Free Republic

One of the US Navy’s MQ-4C Triton high altitude long endurance (HALE) reconnaissance drones was spotted entering the South China Sea on Wednesday – the latest addition to an increasingly long list of US spy planes plying the waterway in recent months. The unmanned aerial vehicle was spotted entering the northern end of the South China Sea via the Bashi Channel on Wednesday, where it seemed to zero-in on some object of interest before departing the region. ​Sputnik reported in January on the stationing of the US Navy’s first two MQ-4C Tritons on Guam, at the far side of the...

Evidence Iran has offered to ‘prove’ that an American RQ-4 Global Hawk drone was in its airspace when it was shot down this week is completely fraudulent. In particular, a photo Iran has published supposedly showing the drone tumbling from the sky in flames to indicate where it was when it was targeted destroys any remaining credibility the Islamic republic had. The state-run Islamic Republican News Agency published a photo of what the outlet claimed was the RQ-4 tumbling from the sky...

The U.S. Air Force has decided to scrap its Northrop Grumman Corp high-altitude unmanned surveillance plane program and keep its Cold War-vintage U-2 spy planes flying into the 2020s, according to a government official and a defense analyst. Loren Thompson, chief operating officer of the Virginia-based Lexington Institute, said the Air Force decision was based on the cost of the RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned planes, and said the service would investigate using a marine version with different sensors that Northrop is developing for the Navy. The Navy is proceeding with its plans to buy 68 of that version of the...