Ryan Firebee
1951 target drone family by Ryan Aeronautical
The Ryan Firebee is a series of target drones developed by the Ryan Aeronautical Company beginning in 1951. It was one of the first jet-propelled drones, and remains one of the most widely used target drones ever built.
Development
Ryan Firebee I
Q-2/KDA-1 Firebee
The Firebee I was the result of a 1948 U.S. Air Force request and contract to Ryan for a jet-powered gunnery target. The first flight of the XQ-2 Firebee prototype took place in early 1951. The drone featured swept flight surfaces and a circular nose inlet. The initial models had distinctive "arrowhead" shaped endplates on the tailplane. The Firebee could be air-launched from a specially modified launch aircraft (Douglas A-26 Invader was first to be used for this purpose), or ground-launched with a single RATO booster.
Following successful evaluation the target was ordered into production for the USAF as the Q-2A, powered by a Continental J69-T-19B turbojet engine with 1,060 pounds-force (4.7 kN) of thrust. The Air Force then obtained small numbers of a Q-2B with a more powerful engine for high-altitude performance.
The U.S. Navy bought the Firebee as the KDA-1 which was mostly similar to the Q-2A, differing mainly in its powerplant: a Fairchild J44-R-20B turbojet with 1,000 lbf (4.4 kN) thrust.
“Ryan Firebee” enters the record as 1951 target drone family by Ryan Aeronautical. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ryan, Firebee and target can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2906749. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1951 and 1948.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ryan Firebee” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.