The decision marks the service’s most significant step yet as it aims to create a series of drones using autonomous software to fly alongside piloted jets.
The Navy is trying to make unmanned systems a more normal part of daily operations, even as experimentation continues to refine concepts of operations.
The Navy's top civilian called the establishment of a robotics warfare rating "a significant milestone" in the service's journey toward a hybrid fleet.
Laser and microwave weapons are considered critical elements of layered defense, or having different countermeasures ready to thwart different threats.
Footage showed an Altius-700M shooting out of a ground-based launcher, cutting through the air and then crashing into a mock surface-to-air missile system.