The US military is making ever more use of unmanned fighters and intelligence
gathering aircraft. The great thing about this type of aircraft is that they can loiter over some far away battlefield for a long time, and if they are shot down, no lives are at risk. The Being Phantom Ray Stealth UAV made its first flight this week and is on its way to becoming the first stealth UAV in the arsenal. The Phantom Ray is the size of a fighter aircraft, and its maiden voyage took it to 7,500 feet and a speed of 178 knots.
“The first flight moves us farther into the next phase of unmanned aircraft,” said Craig Brown, Phantom Ray program manager for Boeing. “Autonomous, fighter-sized unmanned aircraft are real, and the UAS bar has been raised. Now I’m eager to see how high that bar will go.”Link
While interesting in itself, it's certainly not the first. the lockheed martin RQ-170 has been in service in afghanistan since 2007, and is thought to have even played part in the operation to kill Bin Laden.
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Interesting how far we have come with some basic German WW2 designs. Good thing the 3rd Reich did not have computers.
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