Somewhere over Southern California, instrumented “red” fighters played the enemy, airliners went about their business and ships moved at sea. Watching them at the same time, from long range, was not a big radar jet full of operators. It was a drone with no one on board.
On Wednesday 28 October, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-ASI) and Saab announced that a company-owned MQ-9B carrying Saab's LoyalEye radar has completed advanced flight tests of an airborne early warning (AEW) system. The flights took place over recent months from GA-ASI's Desert Horizon flight operations facility in Southern California.
It is a modest headline with a large idea behind it. Since the Second World War, airborne early warning has meant crewed aircraft, most of them big and expensive. MQ-9B airborne early warning promises something cheaper and longer-lasting, able to fly where crews should not.
Informazioni rapide
- Piattaforma: GA-ASI MQ-9B, company-owned test aircraft
- Sensore: Saab LoyalEye AEW radar, carried in payload pods
- Annunciato: 28 October 2026 by GA-ASI and Saab
- Test site: GA-ASI Desert Horizon flight operations facility, Southern California
- Risultato: Simultaneous long-range tracking of several air and maritime targets, including instrumented red fighters and airliners
- First flight with pods: 19 May 2026
- Partnership announced: June 2025
- Likely customer: UK Royal Navy, whose Crowsnest helicopters are due to retire at the end of 2029
What the drone saw
The companies are careful with numbers. They give no detection ranges and no target counts. According to GA-ASI, the MQ-9B tracked several airborne and maritime targets simultaneously at long ranges, and the airborne targets included multiple instrumented red fighter jets and several commercial aircraft.
Saab adds that the flights validated the system's ability to detect, track and classify airborne targets from an unmanned platform, in what it calls a representative operational scenario. Stakeholders were present and watched the picture build in real time.
GA-ASI's president did not hide his enthusiasm. The company says it is discussing unmanned AEW on the MQ-9B with several customers, without naming them.
MQ-9B airborne early warning: a radar in a pod
The MQ-9B is the larger, certifiable descendant of the MQ-9 Reaper, sold as the SkyGuardian and SeaGuardian and flown by the Royal Air Force as the Protector. LoyalEye does not require a new airframe. It rides in payload pods: company renderings show one under each wing and a third on the centreline. The same aircraft can, in principle, carry surveillance or anti-submarine kit one day and early warning the next.
The programme has moved quickly. GA-ASI and Saab announced their partnership in June 2025, and the MQ-9B first flew with the AEW pods on 19 May 2026, again from Desert Horizon. Five months later the radar is tracking fighters. GA-ASI plans to offer the capability across its MQ-9B family, including the MQ-9B STOL short take-off version it is developing for aircraft carriers.
Saab knows this market better than anyone in Europe. Its Erieye radar is the heart of the GlobalEye business jet, which has won fresh European interest this year. The companies have not said whether LoyalEye shares technology with Erieye. Saab presents LoyalEye as a complement to crewed AEW&C aircraft rather than a rival, able to work alongside them or on its own.
GA-ASI's official video presenting the MQ-9B AEW concept with Saab.
Why the Royal Navy is watching
The most obvious buyer for MQ-9B airborne early warning sits in Portsmouth. The Royal Navy's carriers rely on Crowsnest, a radar system carried by Merlin HM2 helicopters, which is planned to leave service at the end of 2029. In May 2025, defence minister Maria Eagle told Parliament that the MQ-9 was being considered as a candidate for the Navy's Carrier Strike Airborne Early Warning requirement, and that the Navy had established the drone could be modified to fly from the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers.
The logic is simple. A helicopter can only climb so high and stay up so long, and the alternatives, such as the E-2 Hawkeye, need catapults the British carriers do not have. A long-endurance drone with a pod-mounted radar could hold a radar picture over the fleet for far longer, without putting an aircrew in the line of fire.
Nothing is ordered yet, and a test over the Californian desert is a long way from a radar picture over the North Atlantic. Still, Saab's radar on an American airframe, with a British carrier as the likely first home, is a very European way to build airpower in 2026: allied, modular and, above all, persistent.
Sources: GA-ASI (press releases 28 October 2026 and 21 May 2026, X), Saab (press release), The Aviationist, UK Defence Journal, Naval News, Unmanned Systems Technology
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