The Navy’s new unmanned tanker won’t be ready until 2027—another delay for a program that has struggled with design and production problems.

The MQ-25 Stingray was originally supposed to reach initial operational capability in 2024, then in 2026 . New budget documents reveal that date has been pushed back again, to the third quarter of fiscal 2027. A Navy official confirmed the delay, but neither the service nor Boeing disclosed the reason behind it.

Budget documents also show that initial operational test and evaluation, or IOT&E, has been delayed a year; it is now scheduled to take place in the second to fourth quarter of fiscal 2028. Typically, that testing happens before IOC is declared so the service can test with production-like systems ahead of deployment. But for this program

See Full Page