US SECRET WARS IN PAKISTAN, YEMEN AND SOMALIA

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At least, that’s the U.S. military’s eventual goal for Phantom Eye
— a ginormous, hydrogen-powered uber-drone. The vehicle, manufactured
by Boeing and designed as a huge surveillance tool, performed its first
test flight at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center last week, the company announced on Monday.
But Phantom Eye, which boasts a mammoth 150-foot wingspan, isn’t
soaring to great heights just quite yet. During last week’s test, shown
in the video above, the mega-drone reached an altitude of 4,080 feet and
stayed airborne for a total of 28 minutes, reaching a cruising speed of
62 knots.
That’s a far cry from what the military wants the drone to eventually
do. Phantom Eye is supposed to reach a maximum altitude of 65,000 feet
and stay aloft for up to 96 hours — that is, four whole days — at speeds
reaching 150 knots. That would make the flying spy the biggest and
longest-loitering drone the United States has. (Don’t worry, it’s not
armed.)
The Phantom Eye’s size means the drone can be loaded up with a
whopping 450 lbs. of sensors and cameras — which will come in handy for
toting the military’s forthcoming spy gear, like Gorgon Stare, designed to spy on “city-size” areas, or the Army’s ARGUS sensor,
which collects the equivalent of 79.8 years of video footage each day.
Combine that capacity with a lengthy loiter time, and you’ve got a
high-flying spy system that can peek on entire cities for days at a
time.



Phantom Eye’s flight debut was a small step forward for the ambitious
drone, which Boeing first introduced in 2010. But the test wasn’t
flawless — the giant spy machine sustained a broken landing gear upon
touchdown. This isn’t the first time the mega-drone has encountered
technical difficulty. Although Boeing initially planned to test-fly the
Phantom Eye in 2011, that date was pushed back because of unspecified
tech concerns.
Not to mention that, in 2010, the company aspired to an initial test flight of 8 hours. Last year, company officials told Danger Room
that the Phantom Eye’s first flight had been scaled back to “maybe two
to four hours.” Obviously, those goals are both far cries what Phantom
Eye ended up accomplishing: 28 minutes in the air.
Of course, that’s what testing is for, and in any event, Phantom Eye
is years away from actual military use. Still, it’s a little unclear
what value a gigantic drone has, given that Congress is pushing the Air Force
to deploy giant spy-blimps, which can lug even more spy gear while
loitering for longer periods of time. But the blimps are technically
complex and expensive, and the Air Force is getting cold feet about them.
Whether blimp-crazed politicians like it or not, Phantom Eye might
turn out to be the military’s long-distance surveillance champ.