Australia’s move into autonomous air combat has entered a decisive phase, with its Ghost Bat drone scoring its first air-to-air kill, underscoring how the country is racing to counter China’s growing long-range strike reach from the South China Sea.
Multiple media outlets reported that during a trial this month at the Woomera Test Range, the drone launched a Raytheon AIM-120 advanced medium-range air-to-air missile (AMRAAM), destroying a Phoenix jet-powered aerial target while operating in a networked formation with a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) E-7A Wedgetail and an F/A-18F Super Hornet, which shared sensor and targeting data to cue the engagement.
Boeing said missile integration and testing were completed in under eight months, enabled by the drone’s modular architecture.
Images from the test show the AMRAAM mounted on an external pylon beneath the left intake, with the Ghost Bat currently lacking an internal weapons bay but expected to gain expanded payload options in future blocks.
Ghost Bat-launched AMRAAM. Photo: Commonwealth of Australia
Australian officials described the firing as proof that the Ghost Bat is a world-leading collaborative combat aircraft, with the government simultaneously announcing contracts for six Block 2 aircraft and development of a Block 3 prototype.
The milestone places Australia at the forefront of unmanned air-combat development
It also signals a shift from experimentation to fielding an operational combat-drone capability.
The drone’s debut comes as Australia confronts a shifting regional threat environment shaped by China’s expanding long-range strike reach.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported in July 2025 that China has deployed H-6K bombers to Woody Island in the Paracels, warning that these aircraft “can launch missiles within range of Australia” and may operate from multiple long South China Sea runways built for that purpose.
Possible targets in Australia include US military facilities such as Pine Gap, which serves as a space and signals intelligence-gathering center, and Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt, which serves as a communications hub for US warships and submarines in the Pacific.
Other targets include HMAS Stirling – Australia’s largest naval base and likely future home port of its planned nuclear submarines under the AUKUS agreement, and RAAF Base Tindal, which can host US bombers such as the B-52 and B-2, supplementing facilities such as Guam.
This emerging vulnerability helps explain the strategic emphasis placed on the Ghost Bat’s evolving mission profile. Malcolm Davis discusses in an article this month for The Strategist that the Ghost Bat, armed with AIM-120 missiles, can serve as a “missile truck,” operating ahead of manned fighters like F/A-18Fs and F-35As to take on risk while increasing combat power.
He mentions that the Ghost Bat, operating alongside surveillance platforms such as the E-7A Wedgetail, expands threat coverage, complicating adversary targeting and enhancing survivability, with its modular design supporting rapid upgrades. Davis says that Ghost Bats enable denial strategies – akin to a drone wall – defending air and maritime approaches while keeping human pilots in oversight roles, not direct combat.
Beyond air-to-air combat roles, Bradley Perrett notes for The Strategist that aircraft such as the Ghost Bat can perform a wide array of combat roles that range from support to direct strike. According to Perrett, the Ghost Bat or similar aircraft can conduct electromagnetic missions including jamming, spoofing and passive radar sweeps; act as a communications node; and deliver kinetic strikes against lightly defended surface targets.
Equipped with modular noses and internal bays, he says, the Ghost Bat or aircraft of its type may carry bombs like the GBU-53/B for air-to-ground strikes.
Furthermore, Marcus Helleyer and Andrew Nichols mention in a December 2022 report for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) that Ghost Bat can be a template for a “Goldilocks” long-range strike drone that can provide impactful projection without B-21-level costs.
Helleyer and Nichols envision a larger, twin-engine Ghost Bat with a combat radius of “several thousand kilometers,” carrying two to four standoff missiles or 12 to 16 small diameter bomb-class weapons across Australia’s near region.
Delving deeper into the capabilities of an extended-range Ghost Bat, The War Zone (TWZ) reported in September 2025 that Boeing showcased a conceptual design with aerial refueling receptacles that could transform its operational endurance.
TWZ notes that midair refueling would extend the Ghost Bat’s 3,700-kilometer range, enabling longer on-station persistence and greater flexibility across vast theaters like the Indo-Pacific. It says that the capability would allow drones to break off, refuel and rejoin missions without returning to base, enhancing their role as sensor nodes and defensive escorts for vulnerable tankers and surveillance aircraft.
Helleyer and Nichols add that the modular nature of Ghost Bat would let strike packages mix armed aircraft with electronic-warfare and communications-node variants. At the same time, they say individual Ghost Bats could act as motherships for smaller disposable drones or loitering munitions, generating massed, dispersed, attrition-tolerant strike power for deterrence by denial.
These expanding capabilities align with broader doctrinal shifts now shaping Australia’s future airpower posture. Australia’s 2025 Air Domain Concept positions loyal-wingman-type systems like Ghost Bat as central to airpower under a Strategy of Denial – an approach focused on preventing an adversary from achieving military objectives in Australia’s region by restricting its freedom of action.
The concept notes that such aircraft expand “air domain access points” by operating from dispersed, austere locations using “runway independent launch and recovery options,” reducing dependence on vulnerable bases.
It mentions that these drones provide cost-effective, risk-tolerant, and expendable mass that preserves pilots. It states that these aircraft, integrated into counter-air, strike and integrated air and missile defense (IAMD) roles, complicate targeting, increase adversary costs and enable agile maneuvering across northern Australia and the wider region.
In practice, this means the Ghost Bat is designed less to strike deep into hostile territory and more to blunt, disrupt and stretch any adversary attempting to project power toward Australia.
Still, technology alone cannot overcome the geographic and political constraints limiting Australia’s airpower reach. As Toshi Yoshibara and Jack Bianchi mention in a January 2025 Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) report, Australian airpower is constrained by three interlocking challenges.
According to Yoshibara and Bianchi, China’s outposts in the South China Sea are protected by dense, mutually supporting air and missile defenses that would heavily contest any approach. Furthermore, they state that the tyranny of distance imposes long flight times, refueling demands and sortie-generation limits.
Yoshibara and Bianchi add that strike operations would require securing overflight rights from neighboring states such as Indonesia, creating a significant diplomatic burden that could impede rapid action.
Australia’s Ghost Bat marks a significant leap in autonomous airpower. Still, its promise lies not in deep-strike fantasies but in building a dispersed, resilient denial force able to blunt and complicate China’s operations across the Indo-Pacific.
Yet even as the drone evolves into a frontline asset, Australia still faces hard limits imposed by distance, diplomacy, and China’s fortified island outposts – constraints that no amount of technology can fully erase.
