For most of their operational life, large uncrewed aircraft such as General Atomics' MQ-9 line have been prized for what they can see rather than what they can carry. That balance is shifting. At Farnborough 2026, European missile house MBDA confirmed that its SPEAR 3 miniature cruise missile is entering low-rate initial production (LRIP) this year, and that a newly signed agreement with General Atomics will put the networked precision weapon onto both the MQ-9B uncrewed aircraft and the company's Gambit 6 collaborative combat aircraft (CCA).
Taken together, those two developments point toward a near-term future in which an ISR-and-strike drone doesn't just loiter over a target and drop a single bomb, but salvos multiple precision munitions against mobile, defended, and time-sensitive targets — the kind of mission set that has traditionally belonged to crewed strike jets.
What SPEAR Actually Is
SPEAR — the name stands for Selective Precision Effects At Range — is not a glide bomb or a conventional air-to-ground missile. According to Janes reporting from Farnborough 2026, SPEAR 3 is a turbojet-powered mini cruise missile with a range of roughly 100km. That powered flight profile is the key differentiator: rather than relying on the launch aircraft's altitude and speed to reach a target, SPEAR flies itself there, which lets a launch platform stand well back from air defenses and still reach deep.
The guidance package is built for exactly that stand-off, contested-airspace role. Janes describes a midcourse phase using GPS and inertial navigation paired with a two-way datalink, terminating in a dual-mode seeker that combines millimetre-wave radar with semi-active laser guidance. The two-way datalink is worth dwelling on: it means the missile is not simply fired and forgotten. Targeting data can be updated in flight, targets can be reassigned, and multiple missiles can, in principle, be coordinated against a defended target complex — suppressing air defenses, striking mobile launchers, or servicing a moving convoy.
The millimetre-wave radar seeker gives SPEAR the ability to find and hit targets on its own terms, including in poor weather, while the semi-active laser mode supports precise engagement of designated or moving targets. That combination is what makes the weapon relevant against the harder end of the target set — the mobile and the defended — rather than only the fixed and the cooperative.
From Farnborough Display to Production
The headline from Farnborough is that SPEAR is moving out of development. MBDA said low-rate initial production begins in 2026, with UK certification on the F-35B targeted for the end of the year. The missile has already been through carriage trials in that context: Janes reports that a May 2026 US Marine Corps F-35B trial, flown with RAF and Royal Navy aircrew, carried four SPEAR missiles internally.
Internal carriage matters for a stealth aircraft like the F-35B, because it preserves the jet's low-observable profile — and it hints at the density SPEAR is designed for. Four missiles in an internal bay is a meaningfully different weapons load than a pair of large air-to-surface missiles. MBDA executive John McCullagh was quoted by Janes on the program's progress at the show.
The General Atomics Agreement
The piece that makes this an uncrewed-systems story rather than a fast-jet story is a memorandum of understanding signed on 20 July 2026 between MBDA and General Atomics. Under that MoU — reported by Janes, the UK Defence Journal, and Breaking Defense from the Farnborough 2026 display — the two companies committed to integrating SPEAR onto the MQ-9B remotely piloted aircraft and onto the Gambit 6 collaborative combat aircraft.
The MQ-9B is General Atomics' latest and most capable member of the Reaper/Protector family — the same airframe that, in Royal Air Force service, is fielded as Protector. Bolting a networked, 100km-range powered cruise missile onto that platform changes its character. A Protector-class RPAS carrying multiple SPEARs is no longer just a persistent surveillance asset that can occasionally strike; it becomes a magazine that can loiter for hours and then deliver a coordinated, multi-missile attack against defended targets from stand-off range.
Gambit 6 is a different animal again. The Gambit family is General Atomics' collaborative combat aircraft line — uncrewed jets designed to fly alongside crewed fighters and act as force multipliers. Arming a CCA with SPEAR points toward a concept in which comparatively lower-cost, attritable uncrewed aircraft carry the precision strike load, extending the reach of a crewed formation without putting a pilot forward into the threat envelope.
The Cost Backdrop
The Farnborough conversation around these platforms was not only about capability — it was also about price. Breaking Defense reported that General Atomics-ASI's chief executive threw cold water on the cost target being floated for a new class of drone, against the backdrop of the company's own CCA effort. That effort, the FQ-42A, is reportedly in a build phase of around 30 aircraft, scaling toward a production tempo of roughly six per month, and sits within the Pentagon's broader unmanned-aircraft push measured against the roughly $30 million price of an MQ-9 Reaper.
Those numbers frame the strategic bet behind weaponising drones and CCAs: if the aircraft can be produced in quantity at a controlled cost, and each can carry several precision weapons like SPEAR, the resulting mass of networked strike capacity becomes hard for an adversary to counter economically. The tension the GA executive flagged — between ambitious cost targets and the real price of building capable uncrewed aircraft — is exactly the debate that will determine how quickly this vision scales.
Why It Matters
Weaponising Protector-class RPAS and collaborative combat aircraft with a networked, powered, stand-off missile is a genuine step up from the status quo of surveillance drones lobbing individual munitions. SPEAR's 100km range lets the launch aircraft stay outside short- and medium-range air defenses. Its two-way datalink and dual-mode seeker let multiple missiles coordinate against mobile and defended targets rather than only fixed, cooperative ones. And internal carriage of four rounds on the F-35B trial signals the kind of magazine depth that turns a single platform into a multi-shot shooter.
Put that weapon on an MQ-9B that can loiter for many hours, or on an attritable Gambit CCA flying ahead of crewed fighters, and the calculus of who can hold what at risk starts to change. The 20 July MoU is still a memorandum, not a fielded capability, and the cost questions raised at Farnborough are real. But with SPEAR entering low-rate production this year and F-35B certification targeted for end-2026, the underlying missile is maturing on a concrete timeline — which is what makes the drone-integration commitment more than a show-floor talking point.
