The American Stealth Drone that May or May Not Exist (The RQ-180)

your favorite shiny headed YouTuber here and do I have some exciting to share with you you know being bald has a Specs you don't have to buy shampoo never have to worry about a bad hair day but let's face it losing your hair can be a bit of a confidence Crusher over 10 years to get over it but you never have to get over it because today's video is sponsored by keeps keeps is not another hair loss brand it's an online subscription service that helps you keep your hair yes it's like having a personal hair gear who delivered right to your door keeps office clinically proven treatments to combat hair loss and the best part it's absolutely affordable we're talking about half the cost of those pricey Pharmacy products here I mean who doesn't love saving some cash and also their hair and here's the thing keeps doesn't just send you products and leave you hanging no they have a team of Expert Medical providers who are there for you 24 7. that's right unlimited access to a dedicated medical provider for a whole year it's VIP treatment right there but that's not all keeps also knows that it's not just about preventing hair loss it's about taking care of the hair you have too and that's why they've got an all all-natural award-winning thickening shampoo and conditioner is like a spa treatment for your scalp keeps doesn't just give you treatments they provide a complete routine that suits your hair goals so whether you want to prevent hair loss stimulate hair growth or just keep your locks looking lashes Keepers got your hair needs covered delivered straight to your door hair loss stops with keeps to get a special offer simply go to keeps.com Mega projects or click the link below that's keps.com Mega projects what are you waiting for link below thanks to keeps for sponsoring now back to today's video the United States Air Force is entering a new era it's Cutting Edge F-22 Raptor still probably the most advanced fighter aircraft in the skies a full 25 years after it first flew is about to be joined by aircraft that can lay similar claim to being the very best at what they do America's newest stealth bomber the B-21 Raider is thought to be making its first flight this year and the Prototype of the highly secretive Next Generation air dominance aircraft the ngad has already made test flights but what is known about these platforms we could probably fit onto a single sheet of paper what we don't know could fill a book but there's at least one Air Force project that's even more secretive than the others even more closely guarded despite the very real possibility that the aircraft involved is already performing missions All Around the World in fact it's so secret that the USAF doesn't even publicly acknowledge its existence and what little we think we know about it has been the result of either detective work or the occasional cheeky nod from the U.S military implying but never verifying that their aircraft might exist its name as far as we know is the rq-180 the High Altitude long endurance reconnaissance aircraft that could reshape the global Battlefield as we know it [Music] thank you now before we say another word about the maybe cooled rq180 we have to give a bit of a blanket disclaimer for this entire episode nothing and we mean absolutely nothing about this program is confirmed and even the most educated guesses are probably going to get some things wrong now of course we hope that in the future we'll be able to release a follow-up video where we can go into the RQ 180 or whatever it's called in all its official glory and perhaps even roast the bits of this video that didn't end up playing out like we thought so look although we've made our best efforts to only include credible speculation here don't just take this video with a grain of salt crack open the whole salt shaker so let's start with the basics the RQ designation signifies an unmanned aerial vehicle a drone which corresponds to the letter Q whereas the r signals that it is a reconnaissance aircraft the number 180 puts it just behind the rq-170 aircraft known as The Sentinel which has been deployed for about about a decade and a half despite only extremely rare sightings and official photographs the RQ 180 isn't known to have a name like the Sentinel yet though it's occasionally been tied to the nickname of white bat that's the name of the white bat in Jim Carrey's eight Adventure series of movies just in case he didn't know although there's never been up close pictures of the rq180 released for the public it's thought to have been sighted at least three times in the skies twice over the Southwest United States and once over the Philippines and while we'll discuss the relevance of those particular sightings later on today we're first gonna focus on what the sightings tell us about the aircraft design if the aircraft cited is indeed the RQ 180 then it features a flying wing design similar to the B2 Spirit bomber a highly efficient design to reduce drag fly long distances and stay stealthy unlike the spirit the rq180 features a clearly defined pointed Tail as well as long wings that square off at the end and don't taper the tips of the nose and tail appear to be sharp and pointed not rounded off on the wings sweep back sharp layer so-called cranked kite design that signals an aircraft that's meant to move fast when it needs to it's also got an unusually light color unlike the midnight black outer layer of the spirit bomber the aircraft twin contrails the linear clouds that form behind an aircraft when they travel at high altitude suggest two powerful engines placed close together and probably buried inside the fuselage almost entirely it's been cited that altitudes thought to be as high as 70 000 feet similar to The Observer ceiling of the U2 spy plane and although any sources claiming to have a precise size of the thing aren't very forthcoming with how they got to their estimations we know that it's pretty big based on the size of the hangers that are believed to house rq180s at Beale Air Force Base in Northern California the drones are thought to have a wingspan