Airbus Defence and Space and Kratos Defense and Security Solutions have announced the creation of a teaming arrangement to pursue opportunities for high-end uncrewed, collaborative capabilities in Germany and potentially in the rest of Europe.

Kratos brings to the table its XQ-58A VALKYRIE, a flight-proven UCAV and Collaborative aircraft which has for several years now been instrumental to USAF and USMC experimentation in the fields of crewed-uncrewed teaming and “loyal wingmen”.

The XQ-58A is low observable and can take off from a short rail-catapult with the use of jettisonable rockets. Being able to land on a parachute, including with splashdown in the sea where needed, the VALKYRIE offers “runway independence” as a significant plus. It can be used to carry sensors and non-kinetic effectors such as electronic warfare systems but it can also carry weapons.

A VALKYRIE variant with conventional landing gear is in the works and expected to play a more important role in USMC plans going forward. The addition of the landing gear adds flexibility, although at the expense of some of the internal payload: the rocket launch and parachute landing are expected to remain available, with the landing gear available whenever those more extreme solutions are not mission critical.

Most recently, the USAF carried out complex air combat simulations which involved 2 couples of VALKYRIES with mission-control respectively on an F-16 and an F-15.

In Europe, Airbus will work to integrate its own Mission System onto the VALKYRIE to offer it to Germany by 2029. At present it’s not clear if the Companies are already targeting a specific upcoming requirement: the Luftwaffe plans to have an electronic warfare uncrewed adjunct platform supporting its new Eurofighter TYPHOON EK in SEAD/DEAD/EW missions, but the Companies say they are not specifically chasing that opportunity.

The VALKYRIE claims a range of 3.000 miles at altitudes of up to 45,000 feet.

The combination of European, open-architecture mission system and proven uncrewed, low-observable platform is expected to result particularly alluring to European, NATO air forces which all agree on the need for more uncrewed capabilities, both ‘attritable’ and not, going towards 2030.

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