Category Archives: Military UAS

CIA’s Bird-Shaped Aquiline Drones Could Still Be Caged Up At Area 51

Documents declassified about the CIA’s Project Aquiline, which sought to develop a small, stealthy drone that resembled a bird in flight, ended up being stored at Area 51 after the project was cancelled. Like so many other aerospace projects that were kept from the public eye, the Aquiline drones could very well still be kept at the secretive Nevada base collecting dust in a storage facility or even buried in the dirt.   Continue reading

NAO Questions UK’s Protector UAV Value For Money

The UK National Audit Office (NAO)* issues regular ‘Value For Money’ Reports at the request of Parliament, and has just issued the latest ‘Improving the Performance of Major Equipment Contracts’ on  June 24,2021. It finds that the RAF’s Protector UAV (MQ-9B SkyGuardian) programme has seen the largest cost increase of any major UK defence acquisition across air, land and sea and suffered a delay of over two years. Continue reading

Northrop Grumman Gets $54M US Navy RQ-4A BAMS Contract

Navy RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle conducts tests over Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md.

Northrop Grumman Systems Corp., San Diego, California, is awarded a $53,773,633 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to provide continuing operator, maintenance, logistics and sustainment engineering support, to include training, supply chain and spares management for peculiar items, peculiar support equipment, and technical publications in support of the RQ-4A Global Hawk Broad Area Maritime Surveillance – Demonstrator (BAMS-D) aircraft being mission-capable for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions for the Navy. Continue reading