somewhere around 170 feet although it's important to note that Beale might not be the home base for the RQ 180 at all like we say speculation hopefully credible so what does all of this information mean well it would make the rq-180 a likely spiritual successor to the U2 or the SR-71 Blackbird an aircraft that can travel at altitudes as high as those planes if not conceivably higher with the impressive range of the U2 and and the ability to operate at speeds that while probably not as insane as the Blackbird would at least make it harder to intercept or shoot down at that a flying wing design that's been used in several pieces of stealth technology plus the fact that with no pilot or life support systems it can be a much lighter and thinner aircraft the sheer size of it would suggest the Air Force is trying to pack tons of Technology inside the fuselage while keeping its sleek and aerodynamic taken together all of these factors point to a high stealth spy drone that would Eclipse anything the us or any other country has in its hands right now the rq180 is believed to be developed by Northrop Grumman the company responsible for aircraft like the B2 Spirit the EQ Hawkeye the rq4 global hawk given Northrop grumman's ample past experience creating drones as well as flying wing and stealth aircraft they would have been the clear correct choice to develop a design that integrates all three in fact the global hawk design is probably the best analog to take a guess at the rq-180s basic abilities were the service range of 14 200 miles and the ability to fly for at least 34 hours continuously with a far more efficient design it's entirely likely that the rq-180 would blow those figures out of the water but that's still a really impressive Baseline to surpass the program's believed to have started in 2006 at the same time the Air Force canceled a separate Northrop Grumman project the so-called ucab or unmanned aerial combat vehicle in order to invest their time in a high altitude long endurance low radar observable drone foreign so far is the sort of things that we can reasonably extrapolate just by using the extremely basic information that's available about the plane itself but by examining the new capabilities and Technologies of the US military more generally and focusing on how the Air Force handles questions about the program there's a lot more that we can glean about what the rq80 might be first let's start with the United States Air Force itself the usaf's so-called ISR capabilities that is intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance have historically been some of its biggest points of Pride it claims to have the best ISR force on Earth however the manned unmanned aircraft it uses for us are either aging unstealthy designs like the U2 or the E3 Sentry or drones like the Predator Reaper and Global Hawk all of these aircrafts do a good job Gathering Intelligence on targets that can't shoot them down but none are prepared to operate in environments like the SR-71 Blackbird which could penetrate airspace that was heavily guarded and defend that would be a pretty glaring Hole In The Air Force's ISR capabilities and they've issued calls since the early 2010s to fill that Gap but there's never been a public announcement to even indicate that a successor craft the Blackbird has been chosen it's long been suspected that the Air Force has built a replacement using its confidential Black budget but an especially cheeky indicator that the replacement is the rq-180 comes from the symbol of the 74th reconnaissance Squadron which was designated in 2009. if you remember that the rq180 has been colloquially referred to as the white bat then it seems like a bit of an odd coincidence that a newly formed Air Force Recon group's badge would also depict a white bat especially oh and it's based in the same area where the rq-180 has been spotted multiple times therefore the 74 freakon is believed to be the Squadron currently training with the rq-180 but if the rq-180 really does fill the role of the SR-71 and is built to be able to be operated in airspace where enemy Nations will be trying to shoot it down that opens a whole realm of possibilities on what it might be capable of experts have suggested that the aircraft might have an actual service ceiling comparable to the SR-71 between 85 and 100 000 feet and would be at least supersonic with better radar cross-section reduction features than the F-22 or F-35 compared to its actual size it may be capable of conducting electronic warfare attacks and could potentially have its own defensive countermeasures to deal with enemy interceptors and much like the U2 and the SR-71 it may also be flying in service to the CIA as well as the Air Force we also know that the US is developing technology for sixth generation fighter aircraft with a specific focus on aircraft that can either operate in tandem with drones or as wingmen or operate in an integrated combat blade in which for example a reconnaissance drone could perform Battlefield OverWatch and Central real-time data to fighter aircraft in order to direct Pilots or other drones through a battle it's reasonable to assume that the RQ 180 is probably being built with these capabilities in mind or at least with the ability to add on that supplemental technology when it becomes available and the other important thing that we can has to guess at is the price tag now we felt reasonably comfortable not bothering to ring up the Air Force and ask them what their black project budget is before we wrote the script for this video after all it doesn't seem particularly likely that we'd get a straight answer but we do know the approximate cost of the upcoming Northrop Grumman B21 bomber the Raider which is believed to be pretty darn similar to the rq-180 a single B21 plane is estimated to cost 700 billion dollars and the Air Force is earmarked about 200 billion dollars to maintain a fleet of a hundred of them so those should at least give some approximation of just how expensive the RQ 180 Program might eventually be [Music] according to Aviation week as the rq180 might have actually become operational as