Imagine an aircraft that can fly more three times faster than a shinkansen bullet train. Imagine an aircraft with the ability to avoid even the most sophisticated tracking devices in America. On May 2, 2011, Barack Obama used an unmanned aerial vehicle known as the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 was used to infiltrate a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan and send a live feed video into the White House. That very night, a team of Navy SEALs were sent to the compound to assassinate its leader, Osama bin Laden.
Without this amazing piece of machinery, we may never had been able to execute the man who was responsible for the tragedy of 9/11, and now, our military has made two more UAV even more powerful. The Taranis and the RQ-180 are the latest additions to the arsenal of UAVs in the American airforce, and they were built for stealth.
The Taranis is the smaller of the two, with a length of just over forty feet and wingspan of only thirty-three feet, this UAV is great for stealth and speed. It can fly at speeds over seven-hundred miles per hour, and it’s maximum flight time is six hours, which is a long time when you take into account its speed. The biggest drawback of this craft is its lack of any vertical stabilizer, which, given its size, often causes it to spin out of control and/or crash.
The RQ-180 may be slower than the Taranis, reaching speeds just over six-hundred miles per hour, but it makes up for it in every other aspect. For one, its wingspan reaches one-hundred and thirty feet and it’s fifty feet long. On top of all of that, this is the stealthiest craft in our arsenal, an it can fly for more than seven hours before needing to be recharged. The RQ-180 is slightly less maneuverable than Taranis, given its size. However, it is very light, and acts as a gliding, using the wind beneath it to give it air control and give it more altitude, helping it to fly past sixty-thousand feet into the air.
With technologies such as this being developed, we could, potentially, see an army of UAVs replacing the need for an air force. This would mean the army would need less soldiers, and if the aircraft flew under radar, they wouldn’t even be seen by the enemy until it was too late.
