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The US Air Force’s secret spy stealth drone appears to have appeared.A bat-winged drone fitting the description of the RQ-180 appeared high above the Air Force Base Edwards in California in daylight in early October. A long white fluffy trail remained in the sky.
According to a Forbes magazine report on Day 1, photographer Rob Kolinsky took at least one clear photo of this mysterious plane. He posted the photo to Instagram on Saturday and wrote: “This thing flew over my house a few weeks ago. I haven’t figured out what it is.”
And “Aviation Week” noted that the photos that appear on the Internet roughly match the characteristics of the RQ-180 drone. However, the US Air Force has never officially recognized the existence of the RQ-180. In 2013, “Aerospace Weekly” reported on this drone developed by Northrop Grumman. Six years later, he published an in-depth report that tracked the development of the RQ-180 and noted that there were at least seven RQ-180s at the time.
Previous reports noted that there is increasing evidence that the RQ-180 has fully exercised its combat power, can penetrate enemy areas and undertake intelligence search, reconnaissance and surveillance tasks. Some experts say that the RQ-180 resembles the B-2 bomber of the American defense contractor Northrop Grumman (Northrop Grumman). However, its size is smaller than that of the manned B-2, and it also covers the new and improved B-21 bomber design.
The RQ-180 first flew in 2010, eventually delivering to the US Air Force a new long-range reconnaissance aircraft capable of penetrating enemy areas. In the late 1990s, prior to the RQ-180, the United States was able to have similar reconnaissance capabilities through the SR-71 “Blackbird” reconnaissance aircraft flying at Mach 3.
Additionally, the United States Air Force is said to have once flown the RQ-180 over Groom Lake at the top-secret “Area 51” airbase in Nevada. In early 2020, this drone with a wingspan of about 170 feet (nearly 52 meters) was obviously mature enough to reassure the Air Force and began hacking into the RQ-4 “Global Hawk” unmanned non-stealth reconnaissance fleet. . To the point.
When the US Air Force proposed the 2021 budget, it asked Congress to allow the removal of a large number of military aircraft. Perhaps the most surprising thing about them is that they plan to eliminate 24 of the 34 RQ-4s, leaving only the latest version of the 40 10 frame batches. The US military said this would save US $ 21 billion (about Taiwanese $ 600 billion) over five years, but this did not seem to convince the suspect members of Congress.
The Air Force declined to explain how to fill the gap in the substantial removal of RQ-4, only wanting to reveal that if Congress acquiesced, they had something to replace. In February this year, David Goldfein, who was the US Air Force Chief of Staff, said that most of the planes they replaced were unclassified military aircraft, but many of the aircraft they will buy remain classified. .
(Zhongshi News Network)
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