AVWeek F-22 technology flown on RQ 170

Avweek reports By Bill Sweetman, David Fulghum Washington, Washington The first clear pictures of the center-line reconnaissance bay on Lockheed Martin’s RQ-170 Sentinel show that the small unmanned aircraft was carrying sensor balls mounted in an internal compartment with specially treated transparent panels—developed for the F-22—when one of them crashed in Iran on Dec. 4. The new pictures were taken at Kandahar airport in Afghanistan on Sept. 30. The images show that a wheels-up landing would have inflicted massive damage to the bay and sensor package.. That package is “similar to some of the podded electro-optical/infra-red [EO/IR]systems” used by other non-stealthy aircraft and unmanned aerial systems, says a veteran black-world engineer with insight into U.S. UAS programs. The accident was caused by a “lost [data] link, followed by, or simultaneous with, another malfunction,” says a second official involved with the program. Putting the loss into perspective, “We’ve lost over 50 MQ-1s [Predators] and 9s [Reapers], so this should not be a surprise.” The U.S. Air Force squadron that flew Sentinels was activated in 2005 and the stealthy, unmanned aircraft was first photographed at Kandahar in 2007. Early RQ-170 operations were conducted from both Afghanistan—with CIA involvement—and South Korea. The RQ-170s […]
AVWeek F-22 technology flown on RQ 170