IN Brief:
- A Marine Corps Valkyrie demonstrated beyond-line-of-sight command and control during an electronic-warfare mission.
- Control transferred from a Kratos ground station to an A-GRA-compliant interface developed by Autonodyne.
- Kratos says production is scaling towards approximately 40 Valkyries annually as demand for missionised uncrewed jets grows.
Kratos has demonstrated beyond-line-of-sight control of a US Marine Corps Valkyrie uncrewed aircraft during an electronic-warfare mission involving multiple F-35s and an F/A-18, adding another command-and-control configuration to the service’s collaborative combat aircraft work.
The flight took place in southern California in April and was disclosed on 18 August. A missionised Valkyrie launched from a zero-length launcher before validating its beyond-line-of-sight command-and-control datalink and transferring control from a Kratos ground station to an Autonomy Government Reference Architecture-compliant human-machine interface developed by Autonodyne.
Kratos Defense & Security Solutions said a Marine Corps operator then controlled the aircraft through the beyond-line-of-sight link while it flew with crewed combat aircraft and supported coordinated electronic-warfare objectives. The aircraft returned autonomously to its recovery point at the end of the mission.
The engineering significance lies less in the presence of an uncrewed jet beside F-35s than in the control architecture joining them. Collaborative aircraft have already demonstrated formation flight, autonomous behaviours, and increasingly complex mission payloads. Making those systems useful at fleet scale requires a command structure that can transfer control, tolerate changing communications paths, and accept new mission systems without rebuilding the complete aircraft architecture each time.
The A-GRA-compliant interface is intended to support that modularity. Government reference architectures establish common technical boundaries between autonomy software, mission systems, operator interfaces, and the air vehicle, reducing the risk that one proprietary control stack becomes inseparable from the aircraft itself.
That matters as collaborative aircraft move through rapid development cycles. New sensors, datalinks, autonomy software, and electronic-warfare payloads will arrive at different speeds, and a tightly coupled design can turn every upgrade into a lengthy integration programme. Open interfaces do not remove the qualification burden, but they can make it easier to isolate changes and test new configurations without redesigning unrelated systems.
Beyond-line-of-sight control introduces a separate operational requirement. An uncrewed aircraft dependent on a nearby ground station is constrained by terrain, distance, antenna geometry, and the need to keep support equipment close to the operating area. Extending command through a BLOS link allows the launch location, controlling unit, and operating area to be separated more widely.
It also enlarges the cybersecurity and electronic-warfare problem. Communications have to remain secure and predictable while operating in a congested or deliberately disrupted spectrum, and the aircraft must respond safely if the control path degrades or disappears. Those requirements become more demanding as uncrewed systems operate further from controllers and take on roles alongside crewed formations.
The Marine Corps test combined those command requirements with an electronic-warfare mission. EW payloads place substantial demands on power, cooling, apertures, processing, timing, and data exchange. Carrying a jammer or sensor is only one part of the integration task; the mission system also has to decide when to collect, transmit, or act without overwhelming the available communications architecture.
Kratos describes the April flight as the fourth new mission-system configuration flown on Marine Corps Valkyrie aircraft in less than three years. That rate of change is central to the business case for comparatively low-cost collaborative aircraft, which are expected to accept new payloads and software faster than conventional combat-air platforms with longer certification and upgrade cycles.
The company is also linking that flexibility to a higher-volume production model. Kratos says it expects to produce more than 150 Group 5 uncrewed jet systems across its wider portfolio this year and is scaling towards approximately 40 Valkyries annually. Those figures are company production targets rather than contracted Marine Corps quantities, but they illustrate the industrial approach behind the aircraft.
Producing a common air vehicle in useful numbers while varying the mission equipment can reduce the cost of introducing new configurations, provided the underlying platform remains sufficiently standardised. That qualification becomes important once different customers, payloads, software versions, and datalinks begin accumulating across production lots.
The Marine Corps is already pushing the Valkyrie towards that more structured mission role. Kratos and Northrop Grumman Mission Systems announced a contract earlier this year to develop missionised aircraft for the MUX TACAIR programme, combining Valkyrie platforms with a Northrop Grumman mission kit and open-architecture autonomy software.
Configuration control will become increasingly important as those efforts converge. Rapid mission insertion only works if aircraft, payloads, ground systems, datalinks, and software baselines remain compatible. A fleet that develops too many bespoke variants can recreate the sustainment burden that modular architecture is intended to avoid.
The April test also remains a development milestone rather than proof of an operationally mature command chain. Future work will have to establish how the architecture performs over longer distances, through different communications pathways, in degraded networks, and with larger numbers of uncrewed aircraft operating simultaneously.
For the Marine Corps, the attraction is a runway-independent aircraft that can carry sensors, electronic-warfare equipment, or other mission payloads without putting a pilot in the platform. Its value, however, depends on whether multiple aircraft can be managed as part of a wider combat system rather than operated as isolated drones.
That puts the less visible parts of collaborative aviation at the centre of the programme: interfaces, datalinks, cybersecurity, configuration control, operator workload, and repeatable production. Successful demonstrations establish that the pieces can work. The harder industrial task is making them work consistently across a fleet.
