This just in – Iran’s reverse-engineered RQ-170 drone flies

Iran has released video of what it claims to be a reverse-engineered version of a captured RQ-170 Sentinel unmanned aircraft. The jet — pretty loud jet at that — is seen flying overhead multiple times. The two-minute thirteen second video then shows numerous air-to-air views of the aircraft, apparently from a helicopter chase plane. The…

The F-117 is still flying. But why?

File this one under oddities and curiosities…. The F-117 “Nighthawk” was officially retired in 2008, and in theory the fleet of stealthy fighters has mothballed up. But rumors have persisted in recent years about one or more Nighthawks still flying out in the desert. Those rumors were proven this month when posted photos appeared to show an F-117 taking…

Air Force Mystery Spaceplane Comes Home

The X-37B, the Air Force’s top secret spacefaring drone, has come home. The Air Force announced today that the unmanned space system had landed safely at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Although it had been expected to land sometime this week, just when it would occur was a bit of a mystery — fitting, because the…

US Navy’s Triton UAV: 3,300 Miles Cross-Country – Unmanned

US Navy’s new Triton UAV makes first cross-country flight The US Navy’s new MQ-4C Triton unmanned aircraft completed its first cross-country flight on the morning of Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2014, taking about 11 hours to fly 3,290 nautical miles from Palmdale, California, to Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland. Flying in restricted conditions through US…

VIDEO: Inside Raytheon’s SM-3, SM-6 Missile Interceptor Factory

HUNTSVILLE, ALA — In a one-story gray building with a bright red pin striping about two-thirds of the way up its side, a nondescript 70,000 square-foot factory sits behind three 21-foot tall missiles. Tucked inside the fences of the Redstone Arsenal — a sprawling Army base just minutes from downtown Huntsville — is where defense giant Raytheon assembles ship-launched missile interceptors,…

Marine Corps Pioneering Unmanned Helo Headed for Storage

  After almost three years in Afghanistan, 2,150 flight hours and more than 1,950 sorties, the Marine Corps’ two K-MAX unmanned helicopters are being put out to pasture in central New York State. The unmanned rotary wing aircraft—which hauled a total of 4.5 million lbs. of cargo across southern Afghanistan since December 2011 for Marines…

DoD OCO Requests $700M for Bombs and Ammo

As the congressional oversight panels continue their review of the Pentagon’s $58.6 billion 2015 Overseas Contingency Operations budget request, much of the focus has been on the high-profile items, such as a $4 billion request for a new counterterrorism fund and $1 billion to boost US military presence in Europe. But the request includes $53 billion…

Army’s Aerostat Ready for Overseas Deployment

If a US combatant commander stationed somewhere around the globe feels that the one thing the command is missing is the ability to detect missiles, airplanes and drones hundreds of miles away, the US Army has just what they’re looking for. Almost a decade after it first began development—and just two years after a 2012…