The Clone Ranger drone is intended to carry a mix of munitions and sensors and fly from short fields over long distances.
Kratos has been developing an unusual-looking air combat drone capable of carrying munitions internally and externally, as well as various sensors, and that has a built-in buddy refueling capability. Dubbed Clone Ranger, the uncrewed aircraft is designed to be highly modular, as well as relatively low-cost and readily producible.
A rendering of Clone Ranger was recently added to Kratos’ website, but without its name being given and no further information offered. A spokesperson for the company provided TWZ with the moniker and more details about the design, which has been in active development since 2020, today. The drone is said to be “at a conceptual design maturity.”
The name directly reflects the design’s core attributes, the spokesperson explained. Clone refers to its small size (pegged at around 30 feet long), as well as its focus on modularity, lower cost, and producibility. Ranger reflects its intended ability to operate forward from runways as short as 4,000 feet and its expected 1,900 to 2,200 nautical mile range. It is worth noting here that the baseline version of Kratos’ XQ-58A Valkyrie, one of its best-known tactical designs, is also 30 feet long (and has a wingspan of 27 feet) and has a maximum range of 3,000 nautical miles, according to a company fact sheet.
The rendering of Clone Ranger on Kratos’ website now shows a design with some signature control (stealthy) features, with modified diamond-like delta wings and a very wide center body. It cannot be seen whether it has any kind of tail. It is reminiscent, in some very broad strokes, of a rendering of Kratos has previously shown of another stealth drone called Thanatos, details about which remain limited. Thanatos is known to have flown for the first time last year.
However, Clone Ranger has distinct differences, including the presence of what appears to be at least one engine air intake sitting in between horn-like extensions on either side of the forward fuselage, giving it an overall appearance almost like a flying catamaran speed boat. How many engines the design has, and of what type, is unknown. Kratos’ explicit mention of short takeoff and landing performance means it should have landing gear of some kind, but they are not shown deployed in the rendering.
Clone Ranger’s design has “dual large payload bays for: lethality, endurance, and survivability in contested airspace” and “dual multirole forward sensor stations for engaging multiple threats,” according to the Kratos spokesperson. The rendering also shows that the drone has the ability to carry additional stores on pylons under its wings.
In terms of actual stores, Clone Ranger is depicted releasing a GBU-39/B Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) precision-guided glide bomb and an ADM-160 Miniature Air-Launched Decoy (MALD) from the left bay and firing an AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) from the right one. An AIM-9X Sidewinder is also seen on a pylon under the right wing.
In terms of sensors, a faceted enclosure is seen underneath the drone’s left front ‘horn’ in the rendering, and is depicted ‘scanning’ a Scud-type ballistic missile transporter-erector-launcher. This would point to a multi-purpose electro-optical targeting system of some kind. A Chinese J-20 stealth fighter is shown as a notional aerial threat. Clone Ranger could conceivably be fitted with a small radar and/or a dedicated infrared search and track system (IRST) for use in air-to-air engagements.
Not readily visible in the rendering, but said to be among Clone Ranger’s key features is a “game changing buddy refueling capability,” according to the Kratos spokesperson.
Overall, the Clone Ranger design is clearly optimized for internal space. The ‘pickle fork’ configuration offers what almost amounts to a pair of fuselages, with two nose sections to mount sensors and other systems. At the same time, the broad center body offers important room for fuel, which would be needed to support the buddy refueling capability, along with the weapons bays for munitions in each outboard fuselage section.
Clone Ranger’s expected mix of capabilities opens the door to some interesting potential concepts of operations, especially if the drones can be networked into a highly autonomous swarm. Clone Rangers could be configured to conduct counter-air and air-to-ground operations, as well as reconnaissance and surveillance missions. Loaded with different variants of the ADM-160, the drones could help suppress enemy air defenses or otherwise confuse them with false threat signatures. It could carry electronic warfare payloads internally, as well.
The Clone Ranger’s built-in buddy refueling capabilities would help in reaching areas further away from their launch points and/or increasing on-station time. Being able to use shorter runways would open up more options to push the drones closer to operating areas to begin with, while their ability to refuel each other would help reduce the need for already heavily in-demand tanker support. A general ability to conduct more independent and distributed operations would help reduce risk and create complications for opponents.
