Rheinmetall offers MQ-28 ‘fighter drone’ to Bundeswehr

Rheinmetall and Boeing Australia have entered into a strategic partnership to offer the MQ-28 Ghost Bat as a collaborative combat aircraft solution for the Bundeswehr.

The agreement centers on Germany’s emerging requirement for collaborative combat aircraft (CCA), a class of autonomous unmanned systems designed to operate alongside manned fighter aircraft as force multipliers in contested airspace. The immediate relevance of the partnership lies in accelerating the Bundeswehr’s access to a mature autonomous platform that has already undergone extensive flight testing, while also placing the MQ-28 into a developing competitive field inside Germany’s future air combat plans.

According to the companies, the MQ-28 Ghost Bat has completed more than 150 flights and was designed, developed, and manufactured in Australia for the Royal Australian Air Force and allied users. The platform is intended to team with manned aircraft, extending sensor reach, increasing survivability, and adding combat mass in high-threat environments.

Collaborative combat aircraft are designed to operate as loyal wingman systems, supporting crewed fighters with missions such as reconnaissance, electronic warfare, target detection, decoy operations, and potential weapons integration.

The MQ-28’s modular architecture supports multiple mission sets and rapid reconfiguration. According to the announcement, its autonomous behaviors and open systems design allow for continuous upgrades and accelerated capability growth as operational requirements evolve.

Under the new arrangement, Rheinmetall will serve as the system manager for MQ-28 in Germany, overseeing integration into existing and future Bundeswehr command and weapons systems, adaptation to national requirements, and long-term operational, maintenance, and logistics support.

Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger said, “With Boeing Defence Australia as a partner, we are laying the groundwork to optimally tailor the MQ-28 to the Bundeswehr’s requirements. As a system integrator, we ensure that integration, operation, and further development come from a single source while simultaneously strengthening industrial value creation in the form of an industrial hub in Germany and Europe.”

He added that the company sees revenue potential in the three-digit millions of euros, underscoring the industrial scale of the project.

The partnership also emphasizes national and sovereign industrial value creation in Germany, with Rheinmetall supporting a dedicated digital engineering environment in-country. Engineers from Germany and Australia are expected to jointly contribute to software validation, systems testing, and hardware integration.

At the same time, Airbus is preparing flight tests of a separate unmanned collaborative combat aircraft system based on the Kratos XQ-58A Valkyrie, as part of another program intended to provide the German Air Force with an operational Uncrewed Collaborative Combat Aircraft (UCCA) capability by 2029.

That work is underway at Airbus facilities in Manching, near Munich, where engineers are preparing two Valkyrie aircraft acquired from U.S. partner Kratos Defense & Security Solutions. According to Airbus, the aircraft are expected to conduct their first flights later this year using a European mission system developed by Airbus.

The Airbus-Kratos effort adds a second pathway toward Germany’s 2029 collaborative combat aircraft objective and highlights that the Bundeswehr’s future UCCA capability is now shaping into a competitive industrial and technological race.

The existence of both the MQ-28 Ghost Bat offer from Rheinmetall-Boeing Australia and the XQ-58A Valkyrie-based Airbus-Kratos effort suggests that Germany is positioning itself to field an operational loyal wingman capability within the current decade.