US Air Force Chief Hints at Existence Of Clandestine Spy Aircraft
Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall has hinted at the existence of a new intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) platform, something that has long been a topic of discussion around the future of U.S. Air Force capabilities. Frequently, such a platform has been understood as a very stealthy, long-range, high-altitude surveillance drone commonly , although there are other possibilities, too, and even an RQ-180 would only be one facet in a larger constellation of next-generation ISR systems.
A notional rendering of what the high- and long-flying RQ-180 stealth drone might look like appears at the top of this story. While it has been widely posited that the RQ-180, or at least progenitors of it, have and may be operational at least in small numbers and to a limited degree, there is no guarantee that such a system continues to receive the Air Force’s backing. This is especially true as space-based distributed constellations are quickly gaining favor throughout the DoD. These are highly resilient to attacks and offer persistent surveillance of target areas that was unheard of in past low earth orbit-based sensing systems. In fact, one program for this kind of capability is deep in development now and it a notional RQ-180 would likely be tasked with doing. In other words, just because an RQ-180-like aircraft exists, it doesn’t mean its future is guaranteed.
Speaking at a roundtable event on Sunday, just before the opening of the Farnborough International Airshow in England, Kendall was responding to a question from Chris Pocock, a long-time aviation journalist, author, and expert on the . Pocock was asking the Air Force chief about plans for the airborne ISR layer and are withdrawn — moves that will follow the previous retirement of the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System ().
“What is that airborne layer? You’re retiring JSTARS, you’re retiring the U-2, you’re retiring Global Hawk,” Pocock said.
Kendall’s response was intriguing, describing that future ISR layer as “a combination of things.”
“I mentioned at the beginning of the conversation,” Kendall continued. “That’s part of that layer. So, we’re making progress on that, as I said before. We’re retaining some of the [] AWACSs, for example, to help transition smoothly over to a combination of … space-based capabilities and new systems like the E-7. So there’s a mix of systems in there, some of which there’s not much I can say about them.”
At least one of the systems that the Secretary of the Air Force cannot say much about is likely the aforementioned ‘RQ-180.’