This is all particularly interesting to consider given how the U.S. Air Force has been talking in the past year or so about its still-evolving Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drone program. General Atomics and Anduril are currently developing designs as part of the first phase, or Increment 1, of the CCA program. Requirements are being finalized – if they haven’t been already – for a follow-on Increment 2, which Air Force officials have said could focus on cheaper and less exquisite designs.
“As you look at how we generate combat power and the number of sites we can use, there’s something to a shorter takeoff length, and there’s something to vertical takeoff,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Joseph Kunkel said back in May. “We [have] got to figure out what that takes, because generally, when you do a vertical takeoff aircraft, you decrease the payload, you decrease the range. And so there’s a balance that we need to strike here as we’re thinking about how we generate combat power, how survivable it is, but then what the requirements are on the aircraft in terms of payload and range? But we’re absolutely looking at that and what it takes.”
Kunkel, who is currently Director of Force Design, Integration, and Wargaming and Deputy Chief of Staff for Air Force Futures at the Air Force’s headquarters at the Pentagon, made his remarks during a virtual talk hosted by the Air & Space Forces Association’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
“We know that the adversary is going to try and target our bases,” Kunkel added at the time, in an obvious reference to China. “The ability to achieve air superiority in the future is going to be more complex, and there’s a couple things that we’re going to need. We’re going to need mass, and we’re going to need some type of affordable mass that can counter our adversaries where they are. And so CCAs help us out with achieving affordable mass.”
“As an air-to-air guy, you know that the easiest threat picture to counter is the ‘Hey, diddle, diddle up the middle,’” he continued. With “the ability to position CCAs and posture them in different places in a theater, you can increase the complexity of the picture that our adversaries see dramatically. And so that’s another point that we’ve found, is increasing dilemmas for the adversary, increasing the complexity of the picture that they’re going to see, increasing the complexity of what it takes for them to counter us.”
The Air Force has also previously talked about the potential for adding a mid-air refueling capability to at least some of its future CCAs. The service has intertwined concerns about growing threats to existing tanker fleets and its ability to provide adequate aerial refueling capacity, especially during any future high-end fight. It has been exploring novel options for expanding that capacity, including new boom-equipped buddy refueling stores that smaller aircraft, potentially even crewed combat jets, could carry.
The U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Navy have their own CCA efforts, which they are working on in close cooperation with the Air Force. The Marines’ current aviation plans are also directly influenced by the services’ broader realignment around new concepts of operations focused heavily on rapid and irregular deployments and redeployments to far-flung operating locations. The Navy, which, by its own admission, is following the lead of the Air Force and the Marines when it comes to CCAs, is heavily focused on future carrier-based operations. Clone Ranger could offer unique benefits in those contexts, as well.
Kratos has been prominently absent from the Air Force’s CCA program so far, but has made major inroads with the Marines with its XQ-58A Valkyrie drone, as you can read more about here. The Air Force is the only other known operator of XQ-58s, through Kratos is actively pursuing more sales of those drones. XQ-58 is just one of many drones in Kratos’ portfolio, which is known to include a number of classified or otherwise undisclosed designs.
How Clone Ranger development continues to proceed, and when Kratos might move to build a flying example, remains to be seen. If nothing else, it is a particularly interesting concept, the company’s experience with which could also influence other designs.
Update, 10:55 PM Eastern:
A presentation slide on Clone Ranger, seen in the social media post below seen below, looks to have first appeared online a few years ago. It offers additional views of the design that show it has twin vertical tails, as well as winglets, and a single engine. More information is also provided about the buddy refueling package, which is a two-part probe-and-drogue system that fits inside the payload bays. A broad spread of missiles, precision-guided bombs, and air-launched drones are also shown as potential payload options.
The slide is from Sierra Technical Services, Inc. (STS), which Kratos acquired in 2023.
A comparison has also been drawn to another drone concept with a very similar overall layout that Lockheed Martin developed during the 1990s called Saber Warrior. This design was larger than Clone Ranger and powered by a single afterburning turbofan engine. What lineage there may be from Clone Ranger back to Saber Warrior is unclear.