early as 2017 and the fact that it's been spotted flying over the Philippines would suggest that at least a few units are already in the skies the forward operating base for the RQ 180 is believed to be Anderson Air Force Base in Guam not too far from the Philippines and with that location in mind it's not hard to see where the Air Force might be focusing the rq80 program China it should be no surprise by now that the United States and China both see themselves as opposing sides of a new multi-polar world order one in which each superpower sphere of influence is expected to push stronger and stronger against the other as time goes on China is more than able to deal with any of the slower lower flying or less stealthy drones that America has in its Arsenal so the rq-180 would be a real game changer especially in the event that either side were to begin a clearer military buildup day for example in advance of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or something and it's here that the rq-180 would really shine sound eye monitoring is well and good for Gathering intelligence in fact right now it's the publicly acknowledged way that the U.S gathers all its information about well-defended adversary Nations but satellites can only see so much and they're not equipped to give detailed information in real time China also is very publicly touted its ability to destroy satellites in orbit and any satellite is vulnerable to jamming spoofing and even hacking all of which would seriously compromise America's ability to gather intelligence the rq180 could hypothetically fill all of those gaps if satellites went out of commission but even if the satellites are working the RQ 180 can provide real-time data on specific targets that go Way Beyond what a satellite could hope to achieve the rq180 is also taking flight at the same time as the U2 is starting to beg for a time it's a half century old plane that was initially slated to leave active service over a decade ago and the Air Force is well aware of its limitations the USAF has been pushing hard to retire its remaining for Global Hawks which aren't even capable of Performing the role of the U2 ironically the US Congress has refused to allow the global hawk to be retired until the Air Force reveals plans to replace it practically speaking that replacement would be the rq-180 but it appears that the Air Force would rather keep the global program running than try and Trust members of congress not to run their mouths but perhaps the biggest reason the rq-180 is needed quickly is because the rq-170 Sentinel is widely understood to be a compromised asset in 2011 a sentinel drone was taken over by Iran while in flight and crashed with only minimal damage since then it's been reverse engineered and its key design components are built into the Sagar 2 and sarkhead 171 drones not only is this a major embarrassment for the United States but it all but guarantees that the sentinel's vulnerabilities are known not just to Iran but to Russia to China and well anyone else willing to pay for some especially tasty Intel The Sentinel was built to be survivable in enemy airspace live the RQ 180 but without it the US has no other option but to start putting the RQ 180 in the skies whether the rq180 is actually flying spy missions over China or any of America's other adversaries or perhaps even watching over hot zones like Ukraine Yemen and Sudan it's impossible to say but at the very least it appears that the rq-180 has taken to the skies in force and is already trusted to fly around the world without threat of a system failure the fact that it's been spotted multiple times during daylight hours might suggest the Air Force is interested in building public speculation or hinting at the drone's existence for adversaries to spend time worrying about or it might be an artifact of the rq-180s ability to fly for dozens of hours or potentially even days at a time without returning to the ground either way these aircraft have only been spotted at times when the Air Force should reasonably expect that they might be seen meaning that not only is the Air Force more than capable of hiding them the rest of the time but that someone somewhere has decided that it's okay for the world to get an inkling of the drones existence that's when the Drone will be officially revealed to the world it's hard to say the Air Force almost seems to be enjoying itself as it drops a occasional hints for example a video dropped by the Air Force's profession of armed Center of Excellence included the line the days of balloons and biplanes have been replaced by white bats while showing a global hawk drone in flight and then cutting to a top-down View and aircraft that looks a hell of a lot like what we'd expect the rq180 to look like although it's got some critical differences that would suggest that this isn't actually the real design but breadcrumbs and teasers appear to be enough for the Air Force at least for now as we mentioned at the start of today's video we hope we can go back to this topic in the coming decade or so and explain the rq180 in all its detail for now though we just have the opportunity to take a real-time look at something we rarely get to see a classified Next Generation warplane whose existence is slowly being revealed to the public at a moment in history where the prevalence of social media and high definition camera allow us to observe that process in real time or you know this thing we're talking about might not be called the rq180 at all and for that matter any one of the educated guesses that global Military experts are making could prove to be wrong what we do know is that something is in the skies and it appears to be a particularly magnificent invention [Music] foreign

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 257,675

Keywords: rq 180 stealth drone, rq 180 drone aviation week, rq 180 spy drone, rq 180 drone, rq-180 drones, rq-4 global hawk, rq 180, rq-180 drone, rq 180 speed, rq 180 aircraft, rq 180 northrop grumman, rq 180 unmanned aircraft

Id: tF_eJmX8boQ

Length: 17min 9sec (1029 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 10 2023