Kratos CEO Puts Valkyrie at $6M–$8M Per Unit, Positioning CCA Bid Against Higher-Cost Rivals
If Kratos sustains the $6M–$8M price point at scale, competing CCA designs from Boeing and General Atomics face a cost-justification problem with any customer whose requirement does not demand capabilities that Valkyrie lacks.
The undisclosed foreign customer that took Q3 2025 deliveries is likely the same market the U740/Airbus partnership targets in Europe — if Germany's Luftwaffe awards the U740 contract, that order adds to the production run and further pressures per-unit cost downward, tightening the window for European domestic alternatives to compete on price.
Kratos' $6M–$8M 'white tail' price point is the company's public anchor in the CCA competition, and DeMarco's framing on the earnings call treats affordability as the decisive variable for the next round of US and allied procurement decisions.
The Marine MQ-58B acquisition runs through Northrop Grumman as prime, meaning Kratos' margin and production tempo are partly hostage to a larger integrator's program management. Two undisclosed customers — at least one foreign, with deliveries already made in Q3 2025 — suggest Kratos is building a production baseline that could lower per-unit costs before the Air Force's CCA competition reaches a decision.
What is the fully missionized per-unit price for the MQ-58B the Marines are buying, and does Northrop Grumman's prime markup push that figure above the $8M ceiling DeMarco cited for white-tail configurations?
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