How the drone revolution could save modern aircraft carriers

On November 12, South Korea made history. On a bright autumn day in the Sea of Japan, an unmanned Mojave drone took off from the South Korean Navy warship ROKS Documentary. The ship — which resembles one aircraft carrier with an island, flight deck, and a throng of observers watching from the sidelines—launched the Mojave into the sky. The drone circled, made two simulated landings and landed on land. No one would have guessed that the actual human pilot was hundreds of miles away. On the beach.

With the power of drone technology, South Korea officially entered the elite club of nations with the means to launch aircraft from ships.

Mojave’s feat is also proof that the drone revolution is poised to fix two of the aircraft carrier’s most vexing problems: a shortage of aircraft and a shortage of aircraft carriers. Cheap, efficient and much faster to build than manned aircraft, drone will take over aircraft decks around the world. At the same time, their ability to operate from ships not designed for fixed-wing aircraft will allow more navies worldwide to join the ranks of carrier-operating nations. In addition to South Korea, countries such as Turkey, Spain, Australia, Japan and Thailand can benefit from the new generation of short takeoff and landing drones.

While a naval power, South Korea has never before operated fixed-wing aircraft from an airline. Technically, it still hasn’t: ROKS Documentary is one amphibious assault ship designed to perform a wartime “Hail Mary” play, launching Marines by hovercraft and helicopter to storm the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, killing or capturing leader Kim Jong-un before he can launch nuclear weapons. But Documentary was never designed to operate fixed-wing aircraft: its cockpit, 600 feet long, is too short to operate carrier-based aircraft such as the US Navy’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. Its elevators, designed to transfer helicopters between flight decks and hangars, cannot support the weight of the Super Hornet or the newer F-35B Lightning II fighter jet.

That’s where Mojave comes in. The unmanned aerial vehicle, unveiled in 2021 by General Atomics, was developed as a sea-going version of the US Army’s MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone, itself a little brother to the Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone. The 29-foot-long drone has a wingspan of 52 feet and can stay aloft for up to 25 hours at a top speed of 140 knots. The drone was redesigned for short take-offs and landings (STOL); it only needs 400 feet of rough runway to take off. General Atomics suggests cleared stretches of land made of dirt, grass, or even “a neighborhood football field.” The company also mentions another place of business that older drones can’t take advantage of: ships.

The Mojave can carry up to 3,300 pounds of munitions, including up to 16 Hellfire anti-tank missiles. Other payloads may include Paveway laser-guided bombs, JDAM satellite-guided bombs, and GBU-39B Small Diameter Bomb gliding munitions. The drone can even be configured as a gunfighter; earlier this year, General Atomics fitted a Mojave with two Dillon Aero DAP-6 warheads. The DAP-6 is an all-in-one pod equipped with an M134D-H 7.62mm Gatling gun capable of firing up to 3,000 rounds per minute. In an April 2024 test at the Yuma Proving Ground, a Mojave consumed nearly 10,000 shots on goal over seven sessions. The drone can easily hold four weapon pods, doubling its firepower.

The Mojave drone is also versatile. It can carry electro-optical cameras for surveillance missions, synthetic aperture radars to track ground vehicles at long distances, and act as an airborne relay for voice and data communications. It can also be mounted as a signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection platform, recording enemy radar and communications signals for analysis. In a pinch, wing-mounted cargo pods will allow it to deliver up to 1,000 pounds of cargo to friendly forces.

A world of fixed-wing aircraft is a world of fast, high-performance jets often with stealthy, powerful radars and the ability to carry a hefty amount of air-to-air and air-to-ground munitions into combat. Only a handful of production fighter jets dominate the aircraft deck: the US F-35C and F-35B, the French Rafale M, and China’s J-15 and J-35. Although very capable, these aircraft can only service dedicated aircraft carriers, which require large, specialized, expensive ships.

STOL drones like the Mojave are in a different category than modern carrier-based fighters, between something like a carrier-based fighter like the F-35B and an on-board helicopter like the MH-60S Seahawk. Slow and lacking in both maneuverability and stealth, STOL drones cannot engage in combat against advanced air defenses such as the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system or the Chinese J-20 fighter jet. That said, their strengths are that they are relatively inexpensive ($32 million versus the $100 million F-35B Lightning II), easy to manufacture, and can be quickly reconfigured to suit a variety of missions. The F-35 can perform many of the Mojave’s missions, but cargo delivery is not one of them.

drones taking off from a military deck with personnel observing

General Atomics

Modern carrier aircraft are optimized for high-intensity, high-tech combat. STOL drones are scaled to lower intensity against less sophisticated threats. There are plenty of missions where an F-35B, which costs about $6.8 million a year to run, is overkill in both operating cost and capability. An armed, slow-moving propeller-driven drone with long glide capabilities is perfectly matched against an adversary without air defenses, such as Afghanistan’s Taliban or Al-Qaeda guerrillas in Africa.

There are a number of fleets worldwide with ships set to operate STOL drones. Australia operates two amphibious ships, Canberra and Adelaideeach with 664-foot-long flight decks, enough to launch a Mojave armed with a handful of Hellfire missiles. Spain’s Juan Carlos I is almost identical to the Australian vessels. South Korea’s Documentary has a sister ship, Maradoand Japan operates the two helicopter gunships Hyuga and Ise. Brazil, which had a long history of operating real aircraft carriers, now operates the former Royal Navy command ship Atlântico and plans to fly drones away from it.

A country to watch in the world of STOL companies is Turkey. TCG Anatoliaa sister ship to Canberra-class and Juan Carloswill use up to 30 Turkish-made TB-3 drones. The TB-3 is a carrier-optimized version of the TB-2 Bayraktar, which gained notoriety for helping the defense of Ukraine at the start of the Russian invasion in 2022. The fact that the drones come from Turkey’s growing defense industry means that Anatolia likely to get newer, improved drones faster than most countries.

Dedicated full-size aircraft carriers will also participate in the STOL drone. Autumn 2023, Royal Navy’s HMS Prince of Wales conducted successful trials at sea with the Mojave drone, including takeoffs and landings. The US Navy is set to operate 22 MQ-25 Stingray refueling drones by 2028, and has left open the possibility that up to 60 percent of an airline’s air wing could be unmanned by 2040. In the meantime, there’s no reason why Prince of Wales or a Bush-class carrier could not add 10–20 STOL drones to its existing fleet of high-performance fighters. This would not only save money, it would expand an operator’s capabilities against low-end threats.

Drones like the Mojave or TB-3 may not lend themselves to high-tech combat, but in the long run, drones will only get faster, stealthier, and more lethal, giving smaller fleets a bigger punch. Just as the Air Force’s troublesome propeller-driven MQ-1 Predator drones in the 2000s led to today’s jet-fighter-like Collaborative Combat Aircraft, we will almost certainly see STOL drones like the Mojave give way to ship-based, fighter-like drones with vertical takeoff and landing capabilities .

Drones are disrupting warfare as we know it, and there are ongoing public discussions questioning whether large platforms like aircraft carriers are uniquely vulnerable. But the secret of the modern carrier is that it absorbs all the technology that threatens it – like nuclear weapons, guided missiles and now drones – and then places it on the flight deck, making the ships more relevant than ever.

Instead of driving carriers toward obsolescence, drones will not only make them more relevant than ever before, they will make more ship carriers.