The phrase loyal wingman has long occupied the intersection between futuristic doctrine and experimental test ranges. Over the past 18 months it moved decisively toward the hangar and the operational flight line. Two complementary trajectories illustrate that shift. Australia’s MQ-28 Ghost Bat has completed RAAF-defined capability demonstrations that validate core mission threads, while US-linked prototypes like Kratos’s XQ-58A have proven critical elements of crewed-uncrewed kill chains in large force exercises. Together these events show the transition from maturation to initial operational integration, even as hard work remains on command and control, weapons release authorities, sustainment and scale.

The MQ-28 picture

Boeing and the Royal Australian Air Force completed a set of Capability Demonstration 2025 events that Boeing says validated autonomous behaviours, multi-ship operations, deployment to an operational base and data fusion with crewed platforms. Boeing reports roughly 150 flight hours on real MQ-28 air vehicles and more than 20,000 virtual flight hours logged in digital testing prior to the demonstrations. The trials included an exercise at RAAF Base Tindal that tested sortie generation in an unfamiliar environment and multi-platform data sharing with an E-7A Wedgetail. Those results are not mere engineering tests. They represent successful execution of the early steps in an air combat chain concept commonly summarized as find, fix, track and target.

What the data mean

Measured flight hours are still modest compared with legacy crewed types, but the 150 hours figure combined with tens of thousands of virtual hours suggests a test posture that is deliberately autonomy-forward. Virtual testing provided scale for edge-case scenarios and mission-system regressions that would be impractical to exercise only in hardware. The MQ-28 demonstrations show a program posture optimized to validate software-led mission threads and human-on-the-loop workflows before pushing into live weapon employment. That approach reduces risk at the aircraft level while accelerating operational learning at the tactical level.

Kratos and XQ-58A: kill-chain and expeditionary control

The XQ-58A Valkyrie program has been the clearest example inside the US system of integrating runway-flexible uncrewed jets into joint exercises. Kratos and partners reported collaborative electronic warfare and cooperative kill-chain closure under Marine Corps control during Emerald Flag 2024. The XQ-58A in those events demonstrated on-board sensing that could geolocate threats and pass targeting data to crewed and ground platforms over tactical networks, and the demonstrations included switching control between air and ground nodes. Those are foundational behaviors for a loyal wingman that must operate in distributed, contested environments.

Program context and competition

The US Air Force has been formalizing collaborative combat aircraft as a new mission design series. In early 2025 the service issued YFQ designations for industry prototypes that will feed CCA experimentation and eventual production decisions. That programmatic push is purposely competitive and modular. The USAF and some allied services are betting that competition between different industrial approaches will drive down unit cost and shorten fielding timelines, while allowing different concepts to mature in parallel.

Operational implications and the remaining gaps

1) Command and control and custodianship. Demonstrations show operators handing custody to airborne command platforms and passing control between ground and air nodes. That is essential because centralized supervisory authorities will be needed to enforce safety, engagement authorities and deconfliction in congested airspace. The demonstrated custodianship models are promising, but they also expose a brittle link: if the supervisory node is degraded the autonomy stack and handover logic must be resilient. Kratos and Boeing test results show progress on handover methods, but doctrine and secure, low-latency tactical datalinks remain rate-limiting factors.

2) Weapons employment and ROE. The MQ-28 trials validated find, fix, track and target. Industry and defence reporting indicate live weapon employment was planned as the next step in program timelines. Transitioning from target designation to autonomous or supervised weapons release will require explicit legal, technical and policy rules of engagement. Demonstrations to date stop short of routine, autonomous weapons release at scale for good reason. Programs are treating live firing as a distinct escalation in risk that needs justified doctrine and technical safeguards.

3) Scale, producibility and attritability. One of the CCA design goals is to enable affordable mass rather than bespoke, single-digit platforms. The US CCA effort and industrial bids emphasise manufacturability, modular payload bays and software-driven capability growth. The MQ-28 is being produced in iterative blocks with modular nose bays to swap ISR, EW or other payloads. The Valkyrie and other US efforts intentionally target lower unit costs so forces can accept attrition as a tactic. Demonstrations show concept validity, but scaling from prototypes and small fleets to hundreds of operational CCAs will stress supply chains, propulsion sourcing and maintenance concepts.

4) Interoperability across allies and platforms. The MQ-28 effort was framed around integrating with RAAF legacy assets and coalition sensors. The US CCA and Skyborg lines are designed to plug into allied architectures. Early demonstrations have worked multi-platform sensor fusion, but broader NATO and regional interoperability will require harmonized datalinks, common mission-data standards and shared certification practices. This is as much a software and protocol problem as an airframe problem.

What to expect next

If programs remain on current trajectories we should expect three near-term developments. First, additional live weapon tests or closely supervised weapon-employment demonstrations will appear as a controlled extension of the capability demonstrations. Those events will be highly scripted and used to validate end-to-end custody, target data provenance and safeguards. Second, we will see increasing integration trials with command and control platforms such as AEW systems, and with legacy fighters operating as mission commanders. Third, procurement and program-of-record conversations will accelerate as governments assess the cost tradeoffs of buying small fleets versus investing in mass production. The USAF CCA designations and the MQ-28 Capability Demonstration milestones together create political and budgetary momentum for those next steps.

What operational commanders must do now

Operational units and planners must stop treating loyal wingmen as merely test articles. They must rehearse logistics, degraded communications tactics, emergent maintenance requirements and attrition accounting. They should build mission packages that treat CCAs not as single-role point solutions but as configurable nodes that can be programmed to carry EW, ISR or kinetic payloads. Finally, force development must update training pipelines so crewed pilots and mission commanders can supervise ten to one hundred unmanned teammates without cognitive overload. The demonstrations provide a viable blueprint, but turning that blueprint into doctrine and verified tactics is the heavy lift ahead.

Conclusions

As of early October 2025 loyal wingmen have graduated from lab curiosities to operational experiment participants. Programs in Australia and the United States have demonstrated the technical primitives needed for crewed-uncrewed teaming: persistent sensors, data fusion, supervised autonomy and expeditionary control handovers. Those primitives are necessary but not sufficient for routine operational employment. The real work now is not proving the aircraft can fly and share data. It is proving the human systems, legal authorities and sustainment chains can absorb these platforms at scale and in high pressure environments. If commanders and acquisition authorities treat the next 24 months as the period to harden those human and institutional interfaces, then loyal wingmen will become a generational multiplier rather than a brittle technological novelty.