Early last February, The War Zone published an exclusive story detailing what amounts to a "missing link" in Lockheed's flying-wing unmanned aircraft lineage, one that bridges the gap between the Skunk Works' abortive RQ-3 Darkstar from the 1990s and the RQ-170 Sentinel that appeared a decade later in Afghanistan. You can read all about what we know and what we don't about this previously highly classified experimental aircraft and why its existence is so important in our feature on the X-44A linked here. And now we are excited to announce that we have detailed images of the aircraft we described in our report to share with our readers.
Our original analysis and report seem to be spot on, with the aircraft having roughly a 30 foot wingspan, about half that of its RQ-170 successor. The designation and even the use of the Indigo-Delta-Kilo (I Don't Know) cryptic badge are as we previously reported, as it the fact that it uses a small Williams jet engine (Williams badge on the fuselage). The wings also appear removable and/or foldable, and the belly fairing seems to be able to be changed out to accept various payloads and gear designs. And its resemblance to the P175 Polecat demonstrator and the RQ-170 is striking.
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