officers cleared between May and June 2019, explains. "Only the suggested source can perform the study as required, to the exclusion of other sources, because Boeing is the direct manufacturer of the system and maintains the unique intellectual knowledge of these systems." Boeing first announced it was working on the MMP as a private venture specifically for the P-8A in 2016. At the time, the company said that the pod, which it had flight tested twice already, would incorporate signals intelligence systems (SIGINT) and added communications and data sharing equipment, among other capabilities. This sounds very much like a pod with a dense antenna farm that appeared underneath a P-8A testbed in 2015. The Navy's Poseidons already have powerful SIGINT and other intelligence-gathering capabilities, which you can read about in more detail here.

USN A US Navy P-8A Posiedon maritime patrol aircraft.

The contracting document does not offer any insight into how Boeing might integrate the MMP onto the MQ-25. The company does plan to equip the Stingray with underwing hardpoints to support the Cobham aerial refueling pods required for the tanking mission, which could potentially accommodate an external sensor system.

Boeing A Boeing computer-generated rendering of an MQ-25 with a Cobham aerial refueling pod under its left wing and a regular drop tank under its right wing.

DHS A view of the feed from an AN/ZPY-5 VADER radar imaging system, with the red and green tracks representing moving targets.

However, it's unclear whether the MQ-25 would have the altitude and range performance typically associated with these types of broad area missions. The Navy, for instance, is focused on fielding a manned-unmanned team of P-8As and MQ-4C Triton high-altitude long-endurance unmanned aircraft to meet its own similar maritime intelligence and surveillance needs. The service has already been employing older, ex-U.S. Air Force Block 10 RQ-4A Global Hawks, known as Broad Area Maritime Surveillance-Demonstrators (BAMS-D), in this role. Iran notably shot down one of these unmanned aircraft in the Gulf of Oman in June.

Northrop Grumman An overview of the MQ-4C Triton's capabilities.

That being said, the Navy has itself envisioned a secondary intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance role for the Stringray, even after abandoning the more robust UCAV requirements it had outlined in the original UCLASS program. When the service officially asked to change the future unmanned aircraft's designation from RAQ-25A to MQ-25A in 2016, this is how it described the ISR requirements in the request packet, which the author previously obtained via the Freedom of Information Act:

"The UAS [Unmanned Aerial System] is envisioned to be an integral part of the future CVW [Carrier Air Wing]. During periods of flight when it is not executing the tanking mission, the UAS will be available for ISR tasking. As an ISR asset, it will provide the CSG [Carrier Strike Group] commander an organic, long-endurance ISR capability. It will be capable of providing Maritime Domain Awareness via SIGINT [Signals Intelligence], AIS [Automatic Identification System], and EO/IR [electro-optical/infrared]. The UAS will also be capable of performing dedicated ISR missions in support of the joint, component, or task force commander. Sensors will be controlled from the CVN-based [carrier-based] UMCS [Unmanned Carrier Aviation Mission Control System] and by various work stations afloat or ashore depending upon the type sensor. Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) control will be accomplished based on the DSO NTTP [Defensive Systems Operator Navy Tactical Techniques and Procedures]. Based on the data collected from its sensors, the UAS will be capable of transmitting and receiving tactical data link tracks, with associated processing and exploitation capabilities afloat (airborne, surface, and sub-surface) or ashore."

USN via FOIA

USN via FOIA