As the U.S. Marine Corps transforms to address future threats, especially the potential near-peer fight with China in the Pacific, reach and access pose some of the most pertinent problems. To help Marine combat aircraft reach targets from bases along the first island chain, the Marine Corps should adopt the Navy’s new carrier-capable MQ-25 Stingray aerial refueling drone into its own concepts of operations (ConOps).
The MQ-25 would provide the Marine air-ground task force (MAGTF) with an already tested and interoperable unmanned design that can extend Marine aviation units’ reach far into the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. Moreover, the MQ-25’s unmanned design (with man-in-the-loop autonomy) and reduced radar cross-section make it a low-risk but high-impact capability in support of the service’s low-observable fifth-generation F-35B aircraft poised to operate within China’s antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) threat during conflict.
An Operational Concept for the MQ-25
The MQ-25 would be particularly useful in any South China Sea scenario in which the range of combat aircraft would not suffice to cover the entire area of operations. For example, operating from air bases and other forward operating locations in the Philippines or in Malaysia’s Sabah State—the two geographically advantageous locations for the Marine Corps along the first island chain—the service’s F-35Bs and F/A-18s reach to only a 250–450 nautical-mile radius, depending on aircraft loadout and mission profile.1 This is barely sufficient to reach the contested Spratlys, where China has built fortified man-made islands with 3-kilometer-long runways, hardened aircraft shelters, and defensive weaponry. And to the north of the Spratlys, the Paracel Islands and Hainan Island remain beyond the reach of U.S. aircraft.
Based on the Navy’s figures, the MQ-25 would double the combat radius of Marine aircraft, enabling them to reach almost any target in the South China Sea, including Hainan Island and southern China’s Guangdong Province—home to China’s nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarines and the headquarters of the People’s Liberation Army’s Southern Theater Command. And, deployed to Japan’s southern Ryukyu island chain or in the northern Philippines, the MQ-25 would enable Marine Corps and Navy fighters to reach and patrol the Taiwan Strait much more effectively.
Furthermore, forward-deployed MQ-25s would allow combat aircraft to take off with heavier weapon payloads and then join with predetermined tanker tracks on the way to targets or add fuel on the return leg if needed.
The Marine Corps could deploy small MQ-25 tanker elements at forward bases or other military or civilian airfields. Because of its low-observable characteristics, the MQ-25 is a survivable platform that can operate within contested airspace or much closer than the Marine Corps’ slow and vulnerable KC-130J tanker. In addition, operating the unmanned MQ-25 closer to the enemy’s weapon engagement zone poses a much smaller risk than losing a KC-130J and its crew. Together, this makes the MQ-25 an ideal proposition for a Marine Corps mission tanker. Furthermore, the MQ-25’s reduced radar signature enables more covert ingress into operational areas when combined with F-35s.
Tanker Alternatives
The Marine Corps is planning to introduce an aerial refueling version of its OV-22 Osprey on board the Navy’s large amphibious assault ships (LHDs and LHAs) to increase the range of organic aviation elements (e.g., the F-35B).2 However, similar to the KC-130J, an Osprey-based tanker is not survivable in projected scenarios. It could only survive in an uncontested environment or be used solely as a recovery tanker.
Integrating the MQ-25 into the Marine Corps ConOps also would relieve the stress on the Marines’ own tanker—the KC-130J—and airlift fleet in a potential Pacific war. For example, Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 152, which is based in Iwakuni, Japan, operates only 15 KC-130J aerial refueling aircraft.3 These aircraft can offload some 57,500 pounds of fuel each, to two tactical aircraft simultaneously.4 The KC-130J, however, is not a survivable platform when operating near hostile or contested airspace.
The KC-130J could instead be used to connect logistics with forward-operating locations, hauling ordnance and fuel bladders for tactical aircraft and the MQ-25. This would allow an effective sharing of risk between the unmanned and low-observable MQ-25 and the slow, manned KC-130J, with the former operating inside contested airspace and the latter at the rear.
Potential
Critically, the MQ-25 is going to assume additional mission roles. It is already conceived to take up intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and, quite likely, target acquisition tasks, given that both the Navy and the Marine Corps’ need a survivable platform for those missions.5 For such a role, the aircraft would need to be fitted with an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar and/or an electro-optical/infrared turret for increased detection range and target identification in all weather conditions. The aircraft also could be fitted with pod-mounted electronic intelligence/signals intelligence systems. If so, the MQ-25 could scout the maritime space for hostile maritime or land targets and pass target coordinates to other platforms for prosecution or further analysis.
In the future, MQ-25s also could assume communication-relay functions, freeing E-2D Hawkeye IIs to focus on their primary airborne early warning and command-and-control role.6 Doing so also would allow the Navy to keep the E-2D farther outside the range of adversary missiles.
The Lower Risk Option
Adopting the MQ-25 into the Marine Corps ConOps would provide significant advantages and lower risk in operating forward from advanced bases. The Marine Corps could join the Navy’s acquisition program and procure a meaningful number of MQ-25s.
In any potential conflict in the Indo-Pacific, the distance between scant land features is a huge problem. Before and during a conflict, MAGTF units would deploy to and within the first island chain and fight from small, dispersed and unprepared airfields with minimal support. To address the perennial problem of combat reach and persistence, MQ-25 offers the needed capability for the Marines Corps’ new concepts of operations.
1. For a good discussion of tactical aircraft’s combat range, see William Stanley and Gary Liberson, Measuring Effects of Payload and Radius Differences of Fighter Aircraft (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1993).
2. Shawn Snow, “The Corps Is on Track to Turn the MV-22 Into a Refueling Tanker,” Marine Corps Times, 23 April 2018.
3. U.S. Marine Corps, 2022 United States Marine Corps Aviation Plan (April 2022).
4. Lockheed Martin, “C-130J Super Hercules.”
5. Megan Eckstein, “Boeing Demonstrates MQ-25’s Utility as Surveillance Drone,” Defense News, 16 September 2022.
6. LCDRs Collin Fox, Dylan Phillips-Levine, and Trevor Phillips-Levine, USN, and Capt Walker Mills, USMC, “The Return of Range: How the Navy Got the MQ-25 Right,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 148, no. 9 (September 2022).