Waiting for wings: US likely working to get secret spycraft RQ-180 in action

A recent statement from the United States Air Force (Air Force) Secretary seemingly confirmed rumors about the existence of the RQ-180 drone. Long mused over, the RQ-180 is believed to be an in-development stealthy, long-range, high-altitude surveillance drone.

Supposedly designed as an intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) platform, this new drone is likely a key element of the future of the Air Force’s capabilities. This is especially the case given the tranch of recent retirements of veteran ISR aircraft like the U2.

The news comes from a roundtable event on Sunday with Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall. The event occurred 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 U-2 Dragon Lady spy plane. Pocock asked the Air Force chief about plans for the airborne ISR layer once the U-2 Dragon Lady and RQ-4 Global Hawk are retired, following the previous retirement of the E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS).

RQ-180: The plot thickens

“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 E-7 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. [For example,] we’re retaining some of the [E-3 Sentry] AWACSs to help transition smoothly 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,” he added.

This is interesting as it hints that the Air Force isn’t considering a one-size-fits-all approach to replacing the U-2, RQ-4, and E-8C. The current plan is for the Air Force to retire the last of the U-2s in 2026 and the RQ-4 by 2027.

However, members of Congress are working to prevent the service from fully retiring its fleet of these high-flying Cold War-era jets. That being said, the ultimate goal appears to be to concentrate on distributed concepts, both on Earth and in space.

Is the drone already flying?

Such a concept will likely also utilize advanced computing and networking architectures to collect massive amounts of data and prioritize the relevant parts of that data. This will enable us to exploit the data more effectively in near real-time.

While little is really known about it, there have been rumors of the RQ-180s (or at least its predecessors) for years. However, this is the first “official” statement from the Air Force about its potential existence.

One was believed to have been spotted flying back in 2020 . At the time, a picture surfaced of the drone in flight, taken inside the Military Operating Area near Edwards AFB, California.

The image was snapped during daylight hours and surfaced almost a year after the Air Force made its fleet of RQ-180 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft operational. The aircraft reportedly flew in a racetrack pattern at an estimated altitude of 20,000 feet (6,096 meters).

However, it is still uncertain whether the RQ-180 will become one of Kendall’s hinted-at systems.