U.S. Navy Awards $13.3M Contract to Sustain BQM-177A Target Drones for Missile Defense Training.

Kratos Unmanned Aerial Systems has secured a $13.29 million U.S. Navy contract to sustain the BQM-177A Subsonic Aerial Target System, ensuring the continued availability of high-fidelity threat simulators for fleet training and weapons testing.

The award funds teardown, evaluation, and repair of operational targets, reinforcing the Navy’s ability to maintain a ready inventory alongside ongoing production. Combined with a recent 70-unit procurement, the effort expands both capacity and reliability, enabling more frequent and realistic live-fire exercises against modern threat profiles.

Read also: U.S. Navy Approves Full-Rate Production of BQM-177A Aerial Targets in $61M Kratos Contract.

Kratos’ BQM-177A subsonic aerial target helps the U.S. Navy train against realistic sea-skimming missile threats, strengthening fleet air-defense readiness and preparation for high-end maritime combat (Picture source: U.S. DoW).

The significance of the award is larger than its dollar value. It follows a February 2026 Navy contract modification for 70 new BQM-177A Lot Seven targets and associated rocket-assisted takeoff kits, showing that the service is not only buying more threat-representative targets but also investing in the industrial capacity to inspect, repair, and rapidly return them to service.

The BQM-177A is a recoverable, high-subsonic aerial target developed by Kratos for the Navy’s Subsonic Aerial Target requirement to mimic anti-ship cruise missiles. Derived from the BQM-167X lineage, it achieved full operational capability in 2022 and is designed for both land- and ship-based operations. NAVAIR identifies the aircraft at roughly 194 inches in length with an 84-inch wingspan, while Navy and Kratos material describe performance in excess of Mach 0.95 and sea-skimming flight as low as 6.6 feet above the surface, a demanding envelope for any shipboard air-defense crew.

The BQM-177A itself is not an armed strike weapon, and that is precisely the point. Its military value lies in reproducing the kinematic behavior and sensor signatures of real missiles closely enough to force defenders through the full detect-track-identify-engage cycle. What makes it “look” like a missile is not a warhead but its flight profile and payload architecture: internal and external mission kits can add scoring systems, Identification Friend-or-Foe functions, passive and active RF augmentation, infrared plume simulation, electronic countermeasures, chaff and flare dispensing, and tow targets. In practical terms, the drone can be configured so a ship’s radar, combat system, and missile battery see a fast, low, complex inbound threat instead of a benign target aircraft.

Operationally and tactically, this matters because sea-skimming cruise missiles compress reaction time and exploit sea clutter to complicate detection and fire-control quality tracking. The BQM-177A is therefore used to validate not just the missile shot itself, but the entire naval air-defense architecture: sensors, combat management, doctrine, launcher timing, crew coordination, and post-engagement assessment. Congress’s research service notes that the Navy employs the BQM-177A to evaluate ship air and missile defense systems including Aegis, SM-2, and SM-6, which places the target squarely inside the Navy’s layered defense problem rather than at the margins of training.

The reason the Navy trains with systems like this is simple: no computer model fully substitutes for live, end-to-end engagement against a realistic inbound profile. That is why the BQM-177A has already been used in major operationally relevant events, including Pacific Vanguard 2022 in the Philippine Sea, where targets launched from USNS Alan Shepard were engaged by USS Barry and HMAS Perth, marking the system’s first use in the Western Pacific and underscoring its value for coalition readiness. The BQM-177A is the enabling instrument that turns interoperability from a staff concept into a measurable combat function.

This is also why the March 2026 contract is focused on teardown and repair rather than glamorous new hardware. Recoverable targets only generate value if they can be examined after stressing flights, repaired, and reintroduced into the inventory at speed. In practice, teardown means harvesting engineering data from airframes, propulsion sections, avionics, and mission kits after demanding sorties or intercept events, then feeding those lessons back into readiness, reliability, and cost control. That is a quieter but strategically essential part of naval combat preparation, especially for a target family the Navy is buying in growing numbers, as seen in recent full-rate production lots for U.S. and allied users.

The strategic meaning for the United States is clear. Ordering, producing, and sustaining realistic target systems is not proof of imminent war, but it is unmistakably preparation for real-world operations in maritime theaters where anti-ship missile threats are central. The Navy’s aerial target portfolio received about $197.5 million in FY2025 procurement and RDT&E funding, while CRS has highlighted broader concerns about the availability of representative targets for live testing across the force. For readers of Army Recognition’s report on the Navy’s February 2026 BQM-177A production award and its analysis of SM-6’s maritime defense role, this latest contract shows the Navy is building not just missiles and ships, but the training ecosystem required to use them under combat conditions.

Seen from that angle, the BQM-177A is more than a target drone. It is part of the infrastructure of deterrence: a recoverable, threat-representative surrogate that lets the Navy test weapons honestly, train crews under pressure, and expose weaknesses before an adversary does. When Washington funds the repair pipeline for systems designed to imitate sea-skimming cruise missiles, it is funding readiness in its most concrete form.