A new defense spending bill making its way through Congress would add $240 million to the U.S. Army’s budget for the purchase of more MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones. This is despite top Army leaders having declared last year that they would stop buying “obsolete” MQ-1Cs amid continued questions about the uncrewed aircraft’s relevance, especially in future high-end fights.
The Senate Appropriations Committee released details about the latest draft Defense Appropriations Act for the 2026 Fiscal Year, which it had negotiated with its counterparts in the House of Representatives, earlier this week. The funding boost for MQ-1C contained therein is more specifically said to be for the procurement of Gray Eagle 25M variants for the Army National Guard. Prime contractor General Atomics has already been under contract to deliver examples of this version of the MQ-1C to National Guard units since 2024.
As noted, the Army had moved to halt any future purchases of MQ-1Cs last year. The service did not request any funding to buy more Gray Eagles in its proposed budget for the 2026 Fiscal Year, though it did ask for $3.444 million for continued upgrades for its existing fleet of the drones.
“We will cancel procurement of outdated crewed attack aircraft such as the AH-64D [Apache attack helicopter], excess ground vehicles like the HMMWV [the High Mobility Multi-Purpose Wheeled Vehicle, or Humvee] and JLTV [Joint Light Tactical Vehicle], and obsolete UAVs [uncrewed aerial vehicles] like the Gray Eagle,” Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George had written in a joint letter outlining a major shakeup in modernization priorities last May. “We will also continue to cancel programs that deliver dated, late-to-need, overpriced, or difficult-to-maintain capabilities. Yesterday’s weapons will not win tomorrow’s wars.”
“Our Army must transform now to a leaner, more lethal force by infusing technology, cutting obsolete systems, and reducing overhead to defeat any adversary on an ever-changing battlefield,” that letter added.
Originally known as the Warrior, versions of the MQ-1C have been in Army service since the late 2000s. The drones are very much a product of the Global War on Terror era. The design is derived from General Atomics’ iconic MQ-1 Predator, but with features more tailored to the Army’s operational and logistical needs. It notably still has a heavy-fuel piston engine, like the Predator, despite General Atomics having separately moved to a turboprop on the MQ-9 Reaper. The Gray Eagle is also designed to operate with a smaller logistical footprint and have lower crew training requirements than the MQ-1 or MQ-9.
Army units today use Gray Eagles to perform intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and attack missions, both independently and as part of crewed-uncrewed teams with AH-64 Apaches. The drones each have a sensor turret under the nose with electro-optical and infrared cameras, and can carry munitions and other stores on up to four underwing pylons.
Over the years, General Atomics has worked to improve the endurance and other capabilities of the MQ-1C. The aforementioned Gray Eagle 25M is the most recent iteration of the design, and was unveiled in 2022. This latest version has an improved engine, increased onboard power, and a new flight computer offering a significant boost in processing power. General Atomics has said that the Gray Eagle 25M also brings an open-architecture systems backend to the MQ-1C family, opening new opportunities for the rapid integration of additional capabilities.
General Atomics Aeronautical – Gray Eagle 25M
Questions have been building for years now about the future relevance of MQ-1C, as well as its MQ-1 and MQ-9 cousins, especially in support of large-scale conflicts against adversaries with robust integrated air defense networks. The service careers of the Gray Eagle, as well as the Predator and Reaper, have been almost exclusively defined by operations in permissive or semi-permissive airspace. U.S. operations targeting Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen in recent years underscored the vulnerability of the MQ-9, in particular, even to opponents with relatively limited air defense capabilities.
The Army and General Atomics are not unaware of these realities, and there have been significant investments made over the past decade or so to try to ensure the relevance of the MQ-1 and MQ-9 families. Heavy emphasis has been put on air-launched loitering munitions and other uncrewed aerial systems – capabilities the U.S. military now refers collectively to as “launched effects” – as a way to both increase the capability of the Gray Eagle (and the Reaper) and help keep those drones further away from threats.
General Atomics also disclosed last year that the MQ-1C had demonstrated its ability to shoot down other drones using millimeter-wave radar-guided AGM-114L Longbow Hellfire missiles, highlighting another potential role for the drones going forward.
General Atomics has also developed a self-protection pod that features threat warning sensors and a launcher for decoy flares that the MQ-1C and MQ-9 can carry. The Army had been working on a more capable podded electronic warfare system for the Gray Eagle called Multi-Function Electronic Warfare-Air Large (MFEW-AL), but indicated last year that it was backing away from that program.
Launched effects and new podded capabilities do still look key to the future of the MQ-1C in Army service.
“So, when we train on the West Coast, we’ll use an MQ-1 to lead the half [a group of helicopters] into the objective,” Col. Stephen Smith, head of the Army’s elite160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the Night Stalkers, said last year during a talk about how his unit is preparing for future operations in more contested airspace.
“We can hang different capabilities on that platform [the MQ-1C]. So that platform could look like a Black Hawk. It could look like a [MH-]47. It could look like a Little Bird,” Smith added. “So we’re using that as a decoy, [and there are] potentially other capabilities on [the] side of that aircraft.”
Night Stalker UAS Operations
Overall, the more central question has increasingly been how long the MQ-1C’s career with the Army will continue. Discussions in Ukraine about buying Gray Eagles in the months following Russia’s all-out invasion in 2022 highlight that there is still debate about the utility of armed drones in this general category in higher-end conflicts. At that time, Ukrainian forces were making heavy use of Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drones, which offer a broadly similar array of capabilities to the MQ-1C. Growing air defense threats had largely pushed Ukraine’s TB2s out of the equation as the conflict dragged on, but they notably returned to use on a limited level last year.
The Army does still have a need for assets that can loiter for long periods of time and operate from austere areas, and ones that are not exquisite, particularly when operating across the broad expanses of the Pacific. Drones like the Gray Eagle could play useful supporting roles in areas further away from the front lines, such as providing more localized defense and situational awareness around island outposts.
Much about the Army’s vision for its future aviation capabilities, crewed and uncrewed, is still in flux. Even before the broader shakeup in modernization priorities last year, the service had moved to make major changes to its future aviation plans, heavily influenced by an ever-expanding threat ecosystem. The Army notably cancelled its Future Attack Recon Aircraft (FARA) high-speed helicopter program in 2024. The service also halted plans for a direct replacement for the now-retired RQ-7 Shadow drone last year.
Just last month, the Army issued a new contracting “challenge” to industry, calling for prospective short or vertical takeoff and landing (STOL/VTOL) capable drones to take over at least a portion of the roles currently being performed by Gray Eagles. TWZ regularly highlights the benefits of reduced runway dependence or complete runway independence in the context of expeditionary and distributed operations across an array of far-flung locales in a future major conflict. Not having to rely on established traditional runways opens the door to new operational possibilities and helps create targeting dilemmas for opponents that reduce vulnerability to friendly forces.
General Atomics has been working on a short-takeoff and landing-capable drone based in part on the MQ-1C, now referred to as Gray Eagle STOL, in recent years. There has already been extensive flight testing of a demonstrator, dubbed Mojave, from sites on land and ships at sea. Other companies in the United States are also working on STOL/VTOL-capable uncrewed aircraft designs that could be relevant to the Army’s future needs.
GA-ASI Mojave STOL UAS Completes First Dirt Operations
In the meantime, Congress looks set to keep the Army ordering more MQ-1Cs for at least a little while longer.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com