General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc (GA-ASI) announced on 17 November 2025 that it will team up with Saab to demonstrate an airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) capability on the MQ-9B unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in the summer of 2026.
The two companies first announced they were partnering to develop such a capability in June 2025.
The demonstration will be conducted at GA-ASI’s Desert Horizon flight operations facility in Southern California using a GA-ASI MQ-9B equipped with an AEW&C system supplied by Saab.
GA-ASI and Saab’s AEW&C offering will span a wide range of applications, including early detection and warning of hostile air threats from tactical air munitions to manned combat aircraft and cruise missiles; long-range detection and tracking; and simultaneous target tracking and flexible combat system integration, all over line-of-sight and satellite communications connectivity.
The key advantages of using a medium-altitude, long-endurance UAV such as the MQ-9B for the AEW&C mission are the fact that this class of platform has the highest operational availability of any military aircraft type and, being unmanned, does not place any aircrew at risk.
“Adding AEW&C to the MQ-9B brings a critical new capability to our platform,” GA-ASI President David R Alexander was quoted as saying in a company press release. “We want to deliver a persistent AEW&C solution to our global operators that will protect them against sophisticated cruise missiles as well as simple but dangerous drone swarms.”
