Boeing is proposing to spread MQ-28 Ghost Bat production across a web of smaller enterprises in multiple countries rather than concentrate it in one large plant, according to program head Glen Ferguson, whose press briefing remarks were reported by Breaking Defense and relayed by Defense Express. The reasons he cited read like a diagnosis of the moment: Europe’s shift toward defense independence and a global supply chain nobody trusts to stay intact. I have tracked this aircraft through every milestone at DroneXL, and this is the first one that is about geography instead of flight.
The Assembly Line Becomes The Product
Ferguson’s pitch inverts the traditional defense export model. Instead of building aircraft in one factory and shipping them to customers, Boeing would localize Ghost Bat production according to each operator’s requirements, letting user countries keep control over their own fleet’s manufacturing.
The argument for it is resilience. Distributed production, in Ferguson’s framing, ensures the aircraft can keep being built and operated even when global supply chains become unavailable, a scenario that stopped being hypothetical for defense planners several crises ago.
It also answers a political mood. The European Union has made prioritizing local defense-industrial products over American purchases an explicit goal, which puts a made-in-America drone at a structural disadvantage no spec sheet can fix. Boeing’s workaround is blunt: if Europe wants European production, sell Europe the production.
Germany Gets Named, With Partners Attached
The proposal is not abstract. For Germany, Boeing has pointed to partnerships with Hensoldt, Rohde & Schwarz and Rheinmetall to build out an industrial base that would serve the Bundeswehr, putting three heavyweights of German defense electronics and manufacturing behind a localized Ghost Bat line.
Weapons integration would follow the same philosophy. The MQ-28 has already tested the AIM-120 air-to-air missile, and Boeing has proposed integrating European weapons for European operators, so a German Ghost Bat would not just be assembled locally. It would shoot locally too.
That flexibility is the aircraft doing what it was designed for. Boeing’s Phantom Works built the MQ-28 as a modular collaborative combat aircraft, meant to fly alongside crewed fighters like the F-35 while handling surveillance, electronic warfare and strike tasks depending on the nose section bolted on that day.
Australia Keeps The Program’s Proof Of Life
While the European pitch develops, the program’s substance still lives in Australia. DroneXL covered the Ghost Bat reaching battle-ready status in September, and Australia followed with a 1.4 billion Australian dollar order for six operational aircraft in December after a successful missile test.
The production reality backs the sales talk. Block 2 aircraft are in production for the Royal Australian Air Force’s first operational squadron, building on eight Block 1 vehicles that had logged more than 100 hours of flight testing. Boeing recently presented the Block 3 version, keeping the development cycle moving while the export strategy takes shape.
That Australian foundation is what Boeing is actually selling to Europe: not a promise, but a flying, missile-tested, government-ordered program looking for its next customers, with the factory footprint as a negotiating chip.
Boeing has floated the aircraft for American service too, saying publicly that the MQ-28 could be a fit for the US Air Force as the collaborative combat aircraft concept matures. That would put the Ghost Bat in conversation with a program of record the Air Force has so far filled with other vendors’ designs, and it would make Australia’s operational experience the resume.
The wingman economics drive all of it. A collaborative combat aircraft exists to be the affordable, riskable half of a fighter formation, the airframe a commander can push into contested airspace without a pilot aboard or a nine-figure loss attached. An aircraft built around being expendable-adjacent needs a production system that can replace losses quickly, which is exactly the argument Ferguson is making with distribution.
DroneXL’s Take
Boeing just conceded that the giant defense plant, the crown jewel of every industrial announcement, is now a liability with a roof. Spreading Ghost Bat production across several countries is not generosity toward allies. It is an admission that one big factory is one strike, one embargo, or one election away from silence.
I have tracked this aircraft from battle-ready in September to Australia’s order for six in December, and the interesting shift is that the aircraft stopped being the story. The sales strategy is the story, and the strategy is pure geopolitics: Europe wants industrial independence, so Boeing is selling the assembly line along with the airplane. That is a very different company posture than shipping finished jets from St. Louis and calling it partnership.
Put it next to Anduril, which is betting the opposite direction with massive concentrated factory scale in one American location, and you get two defense giants making opposite wagers on the same fear. One believes size survives disruption. The other believes dispersion does. Both cannot be entirely right.
The question neither company has answered in public, and the one I would ask Ferguson first: distributed production means distributed intellectual property. Six countries building one stealth drone is a supply chain with six front doors, and nobody has explained who holds the keys when an alliance gets complicated. Watch whether Germany’s named partners turn into signed agreements, because that paperwork, not the briefing slides, will show whether Boeing means it.
